Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let
Speaker 1: you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode
Speaker 1: of the week that just happened is here in one
Speaker 1: convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
Speaker 1: listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
Speaker 1: you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
Speaker 1: there's gonna be nothing new here for you, but you
Speaker 1: can make your own decisions. Welcome back to it could
Speaker 1: happen here, a podcast about things falling apart and occasionally
Speaker 1: even about how to put some other things back together. Um.
Speaker 1: Today we're gonna be talking about something that is increasingly
Speaker 1: a part of what we like to call the crumbles
Speaker 1: around here, which is the health care system in this country,
Speaker 1: in the hospital system in this country as it uh
Speaker 1: kind of gets crunched by covid. Um. And we're gonna
Speaker 1: particularly talk about a really critical aspect of our entire
Speaker 1: medical infrastructure that a lot of people don't know about
Speaker 1: traveling nurses. Uh. And with me today is our guest,
Speaker 1: and and you are a traveling nurse from New York
Speaker 1: to California all around the country. Um, thanks for being
Speaker 1: on the show. Glad to be here. Yeah. So I
Speaker 1: live in Colorado and I was a regular staff nurse
Speaker 1: UM until COVID hit. And you know, at that time,
Speaker 1: we expected it to crunch everywhere. UM, but my home hospital,
Speaker 1: like many places that worked on the coast, UM ended
Speaker 1: up being really empty when everybody locked down and stopped
Speaker 1: getting into car accidents and going to parties and all
Speaker 1: of the other things that bring people into the e
Speaker 1: R and I se use UM. So at that time,
Speaker 1: i quit my full time job and went to New
Speaker 1: York as a travel nurse UM. And then I've been
Speaker 1: dancing around hotspots since then. So New York, Texas, Ohio,
Speaker 1: rural New Mexico. UM. I just finished my third contract
Speaker 1: in California. I've been up to Oregon. So UM, I've
Speaker 1: seen the health care system working and not working in
Speaker 1: a lot of different places, and also like how much
Speaker 1: disparity there is different communities related to COVID as in
Speaker 1: the health care that we can provide. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: am kind of before we move on to some of
Speaker 1: the specific things going on with travel nurses, what is
Speaker 1: your sense of like how often are you in a
Speaker 1: place and feel like, well, this the hospital system here,
Speaker 1: this particular hospital they're they're like right on the edge
Speaker 1: of a breaking point most of the time. Okay, that's
Speaker 1: good to know where your seatbelts, folks. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: particularly since everyone was able to get vaccinated right, Like
Speaker 1: to me, I really feel like that that that point
Speaker 1: of like the tipping point of like the quote unquote
Speaker 1: crumbles kind of like after everybody was was able to
Speaker 1: get their second vaccination UM, and we had so much
Speaker 1: hope last May and June and things were reopening and
Speaker 1: it was kind of like, Wow, things could go back
Speaker 1: to normal. UM, and then like, I don't believe that's
Speaker 1: going to happen. And since and I've seen so much
Speaker 1: more despair in my coworkers, and I've heard about so
Speaker 1: many more healthcare suicides UM staff, nurses, travel nurses, arties,
Speaker 1: other ancillary people, and you know, the kind of running joke,
Speaker 1: and a lot of workplaces is like, well, I hope
Speaker 1: I test positive for COVID because that would be better
Speaker 1: than coming into work another day. Yeah, alright, I hope
Speaker 1: I get hit by a car so I don't have
Speaker 1: to come in your job, I think, is what a
Speaker 1: lot of people would the people who you know are
Speaker 1: reasonable human beings and see what you're doing is incredibly necessary.
Speaker 1: Find that would find the work to be something of
Speaker 1: a nightmare. I mean, it sounds like horrific, UM, to
Speaker 1: have to deal with this. I mean it's it's it's
Speaker 1: not an easy job in the best of times being
Speaker 1: a nurse. But like with COVID and stuff, it's it's
Speaker 1: just there's so much else on y'all's plates. UM. And
Speaker 1: one of the things that has happened over the course
Speaker 1: of the last year or well almost two years now, UM,
Speaker 1: is that from January, the advertised pay rates for travel
Speaker 1: nurses around the country have gone up by about sixty UM,
Speaker 1: which in staffing firms of you know, increase their building
Speaker 1: up hospitals by like so like this huge rays in
Speaker 1: what um travel nurses are demanding and what is getting
Speaker 1: paid out. And I think a reasonable person would go, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: of course, UM. And yeah, I think anybody would go
Speaker 1: any reasonable person would go, well, yeah, of course, you
Speaker 1: guys deserve much more money than that for what you're
Speaker 1: dealing with right now. UM. I have no problem with this,
Speaker 1: But people who do have problems with this are the
Speaker 1: American Hospital Association UM, among other folks. Generally the folks
Speaker 1: who are seeing this primarily as a well, now we're
Speaker 1: spending more money issue, as opposed to a hey maybe
Speaker 1: we don't have enough nurses, right, Yeah, So I guess
Speaker 1: I have maybe a couple of comments on that. So
Speaker 1: one of the things about nurses, so if if you're
Speaker 1: not in the travel field and you say want to
Speaker 1: change hospitals, even if you're an experienced nurse, they will
Speaker 1: take between a month and six months to go through
Speaker 1: their hiring process and then they will give you a week,
Speaker 1: two weeks, maybe four weeks of orientation. So that's a
Speaker 1: long process to hire a nurse. Normally, for me as
Speaker 1: a travel nurse, I will talk to a recruiter, I
Speaker 1: will say yes, I will be on the road somewhere
Speaker 1: between four hours to twenty four hours later, I will
Speaker 1: get to the hospital. I will do a bunch of
Speaker 1: paperwork that is for compliance and makes no difference at all.
Speaker 1: I will get between two and six hours of orientation,
Speaker 1: which is basically, here's the bathroom, here's the store room,
Speaker 1: this is what we're going to audit in the charts,
Speaker 1: and then I'm expected to take care of complex actively
Speaker 1: dying patients. So, so you know, people complain about how
Speaker 1: much we're getting paid. But if you only have two
Speaker 1: hours of like where's the bathroom? And like this is
Speaker 1: how you get most of the time when you're spending
Speaker 1: with I T being like hey I need computer access, buddy,
Speaker 1: and then there you are and you're in the thick
Speaker 1: of it with no backup. You know, so you already
Speaker 1: have to be an expert in your field, and you
Speaker 1: have to be able to walk into an unfamiliar chaotic
Speaker 1: situation and hit the ground running immediately. So yes, making
Speaker 1: a hundred twenty bucks an hour is a lot of money,
Speaker 1: But I don't know that that's so super unreasonable for
Speaker 1: two hours of like yeah, it's the exit. Now take
Speaker 1: care of people who are actively dying, and don't screw
Speaker 1: it up. It's the way we're told the system is
Speaker 1: supposed to work, right, Like, this is how capitalism is
Speaker 1: supposed to function. The demand for something goes up, and
Speaker 1: the demand for nursing his way the hell up, so
Speaker 1: the price goes up. Um, if you believe in capitalism,
Speaker 1: like one assumes these people who are responsible for you know,
Speaker 1: paying you and are currently lobbying, So what's happening. I
Speaker 1: should go back because we didn't note this but the
Speaker 1: American Hospital Association and a number of other folks are
Speaker 1: lobbying Congress right now to put a cap on the
Speaker 1: amount of money that traveling nurses UM can uh can cane.
Speaker 1: Even a number of UM congress people have said that
Speaker 1: they're going to be looking into the issue. Several states Oregon, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Kansas,
Speaker 1: and Kentucky have introduced legislation that's attempting to cap nurse
Speaker 1: pay rates. So there's like this huge backlash attempting to
Speaker 1: lock down the amount of money y'all can continue to
Speaker 1: get paid UM because of all of the things this country,
Speaker 1: I guess has money for the people dealing with the
Speaker 1: I don't know what. I don't know how many millions
Speaker 1: of additional sick and dying people UM are are are
Speaker 1: kind of beyond what these folks are willing to shell
Speaker 1: out for UM. And I got the size of that,
Speaker 1: and I mean to clarify, so in a FEMA contract,
Speaker 1: so what a lot of the contracts I take are,
Speaker 1: So the nurse is making between a hundred and maybe
Speaker 1: you also have a taxi stipend or you don't kind
Speaker 1: of depending on how you are in that. And then
Speaker 1: but the bill rate to the hospital is usually like,
Speaker 1: so the legislation is against the agencies the agencies are
Speaker 1: making between of course, the agency is then going to say, hey,
Speaker 1: well we aren't going to pay you as much because
Speaker 1: we still want the same cut. Yeah, my understanding, so
Speaker 1: the trickle down effect is likely going to be travel
Speaker 1: nurse wages. But my understanding is it's asking the FTC
Speaker 1: to take enforcement against the travel nurse agencies because the agencies,
Speaker 1: they're the ones that say they have the person on
Speaker 1: the phone that says, hey, you have these credentials, we
Speaker 1: want to send you to this hospital yes, or now
Speaker 1: we've got this hotel arranged or we don't or you
Speaker 1: know those types of and we're going to do this
Speaker 1: type of on boarding. So they have their own kind
Speaker 1: of infrastructure and they take, you know, half of the cut,
Speaker 1: and some of those people are making a lot of
Speaker 1: money too. Yeah, And it seems like it's kind of
Speaker 1: the situation where the way this is being framed, they're
Speaker 1: trying to crack down on these people who are kind
Speaker 1: of profiteering or could be argued to be profiteering off
Speaker 1: the situation um rather than trying to cap the amount
Speaker 1: that the nurses can make so to speak, or at
Speaker 1: least not by as much, but the overall effect will
Speaker 1: be that because of the way these companies work, y'all
Speaker 1: will still wind up making less money. Um yeah, how
Speaker 1: um within the traveling nurse community, what is kind of
Speaker 1: where are people right now with this? Like? What is
Speaker 1: what is kind of the mood? Um? So? I think
Speaker 1: there's a couple of things to note. So in the
Speaker 1: FEMA contracts, they're usually sixty to seventy two contracts, so
Speaker 1: you're working back to back to back to back, so
Speaker 1: I'll do eight weeks sometimes. And most people are not
Speaker 1: white women like me. This is mostly first and second
Speaker 1: generation immigrants and generally people of color. Um So, these
Speaker 1: are not people that are saving for Lamborghinis. These are
Speaker 1: people that are getting off their student loans because a
Speaker 1: lot of them went to private nursing schools because that
Speaker 1: was kind of what was accessible to them because of
Speaker 1: all of the disparity and education and opportunities. These are
Speaker 1: people that are trying to pay off their mortgages. These
Speaker 1: are people who are paying off their parents houses. Um So,
Speaker 1: this kind of idea that like nurses are greedy is
Speaker 1: I think really unfair because most of us are just
Speaker 1: trying to, like, you know, make a life that works.
Speaker 1: And also, you can't do eight hour contracts fifty two
Speaker 1: weeks out of the year. No, I mean doing it
Speaker 1: for any extended period of time. I've I've worked those
Speaker 1: kinds of hours in a generally less stressful working environment. Um.
Speaker 1: And it like it breaks you down, um over time,
Speaker 1: like you you can't do that at any time in
Speaker 1: your life for one thing like um, and you can't
Speaker 1: do that forever. And it sounds like this is kind
Speaker 1: of a lot of people are taking it as like
Speaker 1: this is an opportunity. I can get my parents out
Speaker 1: of debt, I can I can get a house, Um,
Speaker 1: I can say for my kids to I can pay
Speaker 1: off my own college. Like it's a chance for a
Speaker 1: lot of these people by putting in an unbelievable amount
Speaker 1: of f to get ahead. Uh. And I can't can't
Speaker 1: even imagine the frustration at seeing so many people be like, well, no,
Speaker 1: not so fast. And I mean one of the things
Speaker 1: that people are bringing up is right like it in
Speaker 1: the same way that you know, we struggle to want
Speaker 1: to pass minimum wage laws for the undocumented immigrants that
Speaker 1: pick our food, and you know, support this infrastructure that
Speaker 1: is totally unseen now that we have you know what,
Speaker 1: is mostly forstance second generation immigrants that are working these
Speaker 1: FEMA contracts, Like, you're targeting a section of the population
Speaker 1: that are not the people that have doubled tripled their
Speaker 1: wealth in the pandemic, right, Like, these are not all
Speaker 1: of the people that got the small business loans that
Speaker 1: didn't need them and you know and have are just
Speaker 1: putting all of that money into stock, right is there? Not?
Speaker 1: These are people who just want a middle class American
Speaker 1: dream and we're working, will work really really hard for it.
Speaker 1: And I mean there these are people who are asking,
Speaker 1: can I have the thing we're all promised? If I
Speaker 1: spend eighty hours a week watching people, in a lot
Speaker 1: of cases choke out their last fucking breaths, is that okay?
Speaker 1: And a lot of people are saying, oh, of course,
Speaker 1: not right. And you know, so we're taking care of
Speaker 1: dying people while we're getting yelled at at the phone
Speaker 1: of like, is cursing a lot on the show or
Speaker 1: no fucking lutely yes, of course. Yeah. I mean I
Speaker 1: had a family member saying, you're fucking imprisoning her on
Speaker 1: a ventilator I'm going to come for you. Where do
Speaker 1: you fucking live? You know we have to get security involved. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, we get death threats. I've had people like
Speaker 1: threatened to find where I live and raped me. And
Speaker 1: so I mean, yeah, enough of a race taking care
Speaker 1: of your dying loved one who also probably would say
Speaker 1: those same things to me because I would say, hey,
Speaker 1: please be vaccinated and they would say fuck you. But
Speaker 1: I'm still going to do everything I can to take
Speaker 1: care of those um and I'm gonna endure this abuse,
Speaker 1: and like, yeah, if I'm going to leave my home
Speaker 1: and the safety of a hospital that works and go
Speaker 1: into these total cluster fucks of hospitals where the educator
Speaker 1: has left, the manager has left, the director has left,
Speaker 1: so there's no leadership. It's travelers, some of which are great,
Speaker 1: some of which are also hot messes, and try and
Speaker 1: to take care of these people. Then like, yes, I
Speaker 1: want to be paid accordingly for it. Now would I
Speaker 1: trade that for a social um a social safety net
Speaker 1: of health insurance because I have to get private health insurance,
Speaker 1: which is shady. Um, I don't get any disability insurance.
Speaker 1: I have no stick. Leave right because you're you're you're
Speaker 1: a pinch hitter. You're not like salary anywhere. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: would I trade this high salary for a social safety net? Personally,
Speaker 1: I would yes, But I mean nobody's gonna say, like, yes,
Speaker 1: you will be able to retire with dignity if you
Speaker 1: play by all of these rules. They don't believe that
Speaker 1: I want to make the money. Yeah, it's I mean,
Speaker 1: we're all always in this kind and I like, yes,
Speaker 1: soccer way as much as you can while it's coming situation.
Speaker 1: And she's especially if you're especially if you're doing something
Speaker 1: you're gonna need to recover from later, right, Like this
Speaker 1: is I I you know, I've I've done overseas work.
Speaker 1: I understand kind of the nature of like trauma. And
Speaker 1: while you're doing the job at the rate you're doing it,
Speaker 1: you're also like pushing off a day of reckoning mentally,
Speaker 1: and not having a cushion of savings helps with that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like in the middle of it, you're in it, and
Speaker 1: then you know, sometimes it's weeks, sometimes it's months. Um.
Speaker 1: I hiked the Colorado Trail for mental health, and half
Speaker 1: of those nights I had I See you nightmares. So
Speaker 1: I was in these beautiful the middle of lower places
Speaker 1: where everything was quiet. I would wake up with all
Speaker 1: of the beeps and people dying in my head night
Speaker 1: after night after night. You know, yeah, I mean yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm angry that they don't want to compensate me for that,
Speaker 1: because I mean, they're definitely not paying for my therapist.
Speaker 1: They definitely like aren't giving me access to disability if
Speaker 1: I need it? Right? Like yeah, because obviously again, you're
Speaker 1: you're a contractor. Effectively, Um, there's not like a union
Speaker 1: for traveling nurses, is there? Or Am I wrong about that? No? So,
Speaker 1: I mean the only thing you have each your negotiating power. Um.
Speaker 1: So I have eight years of experience between emergency and
Speaker 1: I see you, um, and a lot of very um,
Speaker 1: big and highly regarded hospitals. So I'm a hot commodity
Speaker 1: to them, so I can kind of pick and choose, um,
Speaker 1: who I want to work with compared to someone that
Speaker 1: has less desirable specialties. Not that those specialties don't also
Speaker 1: work as hard, but they're just harder. They're easier to staff,
Speaker 1: so therefore they're not It's a market thing. Sure, it's
Speaker 1: a market things. I definitely don't believe that my specialties
Speaker 1: are more like inherently valuable just in terms of the market. Um.
Speaker 1: So you know, so I get I can I have
Speaker 1: the luxury of turning down contracts that aren't what I want.
Speaker 1: But I mean, I have no idea what I'm walking into.
Speaker 1: So on Monday, I'll walk into somewhere. Um, they said,
Speaker 1: you'll do some paperwork, you'll get your orientation, you'll have
Speaker 1: it'll all be it'll be a busy day and then
Speaker 1: you'll be on your own. And I have no idea.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you're oriented in one unit and you never see
Speaker 1: that unit again. So um, and I you know, you
Speaker 1: have no idea what you're walking into. And how how
Speaker 1: long are these contracts? Generally? For so, before COVID, the
Speaker 1: standard nursing contract was thirteen weeks UM. Since COVID, a
Speaker 1: lot of them are shorter. And I've only done in
Speaker 1: short contracts because if it's a decent place, then I
Speaker 1: can renew and stay longer usually, and if it's a
Speaker 1: bad place, then I'm pretty happy to get out early. Um.
Speaker 1: So I do between four and eight week contracts, and
Speaker 1: I usually do sixty plus hours a week. Is there
Speaker 1: any kind of like organization that you've seen come together
Speaker 1: a little more between people who are doing this this
Speaker 1: gig since you don't have kind of representation. Is that
Speaker 1: something that started to take form in the last two
Speaker 1: years since COVID. I mean there's definitely a lot of
Speaker 1: talk about it. Um. I think like those of us
Speaker 1: that started traveling since the pandemic, you know, I would
Speaker 1: say that I've only done crisis contracts, like I've never
Speaker 1: done a normal thirteen week, thirty six hour a week,
Speaker 1: not crisis assignment, like I've only gone into the ship
Speaker 1: show hot spots, um. And so therefore, like my needs
Speaker 1: and desires are different than somebody who likes that previous lifestyle.
Speaker 1: So in some ways it's a little bit hard for
Speaker 1: us to kind of agree on common goals because we
Speaker 1: have a lot of different you know, we're a very
Speaker 1: diverse group of nurses. Um. Definitely, the Million Nurse March
Speaker 1: is kind of a step towards that. Tell me about
Speaker 1: that what what is this? Because I just learned about
Speaker 1: this pretty recently. Yeah, so I dropped off the grid
Speaker 1: for the last five days, which was fantastic for me,
Speaker 1: but it means I'm also just starting to figure it out. UM.
Speaker 1: So the kind of general idea is that you know
Speaker 1: we have I think, uh, I'm gonna hopefully I don't
Speaker 1: get it wrong. Four millions some nurses in the country,
Speaker 1: A huge number of nurses in the country and a
Speaker 1: huge number of dropping out. Um, you know, hundreds of
Speaker 1: thousands quit last year. They I think one estimate is
Speaker 1: five hundred thousand may quit this year. And we were
Speaker 1: just so people know, tens of thousands of nurses understaffed
Speaker 1: before COVID nation. Yes, right, right, um, And you know,
Speaker 1: I think one of the things to understand too is
Speaker 1: that like if you work, I don't know, what's what's
Speaker 1: the normal type of job that people work. I don't know.
Speaker 1: If you work at the d m V A bookman,
Speaker 1: Oh right, If you work at the d m V
Speaker 1: and the d m V is slow, you will still
Speaker 1: stay there eight hours and you'll just get paid for
Speaker 1: your eight hours. If you are a normal nurse and
Speaker 1: you work thirty six hours and the e R is
Speaker 1: running slow, they could say we're just canceling you for
Speaker 1: the rest of the day, go home, we won't play
Speaker 1: you for those class six hours. And so like we've
Speaker 1: always had pretty like flexible, like we've never had a minute.
Speaker 1: Most of the places i've worked. I've never had guaranteed hours,
Speaker 1: and so one of the reasons to go to travel
Speaker 1: contracts to is also so you can at least have
Speaker 1: guaranteed hours. So there's a lot of kind of protections
Speaker 1: that nurses have never really had, like guaranteed hours UM,
Speaker 1: like staff ratios, so some states California and organ or
Speaker 1: um two of them. If you go into the ice U,
Speaker 1: which is the highest level of care, so people are
Speaker 1: actively dying, actively unstable, things can go bad within seconds.
Speaker 1: Usually it's a one nurse will have two patients UM,
Speaker 1: which is pretty much all you can handle because they're
Speaker 1: on multiple drips, multiple types of life. The part keeping
Speaker 1: them alive so ventilators UM being the one that we
Speaker 1: see the most UM, and it's really your responsibility to
Speaker 1: know every inch of that person's body UM and everything
Speaker 1: going on with them, and you really direct a lot
Speaker 1: of their care UM. So two to one kind of
Speaker 1: makes a lot of sense since the pandemic and not
Speaker 1: having enough nurses, sometimes that slid to three to one
Speaker 1: or even in bad situations four to one. So one
Speaker 1: of the statistic x that UM one of the kind
Speaker 1: of nurse influencers and comedians, nurse Blake talks about UM.
Speaker 1: Is that for every additional patient that a nurse takes on,
Speaker 1: and I believe he's talking about med starch, not I
Speaker 1: see that that patients UM mortality increases by seven percent.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so asking a nurse to do more with
Speaker 1: less is not just like hey, just suck it up,
Speaker 1: be busier. This is actively contributing to people's disability and
Speaker 1: early deaths. So one of the things that the millionairese
Speaker 1: march Um wants to talk about is man man dated
Speaker 1: staffing ratios. So I see you would be two to
Speaker 1: one med starch is usually four to one. I think
Speaker 1: you are. They're asking for three to one UM. So
Speaker 1: these have been studied by the American Nurses Association UM
Speaker 1: and other sort of UM nursing organizations UM. And not
Speaker 1: only do they make your job as a nurse so
Speaker 1: much better because we go into nursing because we want
Speaker 1: to say things and take care of people. We want
Speaker 1: good outcomes, right Like, you don't go into nursing to
Speaker 1: just run around with your head cut off and watch
Speaker 1: everyone die, right Like, that's terrible. You go into nursing
Speaker 1: because you want the people to get better under your care,
Speaker 1: and you want to be able to give them that,
Speaker 1: and so when you're asked to take care of more
Speaker 1: patients than you're able to, you're not able to do that,
Speaker 1: and it just crushes you. UM. So not only is
Speaker 1: it better for nurse satisfaction, it also saves patients lives
Speaker 1: and also prevents things that will give cause lasting disability
Speaker 1: like ventilator associated pneumonia or bed sores or delirium, things
Speaker 1: like that. So, you know, mandating UM patient ratios is
Speaker 1: one of the really big things that the million Nurse
Speaker 1: marks is for UM. There's a lot of talk about
Speaker 1: pay and living wages. You know, like every section. Housing
Speaker 1: prices and inflation have gone through the roof because you've
Speaker 1: got to like be renting a spot whenever you're like
Speaker 1: the hospital only putting you up right well, and fir
Speaker 1: staff nurses to write like if you're you know, maybe
Speaker 1: you're maybe they gave you a two percent raise, but hey,
Speaker 1: rent increase UM. I used to be on the interview
Speaker 1: board at my old hospital and we would just tell
Speaker 1: people like, if you're moving to Denver as a single person,
Speaker 1: we lose most of our nurses because they haven't looked
Speaker 1: at housing. So like they'll accept a job, and then
Speaker 1: they'll look for a place to live and be like, oh,
Speaker 1: I can't afford to live here. So hey, like, I mean,
Speaker 1: we can't ask if you're single moving here, but like
Speaker 1: you probably can't afford to live here with what we're
Speaker 1: going to pay you. I mean, cool, I I It's
Speaker 1: just it's so eternally frustrating that, like the one thing
Speaker 1: that everybody, when you sit them down, agrees is in
Speaker 1: controvertibly necessary medical care. Um. We can agree on a
Speaker 1: lot of things, but not how to make sure that
Speaker 1: people doing it have a good quality of life and
Speaker 1: good income. Like we can we have all these fun,
Speaker 1: fun rules that make it possible to our X number
Speaker 1: of thousand dollars for a dose of insulin um, But
Speaker 1: we don't just have a law that's like, hey, if
Speaker 1: if you're working full time as a nurse, uh, maybe
Speaker 1: you shouldn't have to be housing insecure. I don't know
Speaker 1: how do you make that into a law, But it
Speaker 1: seems like there should be some option for a country
Speaker 1: that can make some of the things we make, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean tying wages to housing prices. It seems like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, not being an economist and not being
Speaker 1: an administrator, Like that sounds super easy to me, Like
Speaker 1: everybody gives a fifteen percent race. Like sure, I'm sure
Speaker 1: it's more complicated than that, but it seems super simple
Speaker 1: to send a guy around with a stick to threaten
Speaker 1: landlords when they raise rent. Like there's we could debate
Speaker 1: the answers to this. What do you think I mean,
Speaker 1: not not that like you have any sort of comprehensive
Speaker 1: knowledge of all of the people doing this, but like,
Speaker 1: do you think there's a possibility of like a wildcat strike,
Speaker 1: which is again for people who maybe aren't is when
Speaker 1: there's a strike of kers who are not unionized. Um,
Speaker 1: I mean to some extent, with everybody quitting to do
Speaker 1: travel nursing, it's not so different. I mean, some students
Speaker 1: have lost eight of their staff, right some Like when
Speaker 1: a unit says, oh, well, we lost of my staff,
Speaker 1: I'm kind of like, well you did better than most,
Speaker 1: you know. Um, So in some ways it's already happening.
Speaker 1: And in that same way, I am seeing hospitals give
Speaker 1: better extent incentives to their nurses that have stayed um
Speaker 1: either retention bonuses or um increasing bonuses for pick for
Speaker 1: core staff picking up extra shifts UM, or kind of
Speaker 1: other perks like increasing education benefits or things like that.
Speaker 1: So I think hospitals are responding to like, hey, we
Speaker 1: don't want to lose these people to traveling, Like can
Speaker 1: we tip the balance a little bit? And I think,
Speaker 1: you know, overall, hospital leadership is moving slower than they
Speaker 1: need to UM. But I mean at least they're moving
Speaker 1: a little bit. So I mean in that way, I
Speaker 1: can see a wildcat strike UM, just coming from the
Speaker 1: kind of labor forces at play UM. And I could
Speaker 1: and I mean there were one of the hospitals in
Speaker 1: the South, I think it was Alabama, all of their staff,
Speaker 1: their staff coordinated UM, so that the ship that was
Speaker 1: on agreed to stay late because you can't because abandoning patients, UM,
Speaker 1: you can put your license at risk. Right, So we
Speaker 1: all walked off in the middle of a shift and
Speaker 1: said fuck you to the hospital. Patients died then, like
Speaker 1: our licenses at risk. So we also have to kind
Speaker 1: of balance that a little bit. But there was a
Speaker 1: hospital they organized for the day shift basically to stay
Speaker 1: as late as they needed, and night shift all stood
Speaker 1: outside of the hospital and I wouldn't refuse to clock
Speaker 1: it in. So sometimes these things are happening in small levels. Um. Also, um,
Speaker 1: really interesting Yeah, Like um, I mean, and that is
Speaker 1: like such a tough thing to balance, just the idea
Speaker 1: that like, well, you are health care workers, like withholding
Speaker 1: your labor is a thing that's going to be necessary
Speaker 1: from time to time. There's also consequences for it that
Speaker 1: are not present if you're making I don't know, tires,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, And as much as teachers and nurses
Speaker 1: are the same, Like I don't think our country cares
Speaker 1: about educating children as much as it cares about their
Speaker 1: parents dying, you know, like for better or worse. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, that's another subject. Um. Is there anything
Speaker 1: else you wanted to get into today? Um? Before we
Speaker 1: we close out for the for the episode, Um, I mean,
Speaker 1: if it's okay with you, and you can cut it
Speaker 1: if it's not. Um, you know, I try and tweet
Speaker 1: about kind of what's happening on the ground. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: and the things that I'm seeing. Um. And I'm mostly
Speaker 1: finished with a book about the first year on the
Speaker 1: front line and seven different hospitals and kind of the
Speaker 1: disparities between you know, critical access in New Mexico versus
Speaker 1: trauma hospitals in you know, the Bay Area and kind
Speaker 1: of what that first year looked like. UM. So if
Speaker 1: you want, you can follow me on Twitter. UM it's
Speaker 1: an A N N E like an of green Gables
Speaker 1: and R N which is when I started traveling nursaying, um,
Speaker 1: you know, and so that I kind of talked a
Speaker 1: little bit about like what I'm seeing and what's going on. UM.
Speaker 1: I was recently in an e er where you know,
Speaker 1: people often had to stay outside under the heat lamps
Speaker 1: for thirty hours waiting for a hospital bed just because
Speaker 1: everything was packed so they couldn't even come inside the
Speaker 1: hospital and they were you know, waiting, um to get
Speaker 1: their appendix out and things like that. Again, where are
Speaker 1: your seatbelts in the helmet? Be real, be real careful
Speaker 1: right now, guys, right UM? And I mean I think
Speaker 1: the other thing is the blood shortage. UM. So most
Speaker 1: hospitals are revising their guidelines of who won't get a
Speaker 1: blood transfusion, so you now have to be much more
Speaker 1: critical before they will give you a blood transfusion. So, UM,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of politics around blood donation, but if
Speaker 1: you feel like you can donate blood, um, it's really
Speaker 1: desperately needed, and people are gonna where your seats because
Speaker 1: people are really going to legitimately die because we run
Speaker 1: out of blood. Yeah, um boy, how do you please
Speaker 1: wear your seatbelts? Folks? Um, just just hunker down for
Speaker 1: a little while. No, no new risky experiments in life
Speaker 1: for just a minute. Not the time to take up skydiving.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, maybe avoid that. Maybe you don't go skiing.
Speaker 1: Uh if you haven't gone skiing before. Um, I just
Speaker 1: did that and broke my wrist because I'm I'm exactly
Speaker 1: as dumb as the people I'm trying to warn. And
Speaker 1: then I guess just check in with your mental with
Speaker 1: your the mental health of your health care workers, because
Speaker 1: I mean, so many people have you know, I think
Speaker 1: a lot of us are dealing with at least passive
Speaker 1: sort of like puck. Maybe I should just drive off
Speaker 1: the road instead of going into work today sort of thoughts,
Speaker 1: you know. And oh, for a lot of us, that's
Speaker 1: just definitleeting thought and then we get our ship together.
Speaker 1: But for some people it's going to be more than that.
Speaker 1: And you know, nursing is one of those things where
Speaker 1: people have to find themselves by their career and they
Speaker 1: need people in their lives, saying like, if you are
Speaker 1: never a nurse again, you are still valued, you are
Speaker 1: still loved. Just being alive, it's enough, and this is
Speaker 1: how you know we can help take care of you
Speaker 1: if you need to quit for three months, you know,
Speaker 1: um and supporting people with their intrinsic value rather than
Speaker 1: like you are only productive and valuable because you were
Speaker 1: there saving lives. Because I think a lot of us
Speaker 1: really get stuck in that, and a lot of us
Speaker 1: are drawn into nursing because we feel some lack of
Speaker 1: worthiness without it. You know, well, that's the hard thing
Speaker 1: to get other people to do, because in part this
Speaker 1: is a society where we just have such generally crummy
Speaker 1: attitudes towards mental health. But like we're great at at
Speaker 1: saying things like, oh, you know, there's a pandemic. Our
Speaker 1: healthcare workers are heroes. You're all heroes because of the
Speaker 1: that you're doing the work makes you a hero, as
Speaker 1: opposed to saying, hey, thank you for doing that. I
Speaker 1: know things are still fucked up right now, but if
Speaker 1: you decide you gotta like take a break or whatever,
Speaker 1: you know, you're you're you're that doesn't mean you like
Speaker 1: what you did was still wonderful and you're still great
Speaker 1: and valuable, and maybe the best thing is for you
Speaker 1: to take that break and not drive yourself off of
Speaker 1: a cliff. Yeah. Yeah, that's that's harder to get people
Speaker 1: to like way of banners that say outside of their
Speaker 1: apartment complexes, banging on pots to like let healthcare workers
Speaker 1: know that no matter what they do, their valued members
Speaker 1: of the community that people love. Um. But yeah, all right, well,
Speaker 1: and thank you so much for talking with us today. UM,
Speaker 1: I hope uh you you hold together and help the
Speaker 1: people in your life hold together, which is all any
Speaker 1: of us can really do other than we're a seatbelt. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you for being a part of the conversation, and
Speaker 1: thank you for you know, listening to hard things. And
Speaker 1: you know that's one thing that I think we really
Speaker 1: appreciate it as to people who will actually listen with
Speaker 1: open hearts and and we'll witness this with us so
Speaker 1: that we're not alone in it. It could happen. Here
Speaker 1: is the podcast that you're listening to right now. I'm
Speaker 1: Robert Evans. All right, that's that's my job done. What
Speaker 1: are we what are we doing? What are we doing today? Hey?
Speaker 1: What's up? Hey? Andrew? Back at it again with another podcast. UM. Today,
Speaker 1: we're doing something a little bit different from the previous
Speaker 1: episodes that I've done. We're having a bit more open
Speaker 1: discussion about sitting book that has been passed around for
Speaker 1: about a decade now and has polarized UM members of
Speaker 1: the anarchist community. UM for it that way, UM today
Speaker 1: we'll be talking about the book the infamous uh polemic
Speaker 1: Desert by Anonymous. For those who uh, you know, not
Speaker 1: aware of this extremely controversial text. Desert is a nihilist
Speaker 1: anarchist text for this published in two thousand eleven that
Speaker 1: is mainly directed at other anarchists and seeks to address
Speaker 1: issues of climate collapse and revolution. It became somewhat of
Speaker 1: a meme to tell folks to read Dessert. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure when that was, but I just remember scene. It's
Speaker 1: a lot um I think in yeah around read Desert
Speaker 1: became a name, yeah yeah, all over Twitter and Instagram
Speaker 1: and credit. But of course, being a thing that exists
Speaker 1: on the Internet, people who naturally became torn on the
Speaker 1: subject of it. And so there are a lot of
Speaker 1: perspectives and opinions and think pieces about desert, some more
Speaker 1: or less accurate than others. But we are here to
Speaker 1: discuss the book, our personal experiences reading it, things we
Speaker 1: think it gets right and wrong, and what we could
Speaker 1: potentially learn going forward. So I would say the floor
Speaker 1: is yours, whoever wants to go first. I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: a huge fan of the quote that the book takes it,
Speaker 1: or that the that it takes its name from, which
Speaker 1: comes from you know, Tacitus, who was a dude writing
Speaker 1: in the Roman period um the exact quote that it
Speaker 1: comes from his and he's talking. Tacitus is talking about
Speaker 1: the Roman Empire, robbers of the world. Now that the
Speaker 1: earth is insufficient for their all devastating hands, they probe
Speaker 1: even the sea. If their enemy is rich, they are greedy.
Speaker 1: If he is poor, they thirst for dominion. Neither East
Speaker 1: nor West has satisfied them alone. Of mankind, they are
Speaker 1: equally covetous of poverty and wealth, robbery, slaughter, and plunder.
Speaker 1: They falsely name empire. They make a desert and they
Speaker 1: call it peace. Huh, good ass quote. It is a
Speaker 1: It is a solid yeah. And obviously I think people
Speaker 1: living in the shadows of every empire that's ever existed
Speaker 1: can identify with that quote. Um, it's it's a powerful
Speaker 1: kind of central idea to hang your extended essay. I
Speaker 1: don't really know what the best term to refer to
Speaker 1: it as all. It's it's it's a long essay. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a very long essay. As we talked about kind
Speaker 1: of coming into this, it's extremely two thousand tens um
Speaker 1: three Arab spring pre all the big uprisings and revolts
Speaker 1: we had in twenty nineteen and UM, there's definitely some
Speaker 1: stuff that it gets very right. And I think kind
Speaker 1: of one of the ways in which it's had an
Speaker 1: impact on me is kind of I've I've thought about
Speaker 1: what happens to sort of culture as the result of
Speaker 1: this kind of Hollywood engine that is heavily tied up
Speaker 1: with the United States military Industrial complex, UM, as a
Speaker 1: process of desertification of ideas and the ability to like
Speaker 1: conceive of of of new futures. UM. That said, I
Speaker 1: I don't really I haven't reread it in a very
Speaker 1: long time, UM, and haven't really felt UM called to
Speaker 1: in in many ways because I do think I don't know,
Speaker 1: I think there's an extent to which it's been kind
Speaker 1: of left behind. UM. Yeah. Yeah, some of the things
Speaker 1: that have happened since I think, yeah, um, I will
Speaker 1: say that as someone who really came into my owners
Speaker 1: an archist in although I had identified with it before, um,
Speaker 1: when I had read the book. Um, I think it
Speaker 1: was in late late so when they read the book
Speaker 1: first time I read it, and honestly, um, there was
Speaker 1: some good, some bad, some some very outdated stuff, and
Speaker 1: also some stuff that I don't know. Maybe the author
Speaker 1: felt it was like groundbreaking at the time, but you know,
Speaker 1: at this present stage just feels like common knowledge sense,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean it was. It was groundbreaking in
Speaker 1: a way for like climate realism, right, like this was
Speaker 1: this was written before you know, this is written before
Speaker 1: climate levy thing. This is written before um, the uninhabitable Earth.
Speaker 1: This was written before a lot of kind of the
Speaker 1: texts that view climate change is an absolute like this
Speaker 1: was written one year before Hyper Objects. Is really interesting actually,
Speaker 1: because you know, the whole premence of that book is
Speaker 1: that climate changes is done, like it happened, where we're
Speaker 1: like there's no turning back the clock. And the desert
Speaker 1: was written even before that, like it was it was
Speaker 1: one of the first things. Now and of course it's
Speaker 1: it's it's much more niche, but like it was if
Speaker 1: I look, if I look back in books that have
Speaker 1: like impacted me, it was it's one of the first
Speaker 1: books like that came out, like timeline wise to take
Speaker 1: climate changes, like, yeah, it's there's no saving it, like
Speaker 1: there's no living in the two thousands, there's no living
Speaker 1: in the nineties. Again, it's like things are like the
Speaker 1: world's not going to end, but things are going to
Speaker 1: get worse, right, like and that, and that is kind
Speaker 1: of a big, big part of the book because it's
Speaker 1: it's also it's also not pro collapse like it it
Speaker 1: doesn't take. Collapse is an absolute. It doesn't take. It
Speaker 1: doesn't it doesn't subscribe to global collapse. And that's one
Speaker 1: of the misconceptions I think people have about them, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that they just assume it's like this collapse Dumorus like
Speaker 1: misscrupic kind of text, but which I did not read
Speaker 1: it as that. I first started around the same time
Speaker 1: you did, um and I read it as a part
Speaker 1: of a lot of books I was reading to prep
Speaker 1: for the show when we when we were writing our
Speaker 1: first five episodes on like on climate change and like
Speaker 1: the Crumbles. So I read it read it as a
Speaker 1: part of my kind of general research. And yeah, like
Speaker 1: at that point it was already kind of mimified to
Speaker 1: be like, you know, like an anarcho nihilist like Dumor Manifesto.
Speaker 1: And I read it and like, that's not what it's
Speaker 1: saying at all. It's actually once I read it, I
Speaker 1: was like, as we be taking it back at how
Speaker 1: how easily um popular perceptions of a piece of media
Speaker 1: good um, I mean honestly corrupted beyond recognition. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: like if people are a bunch of people are telling
Speaker 1: you know it's that or the other about is in
Speaker 1: text or whatever, you know, it's kind of shake it
Speaker 1: kind of shakes you up to like actually consumed for
Speaker 1: yourself and then realize, how do you all get that? Yeah?
Speaker 1: How did you read that out of it? It is
Speaker 1: really interesting because I'm not even sure if they did
Speaker 1: read out of it or if that was the perception
Speaker 1: they had going into it, so they read it through
Speaker 1: that lens, and that lens basically you know, changed the
Speaker 1: text in their head to fit that thing. Because yea,
Speaker 1: it is really interesting how how it is so associated
Speaker 1: with like doomeriism um yet if you like engage in
Speaker 1: good faith with the text. It's very much not a
Speaker 1: doomer manifesto anyway, although there are aspects of it that
Speaker 1: I am um that I think attitude wise that I
Speaker 1: am critical of, But I think Chris was going to
Speaker 1: say something, yeah. So it's just like I, I really
Speaker 1: I've always not liked this book, like read it back
Speaker 1: and I think she Dozeneen when it was first sort
Speaker 1: of like coming back, and I didn't like it then,
Speaker 1: And I re read it this morning, and I like
Speaker 1: it even less now than I did then, and I think,
Speaker 1: I think, I actually, I actually okay, So like I
Speaker 1: think it's true that most of the text doesn't do
Speaker 1: the doom or thing, but I think I understand where
Speaker 1: people got it from, because you know, you have quotes
Speaker 1: in this like uh here, here's one. Yet I can
Speaker 1: already hear the accusations from my own camp, accusations of
Speaker 1: deserting the cause of revolution, deserting the struggle for another world.
Speaker 1: Such accusations are correct, I would rejoin that such millinarian
Speaker 1: and progressive myths are at the core of the expansion
Speaker 1: of power. And this is this is what I really like,
Speaker 1: I think from an ecological perspective, it's sort of Okay,
Speaker 1: I strongly dislike Desert as an anarchist text because I
Speaker 1: think that's just wrong. I think I think, I think
Speaker 1: there's there there's there's there's an ingrained defeatism in it
Speaker 1: that is so strong that it it it just it
Speaker 1: like warps the author's perception of the past. Like you
Speaker 1: get these things where he's talking about these these kind
Speaker 1: of he's talking about like the you know, what you
Speaker 1: call the classical anarchist movement from roughly like eighteen seventy
Speaker 1: two really sort of ends with the defeat of the
Speaker 1: anarchists in Spain and like seven and and he you know,
Speaker 1: they say things like from Spain pre nineteen thirty six
Speaker 1: to the Jewish anarchists in North America, the illegalist of France,
Speaker 1: and the Italian anarchoscentity close to Argentina. The inhabitants of
Speaker 1: anarchist counter societies were always, by definition active minorities. The
Speaker 1: minorities may have gotten larger in an instructionary moments, but
Speaker 1: they remained that minorities always. And that's just wrong, It's
Speaker 1: it's factually wrong, like these these movements were not minorities,
Speaker 1: like the like the entire like the like the largest
Speaker 1: union in France was the siege like in the early
Speaker 1: ante hundred was the you see it that all all
Speaker 1: of the French, Spanish and Portuguese country speaking countries have
Speaker 1: a they have one union that's called the u g
Speaker 1: C and one union it's called CGT and I can't
Speaker 1: remember which ones which, but like like that was that
Speaker 1: was the largest union in France, and it was a
Speaker 1: syndicalist union, right like it was like and there's you
Speaker 1: know the same thing with Argentina, right for a like
Speaker 1: for a while, was the largest union in Argentina. And
Speaker 1: I think and this this is sort of my problem
Speaker 1: with this, which is that you know, this is a
Speaker 1: person who's basically like they talked about like they were
Speaker 1: born in the seventies and they've they've they're writing the
Speaker 1: steals in eleven in just the midst of the collapse
Speaker 1: of sort of like the complete and total destruction of
Speaker 1: the old anarchist movement, right, the anarchist movement that had
Speaker 1: been born out of sort of like the Zapatistas and
Speaker 1: the anti globalization movements. And they've been beaten so badly
Speaker 1: that you know, I mean, they were crushed, they were
Speaker 1: completely destroyed, and they've been beaten so badly that they
Speaker 1: they can't they literally can't imagine winning and think that
Speaker 1: like like revolution in general, like is essentially a secular theology.
Speaker 1: They repeat this over and over and over again. It's
Speaker 1: like revolution is theology, Revolution is a myth. And it's
Speaker 1: like and this is this is something that's just a
Speaker 1: product of of defeat. It's not a product of sort
Speaker 1: of taking seriously the conditions that are emerging around them.
Speaker 1: And you know, I was talking about this before the recording.
Speaker 1: It's like right after this is written, it's you get
Speaker 1: the movement of the squares, and then you get occupied,
Speaker 1: and it's like basically like every major city in the
Speaker 1: world goes into revolt. The revolts are anarchists inspired, and
Speaker 1: you know, and and desert, like this is why dessert
Speaker 1: vanishes for like six or seven years, because desert is
Speaker 1: a piece that's written like it's it's it's a piece
Speaker 1: that's that's only happens in a in a very specific
Speaker 1: part of a revolutionary cycle, which is when like every
Speaker 1: everything has been crushed, all resistance has been crushed, everyone's
Speaker 1: losing hope, and then everyone starts reading dessert again, and
Speaker 1: then the revolutions restart, and and at that point like
Speaker 1: once once once, there's like, you know, two thousand people
Speaker 1: in the streets again like fighting the cops. It becomes
Speaker 1: less and less sort of like like that, that part
Speaker 1: of its analysis becomes less and less relevant until you know,
Speaker 1: inevitably everyone like there's there's a defeat, and then everyone
Speaker 1: goes sort of like And I think I think that's
Speaker 1: why it has the duomer rep because it's it's it's
Speaker 1: the text that people read when you've been beaten in
Speaker 1: the streets. See, yeah, that's that's an interesting look at it,
Speaker 1: because I mean, I definitely agree with the revolution is
Speaker 1: an idea, like is a myth thing, like I I
Speaker 1: specifically within the context of the United States, which I
Speaker 1: believe that's what the books trying to mostly focus on.
Speaker 1: They do bring up other parts of the world and stuff. Um,
Speaker 1: but it's definitely written by in a by an American
Speaker 1: like citizen, and that that that is I mean, I
Speaker 1: mean that that could actually be wrong. Um, it may
Speaker 1: not be written by an American, but I in terms
Speaker 1: of reading it, it is kind of through like a
Speaker 1: very like Western lens of like revolutions not happening here.
Speaker 1: Um And I definitely sympathize and agree with that viewpoint.
Speaker 1: And I mean if if you're in a point of
Speaker 1: being like it was two US and eleven then occupied
Speaker 1: happened and like yeah, but occupied in But that that
Speaker 1: also fits like every every attempt has not succeeded in
Speaker 1: this country did to get any kind of big, meaningful
Speaker 1: change that we can push towards something that's like post capitalist. Um. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I do think I think it's it's it's
Speaker 1: it's mostly targeting people specifically like communists, um or marks
Speaker 1: Londonists who like are just waiting around for the revolution
Speaker 1: to happen and then don't do anything like that, right,
Speaker 1: that is that is the thing that's trying to But
Speaker 1: but but but but I think this is this is
Speaker 1: why it's a text that's like that's not good for
Speaker 1: the moment, because our our problem isn't that, like, like
Speaker 1: the problem right now isn't that there's no one like
Speaker 1: there's no uprising on the horizon, Like everyone's completely beaten down,
Speaker 1: no one's ever gonna go into his treats again. Our
Speaker 1: problem is that like there's just there's there's there's there's
Speaker 1: periodic uprisings everywhere, and every single time everyone is caught
Speaker 1: off guard, and every single time, no one is able
Speaker 1: to actually sort of mobilize off of it. And you know,
Speaker 1: like like like no no one, no one's been able
Speaker 1: to like pivoted into something that's actually like transformative. But but
Speaker 1: but but I think that that's a very different problem
Speaker 1: then the problem that desert is because desert has already
Speaker 1: abandoned the possibility that an uprising can win. That's I mean,
Speaker 1: it's yeah. And then let's specifically been the idea of
Speaker 1: like global revolution, right, that is, that is the thing
Speaker 1: that specifically targeting they're saying smaller specific they're saying like
Speaker 1: smaller local things actually can't succeed in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1: But they're trying to tie this idea of global revolution
Speaker 1: is like a pacifying idea, right, just waiting around for
Speaker 1: this to happen, and tying that to this at the
Speaker 1: time much more niche idea. Now it's now it's way
Speaker 1: more popular. But this idea of like global collapse and
Speaker 1: how people think if they can people think believing in
Speaker 1: global collapse is smarter than believing in global revolution. They
Speaker 1: think it's more realistic but the book saying no, this,
Speaker 1: this idea of global collapse actually falls under all the
Speaker 1: same issues that global revolution has. I think i'd want
Speaker 1: to um sort of comments here um with regard to
Speaker 1: like the defeat is sort of reading in the text.
Speaker 1: I understand that reading. Um. I mean personally, I distinguished
Speaker 1: been like defeatism and domerism, and I always think like
Speaker 1: my own personality and my own perspective kind of like
Speaker 1: inoculates me in a way from like adopting that kind
Speaker 1: of defeatist attitude towards um, you know, change. But I
Speaker 1: don't think the book is entirely um, you know, dismissive
Speaker 1: of like revolution. Um. It just I think the main
Speaker 1: thrust of it is that it's critical the idea of
Speaker 1: like one global revolution, one global collapse. What it really
Speaker 1: emphasizes is that, you know, climate change brings new possibilities
Speaker 1: for new anarchies plural to develop worldwide and response changing circumstances.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, you know, in some areas
Speaker 1: things are going to get willis and some adious things
Speaker 1: are going to get better. And it's not that really
Speaker 1: one broadbrush could be applied to the entire earth. Well,
Speaker 1: but I think I mean, I think like this, this
Speaker 1: is another thing that that they're really guilty of, especially
Speaker 1: like there's an entire section in here where they just
Speaker 1: keep writing about Africa and it's like well, and then
Speaker 1: you know, and they'll get pressed on it and they'll
Speaker 1: be like, no, no, we mean sub Saharan Africa, and
Speaker 1: it's like what are you talking like? They they won't
Speaker 1: name countries, they won't name movements, they won't name people.
Speaker 1: It's just they'll just write something about the whole of
Speaker 1: Sub Saharan Africa, and it's just like, well, I think
Speaker 1: that's evidence of the kind of of what Garrison was
Speaker 1: talking about this, right, And this is something you see
Speaker 1: all over the place with people writing about politics, with
Speaker 1: people trying to write about like particularly revolutionary politics UM
Speaker 1: in a global sense. And I think it's usually a
Speaker 1: mistake to do that, UM for the reasons we've kind
Speaker 1: of discussed. Any time I see a left wing even
Speaker 1: as somebody who I think is generally on point, who
Speaker 1: starts talking about, for example, like extending their theories about
Speaker 1: revolutionary politics to places I happen to know just a
Speaker 1: little bit about, it's always very clear like, oh, you
Speaker 1: don't know shit about Syria. Oh you don't know shit
Speaker 1: about Libya. Oh you don't know shit about Angle like um.
Speaker 1: And that's and that's like not even a moral failing.
Speaker 1: It's just that it's impost It's it's impossible really to
Speaker 1: have in depth knowledge of like what's actually going on
Speaker 1: in those places and what's going on in those revolutions.
Speaker 1: It's why people default so much to the whole. Well,
Speaker 1: whatever side the US is on must be the bad side,
Speaker 1: and whatever side the Russians on must be the good side.
Speaker 1: It's the easiest way to look at that ship. Um.
Speaker 1: I don't I think that's I think that's a worthwhile
Speaker 1: critique to make, and it's a critique to make any
Speaker 1: time that it happens. Um. I I agree with Garrison
Speaker 1: and with Andrew that I think the thing that is
Speaker 1: that desert gets right. Um. And the thing that I've
Speaker 1: seen in my own life is that like the opportunities
Speaker 1: we should be looking for are not suddenly that some
Speaker 1: sort of global revolution sweeps all of the things we
Speaker 1: don't like out of power and magically institutes something better
Speaker 1: comprehensively across the globe. It's it's it's room for little
Speaker 1: anarchies it's what we saw in northeast Syria, right where
Speaker 1: the government pulls out and people have an opportunity to
Speaker 1: do something not perfect, but better. And I think that
Speaker 1: is that's kind of one of the things we talked
Speaker 1: about a lot on this show. That's why mutual aid
Speaker 1: is valuable, It's why building these connections are valuable. It's
Speaker 1: because um, as things crumble, there will be opportunities two
Speaker 1: in local areas, piecemeal, institute and and push through for
Speaker 1: more just and and better ways of living. Um And
Speaker 1: I think that if you're looking at kind of the
Speaker 1: broad level, potentially optimistic point is that when you have
Speaker 1: enough of those and when they spread well enough, and
Speaker 1: if communication is good enough, maybe the things that work
Speaker 1: will get adopted on a wider scale. And there's always
Speaker 1: the opportunity that when enough, when idea is spread far enough,
Speaker 1: they have a tipping point and and they go viral,
Speaker 1: you know, so to speak. But I I I don't.
Speaker 1: I think that while there's a lot of specifics that
Speaker 1: Desert gets wrong, I do think they were ahead of
Speaker 1: the curve and recognizing that. And I think it's it's
Speaker 1: a more productive way to look at the idea of
Speaker 1: revolutionary change than we're going to finally have nineteen seventeen.
Speaker 1: But everywhere, you know, throughouts of the African chapter, the
Speaker 1: impression that I got while reading that chapter, and I
Speaker 1: think the book itself references Um Samba Um, I got
Speaker 1: the impression that the author had read UM Afghan anchism
Speaker 1: history of a movement by some member and they were
Speaker 1: just kind of like inspired by that. I would see,
Speaker 1: because as I do point out, they didn't like specify
Speaker 1: the specific cultures, which is an issue considering you know,
Speaker 1: the tendency that Western has, how of you know, being
Speaker 1: to Africa this large brush as if it's you know,
Speaker 1: all one way or the other. Um. But I think
Speaker 1: what we do see now, um is you know, from
Speaker 1: the Horn of Africa to South Africa to Nigeria too,
Speaker 1: I mean recently Sudan. I believe, Um, there are Africans
Speaker 1: smaller number organizing under demand of anarchism, and there are
Speaker 1: anarchic elements that continue to persist on the continent. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I think that's like you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: one of the things that they sort of got they
Speaker 1: got right, was about how like this the sort of
Speaker 1: the the sort of renewal, the spread of urban anarchism
Speaker 1: they're talking about like Chile in particular, they got right,
Speaker 1: um Indonesia bnglaestra somewhat. But but but I think I
Speaker 1: think there's there's another like my, my, my, my, my
Speaker 1: biggest issue with them in terms of the way they
Speaker 1: think about ecological stuff. This comes this is something they
Speaker 1: talk about with like they have this thing where they
Speaker 1: think that forger societies are like, Okay, they're they're they're
Speaker 1: they're they're more careful than most people to frame it
Speaker 1: as like the forging societies can be a galitarian, but
Speaker 1: I think they they wind up talking about these sort
Speaker 1: of like the way that sort of forging nomadic society
Speaker 1: sort of inherently defy the boundaries of the state, and
Speaker 1: like that's true, but you can also have like nomadic
Speaker 1: foraging societies that have that are you know, hereditary slave societies.
Speaker 1: And this is this is a problem because there's a
Speaker 1: there's a lot in here about that that that's about
Speaker 1: sort of like they're, you know, they're they're taking this
Speaker 1: a sort of like soft anti se of right. It
Speaker 1: has a few liads where it does specifically sayzation is
Speaker 1: the cause of like I think it's like the civilization
Speaker 1: is genocide, Um, which yeah, and that can't silly civilizations
Speaker 1: commit genocide. Sure, if they're saying that they do cause genocide.
Speaker 1: If you're if you're trying to make the case that
Speaker 1: it seems to be that civilizations, Uh, well, I don't
Speaker 1: know every civilization does not commit genocide, but no, but
Speaker 1: civilization gives a constant Yeah, civilization gives you the framework
Speaker 1: that makes genocide possible, well, like potentially intentional genocide possible.
Speaker 1: I don't know that I would agree with that, because
Speaker 1: I think you see examples of genocide from hunter gatherer
Speaker 1: societies and from from so positive societies, and that the
Speaker 1: obviously documentation on that isn't as extensive because we weren't
Speaker 1: documenting things for a lot of it. But you do
Speaker 1: have examples from from what we know of, like um,
Speaker 1: the Americas of their word, genocides committed by societies we
Speaker 1: would call stateless. So I think I might argue that like,
Speaker 1: genocide is a thing that human beings do, and civilization,
Speaker 1: because it allows us to do everything on a larger scale,
Speaker 1: allows us to do way better. Gennos sides, that's definitely
Speaker 1: an art I think. I think my problem with it
Speaker 1: is is that they're going back into this sort of
Speaker 1: like that they're going back into the you know, there's
Speaker 1: this inherent binary between forgers and sal societies and that
Speaker 1: you know, and and specifically they think that that that
Speaker 1: these sorts that the forger's ideas are you know, inevitably
Speaker 1: gonna become a gagalitarian. It's like that's not true, and
Speaker 1: it's not true in ways that you can see right
Speaker 1: now in like like they're like they're like there are
Speaker 1: lots of places right now where you can look at
Speaker 1: you know, forging ancieties that are incredibly right. Like there's
Speaker 1: there's like, for example, you you get sort of you
Speaker 1: get the Filani joining like right wing Islamas groups, right
Speaker 1: and that like that kind of thing. I think it
Speaker 1: has a problem with It's the same thing as looking
Speaker 1: at indigenous societies and and seeing them all on one
Speaker 1: side of the fight with with colonizing nations as supposed.
Speaker 1: I'm reading a book about the history the mapoo Chay
Speaker 1: right now, which are historically like the indigenous group in
Speaker 1: Chile that resisted the law, in the indigenous group really
Speaker 1: and in you could argue in all of Latin America
Speaker 1: that resisted the longest and most effectively. But even then,
Speaker 1: when you look at like the campaigns of the Chilean
Speaker 1: government in the eighteen sixties and eighteen eighties, large like
Speaker 1: significant chunks of the mapoo Chay sided with the government
Speaker 1: against other Mapouchay and like that's the like, it's it's
Speaker 1: always a mistake. I think this is a good one
Speaker 1: of the things that you get out of the dawn
Speaker 1: of everything. It's always a mistake to like look at
Speaker 1: any of these groups hunter gatherers, stateless societies is like
Speaker 1: one thing or another. They're people and some of them
Speaker 1: sucked just like yeah, they're yeah anyway, Yeah, there's there's
Speaker 1: one thing that I wanted to sort of pushback against. Uh.
Speaker 1: ROBBERTI had said that genocide is a thing that humans do. Um.
Speaker 1: I don't think I agree with that assessment, um in
Speaker 1: this sense, or at least i'd rather I would like
Speaker 1: to clarify. Um, Well, give you an opportunity to clarify
Speaker 1: what you mean by that. I you know, I don't
Speaker 1: know that it's just humans, but I think that genocide
Speaker 1: is a thing that as long as we have evidence
Speaker 1: in recorded history, it seems like we have done not
Speaker 1: just against are not just against other humans, but against
Speaker 1: other kind of hominid species. We have we have examples
Speaker 1: of things that it seems fair to call genocide, going
Speaker 1: back further than we have any kinds of written records. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, villages in the Balkans that were you know,
Speaker 1: burnt in people who like groups of people, tribes and whatnot,
Speaker 1: who seem to have been killed in mass And you know,
Speaker 1: there's there's other theories for some of that. Some of
Speaker 1: them may have been like people trying to stop a
Speaker 1: place we don't plague or whatever. Like, there's not any
Speaker 1: kind of comprehensive solidity. But what we do know is
Speaker 1: that as long as we have documentations of humans doing things,
Speaker 1: we have documentations of things that we could call genocide.
Speaker 1: I see, I see, look look into that a bit more.
Speaker 1: I appreciate the glarification. Yeah, can I can I do
Speaker 1: a Balkans pivot, because there's a there's a there's a
Speaker 1: thing like like a genuinely disturbed me reading it in
Speaker 1: here about the Serbs d during the Bosnian genocide. Were
Speaker 1: so that they they're they're quoting disturbing about that. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: but this is this is a I I uh okay,
Speaker 1: So they're they're they're doing they're they're reading a quote
Speaker 1: from the book Gypsies, Wars and Other Instances of the
Speaker 1: Wild where he's talking this is about the Boston genocide.
Speaker 1: How is this possible in Europe at the end of
Speaker 1: the twentieth century was the question that played obsessively through
Speaker 1: my mind. What the war in former Yugoslavia forced us
Speaker 1: to suggest the fact that people proved willing to make
Speaker 1: a conscious and active choice to embrace regression, barbarity and
Speaker 1: return to the wildness. Take the serve fighters who dreamed
Speaker 1: of a return to the serby of the epic poems
Speaker 1: were quote there was no electricity, no computers, when the
Speaker 1: serves were happy and had no cities, the breeding ground
Speaker 1: of all evil. And then this is this is the
Speaker 1: next uh thing? That's that's the text coming back and
Speaker 1: commenting on it that some modern day militias reflect romantic
Speaker 1: and desires while shelling towns, massacring villages, and being killed
Speaker 1: in turn should neither surprise us nor necessarily fully invalidate romance.
Speaker 1: It does, however, suggest, along with the honest expression of
Speaker 1: joy and destruction mouth by some soldiers in every war,
Speaker 1: as well as many anarchists, that there is a coupling
Speaker 1: of some store between a generalized urge to destroy and
Speaker 1: a disgust at a complex human society. And there's there's
Speaker 1: there's another part um only later on they're talking about
Speaker 1: ethnic diversity, and autonomy will often emerge both from mutual
Speaker 1: aid and community and animosity between communities. I'd like to think,
Speaker 1: and our histories back this up, that self adantified anarchists
Speaker 1: will never inflict such pain as Serb nationalist militias, an
Speaker 1: example I shows purposely for the Repugnicans. But we should
Speaker 1: admit that our wish to function up is partly driven
Speaker 1: by the same urge to civilizational dismemberment that can be
Speaker 1: found in many inter ethnic conflicts and in the minds
Speaker 1: of fighters more general. And I think that's fucked. I
Speaker 1: think that's true. That's just I think there's commenting a
Speaker 1: specific type of anarchist literature, which is like the make
Speaker 1: total destroy thing. And yeah, I definitely I have observed
Speaker 1: that in people the same the same urge that you're
Speaker 1: you're so broken down by everything that the only urge
Speaker 1: that is the only creative urge you have is to
Speaker 1: destroy the things around you. I've seen that. I don't
Speaker 1: think they're necessarily celebrating that, but they're pointing out that
Speaker 1: that urge can be there. When I when I think
Speaker 1: they get really wrong here is that I don't think
Speaker 1: that's the urge that that is is like that, that's
Speaker 1: when when when you're dealing with inter ethnic conflict, when
Speaker 1: you're dealing with genocie, I don't think that's the urge
Speaker 1: that's going on. It's spectically with the Serb because the Serbs,
Speaker 1: like you know, okay, like when when when an anarchist
Speaker 1: is doing make total destroy right there, you know there
Speaker 1: like there, there's there's a very specific set of things
Speaker 1: you're attacking or they're you know, they're attacking building, attacking
Speaker 1: the physical infrastructure of the world. When the Serbs are
Speaker 1: doing the Bosnian genocide, like that, they have a very
Speaker 1: specific thing they're doing, which is killing Bosnian Muslims. And
Speaker 1: I think that's extremely different urge than the sort of
Speaker 1: like I don't I don't think that's about sort of
Speaker 1: what it's civilizational dismemberment or whatever. That's about Islamophobia and genocide.
Speaker 1: And I think that's a different I think the genocidal
Speaker 1: impulse is a I think, a very different one than
Speaker 1: the sort of the like the impulse to break the
Speaker 1: society that has harmed you. Yeah, I think it's important
Speaker 1: to draw a distinction between you can kill a shipload
Speaker 1: of people without it being a genocide. UM. And I
Speaker 1: think and it's also one of those things I think
Speaker 1: sometimes why people I think why there's hesitation to see
Speaker 1: certain acts and early history of genocide is that they're
Speaker 1: not as complete as modern genocide. But but what a
Speaker 1: genocide really is, and I think it's important to lay
Speaker 1: this out. It's not necessarily killing every member of an
Speaker 1: ethnic group or a religious group or whatever kind of community. UM.
Speaker 1: It is stopping their ability to propagate and continue themselves.
Speaker 1: That's why things like destroying churches and destroying the cultural
Speaker 1: distroyal markers are part of genocide. And it's also why
Speaker 1: a lot of genocides they left the women and children alive.
Speaker 1: They would kill all the men, and they would take
Speaker 1: the women in and they would breed with them. They
Speaker 1: might kill the kids sometimes, but it was this The
Speaker 1: goal was not necessarily were we need to kill all
Speaker 1: of you, It's we want to kill this this culture,
Speaker 1: this population. UM. I think the I think the Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think the parallel he's trying to make here or
Speaker 1: there or she U is that that like that type
Speaker 1: of like genocidal cultural destruction is targeted against specific groups.
Speaker 1: The difference here is with this type of like you know,
Speaker 1: he's he's writing this for other anarchists. He's pointing out,
Speaker 1: like our destructive urge, our cultural urge isn't even for
Speaker 1: a specific group, it's just for everything, and that can
Speaker 1: be unhealthy sometimes sometimes you know, there's ways to do
Speaker 1: a total destroy that's totally fine, but that can go
Speaker 1: to unhealthy places. Now, he's not equating like ethnic cleansing
Speaker 1: with that. He's like they are like they are different.
Speaker 1: But when when your total destroy urges against all of culture,
Speaker 1: then yeah, that that can like that's something you should
Speaker 1: probably ponder. Yeah, I mean that's definitely I would agree
Speaker 1: that that's the thing that's potentially problematic, right, like with
Speaker 1: a number of different desires, Uh, there's a way in
Speaker 1: which that can lead to people doing really fucked up things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: It's like it's like it's pointing out that that type
Speaker 1: of accelerationism not specific to ideology, but just like accelerationism
Speaker 1: in general. I mean I think when I when I
Speaker 1: talk about things like the fact that because not every
Speaker 1: culture commits genocides and every civil civilization does UM, and
Speaker 1: throughout history there have been more that found the idea
Speaker 1: repugnant than found the idea acceptable UM. But it is
Speaker 1: really a consistent thing in history, And I think the
Speaker 1: lesson with that isn't necessarily that everything could end in genocide.
Speaker 1: So I don't think the lesson is necessarily like, oh,
Speaker 1: you should look at make total destroys if you know
Speaker 1: the this kind of trend in anarchist thought could lead
Speaker 1: to genocide. It's that people in groups are nearly always
Speaker 1: capable of killing a shipload of other people for a
Speaker 1: variety of reasons if applied in the proper ways, And
Speaker 1: so those of us who seek mass movement should always
Speaker 1: be conscious of that, because human beings in large groups
Speaker 1: can do wonderful things, but there's a long history of
Speaker 1: them doing really fucked up shit, sometimes in ways that
Speaker 1: surprised the people that got the large group of human
Speaker 1: beings together in the first place. The other thing I
Speaker 1: wanted to bring up is kind of more circling back
Speaker 1: to the Dumer kind of idea UM, because yeah, a
Speaker 1: big part of the book is trying purposely is to
Speaker 1: dissolution people with this idea of global revolution and disolution
Speaker 1: people with the idea that we can save the earth
Speaker 1: because we can't UM. So that's a big thing. And
Speaker 1: for I think, I think for some people, if you
Speaker 1: stop right there and you that's how you and that thought, yes,
Speaker 1: that does lead to numeriism obviously, like that that is,
Speaker 1: that is, but the books, the book doesn't stop there.
Speaker 1: The book continues on from there. Now they continue on
Speaker 1: from a nihilistic standpoint. I'm not a nihilist. I prefer certinism.
Speaker 1: I prefer discordinism. But those two things are pretty common.
Speaker 1: Like there, they are more similar than not. Um is
Speaker 1: that you can be disillusioned with global revolution and the
Speaker 1: idea to save the earth, but that should not change
Speaker 1: what we do or how we feel or operate as anarchists.
Speaker 1: It's not that we should be disillusioned and then do
Speaker 1: nothing and step aside. That we should be disillusioned and
Speaker 1: then find that disillusionment itself a form of liberation, like
Speaker 1: the freeing nature of being free from this idea of revolution.
Speaker 1: Is that like no, we are living our lives now,
Speaker 1: don't live for a revolution, live your life now, and
Speaker 1: do things now because that's what you actually have. So
Speaker 1: it's like that type of nihilistic, absurdist, discordian things. This is,
Speaker 1: this is this is This is where I come back
Speaker 1: to having problems with it again because this this is
Speaker 1: literally just there is no alternative except it's it's yeah
Speaker 1: and that do energy. I mean, but that's how I
Speaker 1: live like that. I think I think this is a
Speaker 1: bad I think that's a bad plan. And I think
Speaker 1: if if you look, if you look at what happens
Speaker 1: with because you know, this, this was the thing that
Speaker 1: was really big in the American anarchist movement, like in
Speaker 1: you know, from about just and seventeen like roughly now,
Speaker 1: and it's like people were rising too. Yeah that didn't
Speaker 1: succeed like that, like not really like but I think
Speaker 1: like like this is like I think, I think this
Speaker 1: is like like one of the reasons it didn't, we
Speaker 1: were like, Okay, this is like the thing that's important.
Speaker 1: One of the things is the important of revolutions, even
Speaker 1: when they don't succeed, is that for a very brief
Speaker 1: window you actually can like it becomes it becomes possible
Speaker 1: to imagine another world, and what what what this entire
Speaker 1: thing is saying is don't do that. That's not that's
Speaker 1: not that's that is not what it is. Absolutely this
Speaker 1: is no no, okay, can face the sentence, Yeah, like yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: so what what what what? What I'm saying here is
Speaker 1: that what what they've abandoned, right, the thing that they're
Speaker 1: giving up when when they give up revolution, when they're like,
Speaker 1: this is a progressive myth, this is like theology. What
Speaker 1: what they've abandoned completely is our human capacity to actually
Speaker 1: shape a different world. What they're arguing is that, like
Speaker 1: the the you know, this essentially, that the combination of
Speaker 1: ecological and social forces are strong enough that humans humans
Speaker 1: no longer have the capacity to reshape the world into
Speaker 1: a way that is different than this, and that this
Speaker 1: is now the eternal presence, and you know and and yeah,
Speaker 1: inside of the eternal present, they're saying, you should be
Speaker 1: fighting for the same things you should be fighting for,
Speaker 1: like you know, you should you should be in your
Speaker 1: own sort of local domain. You should be like, I mean,
Speaker 1: there're so of the recommendations are wild, Like I think
Speaker 1: I think their conservation stuff is sketchy, given I mean,
Speaker 1: it doesn't. But it doesn't apply to an eternal present though,
Speaker 1: Like they lay out, like the world is changing a
Speaker 1: lot and will for the next fifty years, Like there
Speaker 1: will be massive changes and how things are set up
Speaker 1: in the next like in the next century, and we
Speaker 1: need to take advantage of that. We need to turn
Speaker 1: those liabilities into assets and start making those little anarchies
Speaker 1: like that. That that is what it's trying to do.
Speaker 1: And I would add as well that as it points
Speaker 1: out the situations in Bassic, Stooke and Bangladesh, a difference
Speaker 1: in the present and will be in the future. You know.
Speaker 1: What I think is is trying to be sort of
Speaker 1: drilled in here is that at least in the text
Speaker 1: and how I read it, UM, is that yes, things
Speaker 1: will be different in different parts of the wood, and
Speaker 1: probably maybe they won't be this, you know or as
Speaker 1: the what this is, they won't be you know, this
Speaker 1: one global revolution. But at the end of the day, Um,
Speaker 1: I think what it's trying to emphasize is that we
Speaker 1: don't have the structures. And I think what part of
Speaker 1: what is trying to emphasize is that we don't have
Speaker 1: its structures in place right now to launch an instruction
Speaker 1: we can meaningfully defend. And so that is the sort
Speaker 1: of thing we should be focusing on. But but they,
Speaker 1: but they, but this this this, this is going back
Speaker 1: to my problem with it, going going back to the
Speaker 1: thing where they go on the rant about how anarchists
Speaker 1: are like a permanent cultural majority and will never become
Speaker 1: a majority. Is that even even in situations where people
Speaker 1: had that capacity and did it they go back, they
Speaker 1: project back onto it, go no, no, no, no, they
Speaker 1: couldn't have done that. Like it's it's not about it's
Speaker 1: it's it's they they have a belief and this is
Speaker 1: something that they do explicitly say that that anarchist will
Speaker 1: always be a permanent minority. Right there, There will always
Speaker 1: be an active but permanent minority. And that is the
Speaker 1: like like that specifically, I think is just an actual
Speaker 1: rejection of the belief that we collectively can make a
Speaker 1: better future. Because if if if you think that our
Speaker 1: ideas that you know, if being free, right, if if
Speaker 1: a society, if you think that that is permanently always
Speaker 1: going to be a minority, you are you know, you
Speaker 1: are condemning you're condemning the future to the people who
Speaker 1: don't believe that, and and I I understand why, especially
Speaker 1: if you know, if, if, if, if the only thing
Speaker 1: you've ever known is fifty years of when the new
Speaker 1: Liberals actually did the thing right. They took over the
Speaker 1: entire world, restructure of the entire world economy, seized every government.
Speaker 1: Like if if that's what you lived through, I understand
Speaker 1: why you would think that. But I think the fact
Speaker 1: that it was possible to do it from the other
Speaker 1: direction is in some ways a sense that like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we could do it too. I don't know, Sorry, I
Speaker 1: will stop harping on this one specific point. It just
Speaker 1: extremely annoys me. I think it's not giving up the
Speaker 1: idea that the world can be better. It's that we
Speaker 1: don't need to have the majority of people be anarchists
Speaker 1: to make the world better. We can still spread our
Speaker 1: own anarchies and people don't need to self subscribe as anarchists.
Speaker 1: But as long as we start building those systems in
Speaker 1: the places around us, people start using them, and people
Speaker 1: might start like living them out, even if they don't
Speaker 1: call themselves anarchists. Right, Like, the majority of people will
Speaker 1: probably prefer some some type of state or government. Right.
Speaker 1: You can even look at Rosa and be like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's still is state issue in some ways, but some
Speaker 1: ways not right, Like it's it's it's going We're not
Speaker 1: going to get an anarchist world. That's not going to happen,
Speaker 1: but we can make it better through the lens of anarchy.
Speaker 1: And I think that's what it's kind of trying to say. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I I think it's it's worth acknowledging that, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: the majority of people are never going to be what
Speaker 1: anarchists are right now, which is people who comprehensively reject
Speaker 1: the systems they live in. Most people are always going
Speaker 1: to think more like well, I want to be comfortable.
Speaker 1: I want to I support changes kind of that that,
Speaker 1: you know, fix this thing that I've noticed a problem
Speaker 1: or that thing. Most people are never going to comprehensively
Speaker 1: reject the system. But I do have hope that in
Speaker 1: time and given you know, space to build things and
Speaker 1: show people other ways and improve life for people, you
Speaker 1: can get to a point where most people believe a
Speaker 1: lot of the things that I think are important. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think that's what's time. I think that's sorry.
Speaker 1: I think that's what the as specificitis UM tend to
Speaker 1: advocate for in terms of through the process of social
Speaker 1: institution in these larger movements, generalizing the ideas of anarchist
Speaker 1: ideas as a whole, making them more common throughout the population.
Speaker 1: It's only trying to get each and every boost in
Speaker 1: the world to self identify as an anarchist, communists or whatever.
Speaker 1: It's more so that you're trying to spread these ideas
Speaker 1: to the point where they are. I suppose the common
Speaker 1: sentiment the popular will yeah, like I it's it's um,
Speaker 1: it's like the point of culture jamming and and and
Speaker 1: ship like that, Like it's the the idea that like
Speaker 1: it doesn't so much matter, like like like what matters
Speaker 1: is inserting the things you think are important into the
Speaker 1: culture and getting people to identify with them and understand them.
Speaker 1: The terms that they specifically use aren't aren't as important,
Speaker 1: like that that's not really what matters. Well, okay, I
Speaker 1: don't think they're arguing that though, because I mean, like
Speaker 1: do they have lines like this. We cannot, however, remake
Speaker 1: the entire world. There are not enough of us, there
Speaker 1: never will be. But then you know, they like they
Speaker 1: they they specifically talk about the oh well, they don't
Speaker 1: have to all be anarchists, and you know. I mean,
Speaker 1: here's their line. There is unfortunately little little evidence from
Speaker 1: history that the working class, never mind anyone else, is
Speaker 1: intrinsically predisposed to libertarian ecological revolution thousands of years of
Speaker 1: authoritarian socialization favor of the jack boot. Neither we nor
Speaker 1: anyone else could create a libertarian or global or ecological
Speaker 1: global future by expanding social movements further. There is no
Speaker 1: reason to think that, in the absence of such a
Speaker 1: vast ex bance and global transformation concurrent to our desires
Speaker 1: will ever happen. I think I think, I think the
Speaker 1: keyword there is global, Like, yeah, that's they're trying to
Speaker 1: break with that, and it's important, Like they're writing this
Speaker 1: specifically for anarchists who are kind of already nihilistic, kind
Speaker 1: of already anti sif right, They are writing this for
Speaker 1: other anarchists, that this isn't a book to radicalize a
Speaker 1: normy or a communist by anarchists for other anarchists to
Speaker 1: be like, Hey, you already kind of think the world's
Speaker 1: kind of going to ship. Here's a way that we
Speaker 1: can still do things despite the world being shitty. Because
Speaker 1: once you're once you're disillusioned, it's hard to be illusioned again.
Speaker 1: Like it's it's hard once you give up on the
Speaker 1: idea of global revolution, once you give up the idea
Speaker 1: of global collapse, it's hard to re enter those even
Speaker 1: if you see things happening the world, like there can
Speaker 1: still be uprisings and revolts, absolutely, but there is a
Speaker 1: distinction of between uprising and the revolts, and like a
Speaker 1: global revolution, right and specifically, like the Marxist letters to sounds,
Speaker 1: And I'd also like to um continue the paragraph you're
Speaker 1: reading from there. We had said that as anarchists, sweet,
Speaker 1: he had said, or they had said that, as anarchists,
Speaker 1: we are not the seed of the future society in
Speaker 1: the shell of the old, but merely one of many
Speaker 1: elements from which the future is forming. That's okay, when
Speaker 1: faced with such scale and complexity, there is value in
Speaker 1: non cervile humility, even for in such Yeah, but this
Speaker 1: is this is just this is just giving up. This
Speaker 1: is this is the old. It's too complicated, it's too
Speaker 1: like and like I think, I don't know, like it's
Speaker 1: it's it's it's giving up on it's giving up on
Speaker 1: trying to do any kind of on on like humans
Speaker 1: as a whole trying to do any kind of large
Speaker 1: scale like you know, like it's trying to do transformation
Speaker 1: of what the society. I disagree to continue that that
Speaker 1: coote to give up hoope. For global anarchists, revolution is
Speaker 1: not to resign oneself to anarchy, remaining any to protest.
Speaker 1: Seaweed puts it well. Revolution is not everywhere or nowhere.
Speaker 1: Any bioregion can be liberated through a succession of events
Speaker 1: and strategies based in the conditions unique to it, mostly
Speaker 1: as the grip of facilitation. That area weakens through its
Speaker 1: own volition for the efforts of its inhabitants. So aization
Speaker 1: didn't succeed everytones, and so it's undoing might only occur
Speaker 1: to varying degrees in different places at different times. Even
Speaker 1: if an area is seemingly fully under the control of authority,
Speaker 1: there always places to go to live in, to love in,
Speaker 1: and to resist from, and we can extend those spaces.
Speaker 1: The global situation may seem beyond us, but the local
Speaker 1: never is. And I think that's beautiful. I think that's
Speaker 1: like a That's one of the things that keeps me
Speaker 1: alive is ideas like that. Honestly, and at the same time.
Speaker 1: I also hold the opinion that none of us, including
Speaker 1: this author, is a fortune teller. You know. The desert's
Speaker 1: picture of the future is not the only possibility, you know.
Speaker 1: And I think in a lot of ways and a
Speaker 1: lot of always I believe that they can and have
Speaker 1: already been proven wrong, you know. Like, and there's an
Speaker 1: issue that I really take a lot of contention with
Speaker 1: the book. Part of the book that really pisces me
Speaker 1: off is the sort of persistence of the overpopulation myth.
Speaker 1: I don't remember it being so consistent since I reread
Speaker 1: it um a couple of weeks ago. And so this
Speaker 1: sort of nonchalance the author seems to have about like
Speaker 1: mass die offs and that kind of thing, you know,
Speaker 1: I think that's very troubling to me. That's very specific
Speaker 1: to It's a type of anti civil literature that's like
Speaker 1: we view civilization is going to progress towards genocide anyway,
Speaker 1: and the way to actually avoid more deaths is to
Speaker 1: kind of help the collapse along because that will end
Speaker 1: civilization quicker. So therefore less people, less people will be born,
Speaker 1: and less people will have to die. So that's the
Speaker 1: type of thinking they have. I don't necessarily agree with
Speaker 1: that um necessarily, but yeah, that is that is very
Speaker 1: typical of this type of literature, so again because it
Speaker 1: is written mostly for other anti sid anarchists, but like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not like pro genocide. It's saying genocide will happen.
Speaker 1: So the way to make less of it is to
Speaker 1: actually kind of slowly start kind of help helping the
Speaker 1: crumbles along essentially and while still you know, making people's
Speaker 1: lives better in your immediate community, like with that, with
Speaker 1: that very local focus. So again not not saying I
Speaker 1: necessarily agree with that, but that's the that's the type
Speaker 1: of thought it's engaging with. I mean, I think that's
Speaker 1: true of some of it. But there is definitely a
Speaker 1: lot of like panic about there's going to be nine
Speaker 1: billion people and like population growth of all the over
Speaker 1: population stuff is a little iffy. You know, there is
Speaker 1: a there's a discussion to have on caring capacity, but
Speaker 1: we are not there yet. We right now we way
Speaker 1: overproduced for them for the amount of people we have. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that and that, I don't know. That also frustrated me immensely.
Speaker 1: They're like, yeah, we we have consider they're talking about
Speaker 1: carring capacity, right, and they're like, oh, we already can't
Speaker 1: we have a billion people going hungry And it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: but that's not about the carrying capacity. That's just that's
Speaker 1: that's which was literally that and that idea gained more
Speaker 1: prevalence after Dessert was written. We kind of more understood,
Speaker 1: like like culturally that it is a distribution issue, not
Speaker 1: necessarily a production issue. Now we do overproduce, right because
Speaker 1: and the amount of production we have contributes this tough
Speaker 1: like climate change, and that is bad. So we should
Speaker 1: tone down production, but we should make the ways that
Speaker 1: it's more sustainable and ecological. Um, yeah, that I think
Speaker 1: that does point towards the data nature of the text.
Speaker 1: I think Also my my last like thing with it
Speaker 1: is I think I think it could have benefited a
Speaker 1: lot from like in an indigenous stewardship perspective, because the
Speaker 1: way it thinks about it's particularly the way things but
Speaker 1: wildness versus observation is just very messy. And yeah, if
Speaker 1: it falls, it falls. It does a better job of
Speaker 1: it than some other antis of things that I've seen,
Speaker 1: but it definitely falls into the like trap of like
Speaker 1: here is the wild and then any attempt to manage
Speaker 1: it is uh, you know, is is civilization and you
Speaker 1: need to go back to the wild, and it's like, well,
Speaker 1: this is already stewarded and managed. That is the one. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It does fall on that slope of like nature being
Speaker 1: another that is sacred, which isn't necessarily a great idea
Speaker 1: nor is it really true. Yeah, this is very two,
Speaker 1: very two ten. Yeah. Right, So I think the the
Speaker 1: book is critical concitation and that sort of binary, and
Speaker 1: I agree that indigenous stewardship perspective was sorely needed. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, I do think that the way
Speaker 1: that the book criticizes UM or rather just points out UM,
Speaker 1: the su conservation may have been and may still be
Speaker 1: new for some people. You know, the idea that these
Speaker 1: sorts of government conservation projects which sort of preside over
Speaker 1: this sort of static vision of nature and ecology and
Speaker 1: stuff that is supposedly threatened by humanity. UM. I think
Speaker 1: criticizing that approach to nature it's good. I mean the
Speaker 1: sort of romanticization of the wild that is very typical
Speaker 1: of anti sive text and thought. UM is verty much
Speaker 1: anti sive. But I do believe that people should look
Speaker 1: ah or should rather resist these sorts of conservation impulse
Speaker 1: as I was rereading it a couple of weeks ago.
Speaker 1: I wanted to know, UM, what you guys thought of
Speaker 1: the section of the book that speaks of the different
Speaker 1: modern different, the the idea of fourth and fifth generation
Speaker 1: war Oh boy, that's a UM. I feel that that
Speaker 1: has been UM sort of a contributional approach to analyzing conflict.
Speaker 1: So I figured out, as you have been in you know,
Speaker 1: actual war zoons robot, that you might have a thing
Speaker 1: to see. UM. I mean, it's the kind of thing
Speaker 1: that we should probably cover in in detail on because
Speaker 1: this is a lot of like William Lynde stuff. I
Speaker 1: think he's the guy who came up with the idea
Speaker 1: of like fourth generation war less at least, and it's UM,
Speaker 1: it's basically the idea. It's the idea that warfare UM
Speaker 1: today is conducted through a lot of stuff that's not
Speaker 1: conventional weaponry, right, so stuff like UM like like like
Speaker 1: putting bought networks together to like push social division, you
Speaker 1: know through um social media, UM or carrying out cyber
Speaker 1: attacks on infrastructure, disinformation UM, all of that kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: which is I think accurate. I've been reporting on what
Speaker 1: you could call fifth generation warfare since some UM. I
Speaker 1: think it's I think to the extent that it's relevant here.
Speaker 1: I think one thing that people in the left need
Speaker 1: to acknowledge is that they have UM been blindsided by
Speaker 1: the effectiveness that the far right has adapted to UM
Speaker 1: the key components of this kind of warfare. And I
Speaker 1: think nothing is more key than social engineering and disinformation UM.
Speaker 1: And they've been much more successful at it over the
Speaker 1: last release ince twos in fifteen in particular, UM, than
Speaker 1: the left has by basically everywhere, every single and by
Speaker 1: I think, every single measure of of success. And I
Speaker 1: think this is something we should save in depth for
Speaker 1: another day UM. But I think that it is worth
Speaker 1: acknowledging that this is And I also think that and
Speaker 1: this is again part of a bigger conversation we talked
Speaker 1: about the concept of like culture jamming, when we talked
Speaker 1: about like operation mind fuck you know, which is Discordian
Speaker 1: idea UM, all of which you can see is kind
Speaker 1: of pre predecessors to the concepts of fifth generation warfare.
Speaker 1: I think there's a strong argument to be made that
Speaker 1: those efforts by leftists in the eighties and nineties in
Speaker 1: particular actually contributed to the substantial right wing victories that
Speaker 1: we're seeing right now in this space. UM, and I
Speaker 1: think maybe it's I think there's a number of reasons
Speaker 1: for that, um, including some to some extent, the idea
Speaker 1: of arrogance that um that what that we were just
Speaker 1: too smart, that they were never going to figure out
Speaker 1: how to utilize the same means we had or to
Speaker 1: kind of judo like take the momentum for that and
Speaker 1: spin it around on us. But they were and they did,
Speaker 1: and yeah, that'll that'll lead into another episode. We'll have
Speaker 1: to talk about this in more detail. That's something like
Speaker 1: Grant Morrison actually talks a lot about in regards to
Speaker 1: discordionism and this type of how how you know, he
Speaker 1: used to work for a company called Disinformation back when
Speaker 1: Disinformation was yeah, and now it's like one of the
Speaker 1: leading castes of mass death in the world, right, so
Speaker 1: he That is something that Morrison talks about a lot
Speaker 1: in terms of how they did have that arrogance and
Speaker 1: now the same forces that they used in hopes of
Speaker 1: making the world better and now being used to regress
Speaker 1: the world and make it worse. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: had a big copy of Disinformation on my coffee table
Speaker 1: when I was nineteen. I just ordered, Oh good, there's
Speaker 1: some fun essays in their Garrett. Um, all right, that'll probably,
Speaker 1: I mean, did you have more to say on that?
Speaker 1: And yeah, I just wanted to see that, you know,
Speaker 1: regardless of the uncertain future, um, regardless of your stance
Speaker 1: on get Its message, however flawed. UM here now, as
Speaker 1: the minor goods in Alice Suxley's Island so often repeat, um,
Speaker 1: we can and should pay attention to what we can
Speaker 1: do to support ourselves for whatever outcome you go through,
Speaker 1: you know, projects within the spaces we inhabit. I believe
Speaker 1: that anarchism could be the seed of the new will.
Speaker 1: I do believe that we have an impact, a huge
Speaker 1: impact on society and on politics, and I believe there
Speaker 1: are still many possibilities for liberty still. Yeah, I I
Speaker 1: do as well. I think that acknowledging you know, failures
Speaker 1: both of of of you know, ideas and of methods
Speaker 1: doesn't mean giving up hope or or ignoring the successes
Speaker 1: of those same things which which we're are also present. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I don't know, stay optimistic. Read something uh doesn't
Speaker 1: have to beat but just go go read a thing
Speaker 1: read Yeah, back of your shampoo, B but especially if
Speaker 1: it's Dr Brauner's a lot of good stuff in there. UM.
Speaker 1: All right, that's gonna do it for us this week
Speaker 1: today at least welcome to It could happen here the
Speaker 1: podcast we already recorded and I messed up, um or
Speaker 1: something happened with the zoom and we lost the audio.
Speaker 1: So now we're recording it again as is, as is
Speaker 1: the cycle of life. UM. Thankfully I can. I'm now
Speaker 1: on my tenth shot of espresso of the day and
Speaker 1: it is eight pm, so I'm I'm ready. I'm I'm
Speaker 1: ready this time to a We're gonna be doing another
Speaker 1: one of our chronicles into open source and ocean style
Speaker 1: research or open source verification and this kind of side
Speaker 1: of of generally you know, this is kind of a
Speaker 1: field of like anti fascist research, UM and journalism. So
Speaker 1: we're looking at one of these case studies. UM. But
Speaker 1: today I have someone with me, Alistair from Opossum Press
Speaker 1: is here to talk about sent and UH and this
Speaker 1: type of research. Hello, Hey, thank you for being with
Speaker 1: me again on this on this call, on this very
Speaker 1: Deshavo experience for us. UM. I would actually first like
Speaker 1: to talk about how Opossum Press got started as like
Speaker 1: a collective of of people dedicated towards this goal of,
Speaker 1: you know, surveying the fascist creep. Um. I had an
Speaker 1: interest in and journalism. I have no experience in it,
Speaker 1: but I have other friends that are into writing and stuff,
Speaker 1: and I just kind of reached out to friends like, Hey,
Speaker 1: would anybody be interested in doing this? And um, there
Speaker 1: are several friends that were like, hell, yeah, let's do this.
Speaker 1: And that's pretty much it. After we got it all formed. Um,
Speaker 1: we set up some open source intel like workshops and
Speaker 1: we've about every other week we get together for two
Speaker 1: or three hours and learned stuff that sounds that sounds
Speaker 1: lovely actually, Um, most of my stuff is usually done
Speaker 1: alone in my computer dark when I'm on my again
Speaker 1: tenth cup of coffee of the day. Do we go
Speaker 1: s into a group of people like that sounds like
Speaker 1: it could be actually kind of fun, So yeah, we're
Speaker 1: gonna In our last episode, we talked about how I
Speaker 1: tracked down and found out who written house was the
Speaker 1: night of of that happening in Kenosha Um and today
Speaker 1: and me talking about someone related to January six, um,
Speaker 1: the infamous zip tie guy as he became known for
Speaker 1: like two days on the internet before he got his
Speaker 1: actual day. UM. First, I I guess I probably I
Speaker 1: probably in case you haven't listened to the previous episode
Speaker 1: I did on Written House, so probably kind of explain
Speaker 1: what open source stuff is and what like Osan is
Speaker 1: and verification. So it's about trying to track down information
Speaker 1: using open sources UM on the Internet. So in terms
Speaker 1: of like nothing is it's it's all. It's it's it's
Speaker 1: it's it's already sitting there. Nothing requires like special access,
Speaker 1: nothing requires you know, you're to hack into anyone system. UM,
Speaker 1: it's it's stuff is just the stuff that's already sitting there.
Speaker 1: The data, whether that be you know, geographical data, personal data,
Speaker 1: data from social media accounts, data from every time you've
Speaker 1: entered your email into a random website that you maybe
Speaker 1: didn't know quite what's going on, but you did it.
Speaker 1: Something that's that gets stored somewhere as day to and
Speaker 1: someone can probably find it. UM. So it's all this
Speaker 1: stuff about you on the Internet that is all open
Speaker 1: if you do the digging. UM. Often cases this results
Speaker 1: in going through social media profiles. UM. That is a
Speaker 1: good portion of Osan's work is learning how to use
Speaker 1: Google really well and how to how to how to
Speaker 1: go through social media. Um, start using like Google search operators,
Speaker 1: start using social media tools that help you sort through information.
Speaker 1: Because the information is there, you just have to learn
Speaker 1: how to sort through it, right, because there's just so
Speaker 1: much of it. Um. So that's kind of the just
Speaker 1: to what open source stuff is. You mean, eventually you
Speaker 1: can get into the stuff like using like Python, using
Speaker 1: code and scrapers like all that stuff is there too,
Speaker 1: but for our purposes, we're gonna stick to the more
Speaker 1: simplistic stuff because this is an audio format and I'm
Speaker 1: I'm not going to start explaining Python code on a podcast. Um.
Speaker 1: So let's let's let's turn back the clocks a year. Um,
Speaker 1: a little over a year, and it's a genu where
Speaker 1: he six what's kind of you or your collective's reaction
Speaker 1: just to kind of watching things unfold? You know, Like
Speaker 1: as a researcher, every every time I look at these
Speaker 1: types of you know, protests, you know, whether they be
Speaker 1: big or small, always part of my brains like trying
Speaker 1: to make connections and do stuff right. So as January
Speaker 1: six is unfolding, what's what's kind of going through everyone
Speaker 1: at a post and press his head. The first thing
Speaker 1: that seemed to be collective in everybody's mind was, oh
Speaker 1: my god, none of these people are wearing face masks. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Like the immediate thing is this is probably going to
Speaker 1: be really easy for a lot of people. There's nobody.
Speaker 1: Nobody is in any type of like block or trying
Speaker 1: to hide their identity in at all, something you see
Speaker 1: the European fascists actually doing more often. There was a
Speaker 1: think of a video from Germany of a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of far right dudees just to ian black block because
Speaker 1: black blocks a tactic. Um. So yeah, but in the
Speaker 1: States they're specifically January six, it was Yeah, no one
Speaker 1: was really worried about keeping their identity secret. They really
Speaker 1: did not think what they were doing was wrong. I
Speaker 1: think the other thing we were a lot of us
Speaker 1: were really angry. Um, just like we had been like
Speaker 1: yelling that this was gonna happen, screaming it out, like
Speaker 1: trying to get people to pay attention, and we got
Speaker 1: blown off so much. I remember, just like a few
Speaker 1: days before, I got in an argument with a Facebook
Speaker 1: friend and like people need to be paying attention, like
Speaker 1: they're planning something. They're like, oh, it's fine, it's fine,
Speaker 1: and then you know, just a few days later, I'm like,
Speaker 1: oh is it fine? Like that is kind of always
Speaker 1: the curse of surveilling all of these things, whether they
Speaker 1: be like a specific event or some movement in general. Right,
Speaker 1: people who are really into q and on before the
Speaker 1: Libs knew what Qumanan was and we're warning about it
Speaker 1: for years before you know it resulted in people dying. Um, Right,
Speaker 1: That's that's kind of always the curse of these things.
Speaker 1: So it's it's you get you get the mix of
Speaker 1: the shock and horror of the thing finally happening in
Speaker 1: a weird relief. It's it's it's it's it's a very
Speaker 1: bizarre feeling to watch these things unfold because you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm vindicated, but it sucks that I'm vindicated. Right. I remember,
Speaker 1: like the December watching all these groups, like I was
Speaker 1: just it was just filled with dread. Um, I knew
Speaker 1: something was gonna happen. I didn't know what was gonna happen,
Speaker 1: and it was just so much anxiety. And then like
Speaker 1: it's funny, January six after it happened, like it all
Speaker 1: went away. I was able to get a decent night
Speaker 1: sleep just because there was I didn't have that build
Speaker 1: up of suspense of what what is it gonna be,
Speaker 1: what's it gonna look like? How bad is it going
Speaker 1: to be? Kind of had that release. Yeah, Unfortunately they
Speaker 1: were all like amateur, didn't know what they were doing,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't as bad as it could have been. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I think as for the open source stuff, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: kind of walk us through chronologically and of in terms
Speaker 1: of the journey of zip Tie Guy because I was
Speaker 1: doing like archiving on January six, but zip Ti Guy
Speaker 1: was really the only dude I was interested in identifying.
Speaker 1: There was there was a lot of other people doing
Speaker 1: really great identification work. I was also generous. Six I
Speaker 1: was going through all the social media history of Ashley Babbitt,
Speaker 1: archiving all of her Twitter and Facebook like years of stuff.
Speaker 1: I was to chronicle how she went from like an
Speaker 1: Obama voter to a Q and on from proponent. So
Speaker 1: that was what I was doing, and I was writing
Speaker 1: an article with Belling Cat about that um. But the
Speaker 1: only only other guy I wanted to identify was zip
Speaker 1: tie Guy because he was really interesting. He was one
Speaker 1: of the few guys that was masked up. Um he
Speaker 1: had what he had visible weapons on him. He was
Speaker 1: obviously carrying zip ties. You know. It gives you images
Speaker 1: of like, oh yeah, it's like they're planning to capture
Speaker 1: and execute people. That was like the general kind of
Speaker 1: vibe um of that. So he is the only person
Speaker 1: I was actually put work into identifying, and I put
Speaker 1: a decent amount of work in Now I I failed
Speaker 1: where other people succeeded, and we can talk about like
Speaker 1: why in a sec But for like a day at least,
Speaker 1: all we had to go on was the picture of
Speaker 1: the guy holding the zip ties in a mask. Um.
Speaker 1: There's a few other pictures of him around from that day,
Speaker 1: but it's mostly mostly one picture and the biggest clue
Speaker 1: that we had to start with, Um, what what what what?
Speaker 1: Why don't you explain what the what the first clue
Speaker 1: is and how that may be piqued your interest. He
Speaker 1: had two patches on his vest, and one of them
Speaker 1: was a thin blue line patch, but it was in
Speaker 1: this uh shape of the state of Tennessee. So so yeah,
Speaker 1: in terms of having a decent lead, that is like okay,
Speaker 1: well that that narrows it down to one of fifties
Speaker 1: states probably right, Yeah, I should say I'm from Knoxville,
Speaker 1: so like it be in Tennessee that I picked up
Speaker 1: on that because that's my state. Yeah, that it becomes
Speaker 1: a local problem. I And as someone in Oregon, I
Speaker 1: definitely understand that feeling of of yeah, when fascism becomes
Speaker 1: a local problem of Yeah. So that definitely piqued your
Speaker 1: interests specifically, but then it also gives a really good
Speaker 1: lead for like where to look because osar, he's not
Speaker 1: trying to do a meta thing by tricking us into
Speaker 1: giving us a false lead. Generally people don't do that
Speaker 1: as often in real life as they do in television. Um,
Speaker 1: but there's still has plenty of other ways to detect.
Speaker 1: I mean, I I love I love detecting, and there's
Speaker 1: there's enough, there's enough stuff to do otherwise that making
Speaker 1: it needlessly complicated as honestly, I'm fine with it not
Speaker 1: being that. Um So, yeah, we had we had that
Speaker 1: to go off initially, so starting looking for like far
Speaker 1: right activity in Tennessee. Now, I was an outsider, so
Speaker 1: I didn't really know where to start in terms of
Speaker 1: specific rallies. But I know you uh at what point
Speaker 1: did you start looking trying to like go through pictures
Speaker 1: of specific rallies to try to like match clothing or stuff.
Speaker 1: I think it was probably it may have been that
Speaker 1: day or the day after when I started going through
Speaker 1: the notebooks that I had, like names of just people
Speaker 1: we suspected may become problems, um, and I started looking
Speaker 1: at their profiles again and you know, didn't find anything.
Speaker 1: And in our research that we had already done, we
Speaker 1: didn't see anything on Yeah, I mean that was kind
Speaker 1: of the case for me as well. With just the
Speaker 1: picture of the zip tie a guy with the patch,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's a lead, but there wasn't tons
Speaker 1: to go on. But thankfully, thankfully are are good friends.
Speaker 1: At January six, we're giving us more clues as because,
Speaker 1: as the Simpsons meme goes, videotaping this crime scene was
Speaker 1: the best idea you ever had. Um. So, like January
Speaker 1: I think seventh, there was a live stream video that
Speaker 1: was kind of circulating through like anti fascist group chats um.
Speaker 1: It was. It was posted like publicly to get everyone's
Speaker 1: attention on it on January eight, um, but for like
Speaker 1: a day it was kind of passing through back channels
Speaker 1: and throughout in this live stream, which is Yeah, there
Speaker 1: was so many people were live streaming that night, and
Speaker 1: it is a kind of surreal thing to watch of them.
Speaker 1: This this this live stream in particular, it is zip
Speaker 1: Ti guy if you was friends, um, I think his
Speaker 1: mom and a few and just running the people from
Speaker 1: January six all hanging out at a hotel room afterwards,
Speaker 1: like it's it is. It is the night of the sixth,
Speaker 1: and they're all just hanging out again totally like no masks,
Speaker 1: they're they're they're in a hotel lobby, no masks, um,
Speaker 1: and they're just like hanging out on chilling, like sitting
Speaker 1: on the couch and chatting for like half an hour.
Speaker 1: It's one of the weirdest videos to watch. All all
Speaker 1: of the live streams from that night are so surreal
Speaker 1: because it is like this transitionary period of like after
Speaker 1: the capital attack, but before every before like people like
Speaker 1: gown out on them, so they don't really know how
Speaker 1: to behave They still think what they did was kind
Speaker 1: of fine, even though at this point I think like
Speaker 1: four or five people are dead, um, but it's so
Speaker 1: weird just watch them just interact like such normal people
Speaker 1: in this moment like after they did this thing, then
Speaker 1: they go in this hotel room and they're acting completely normal.
Speaker 1: So it's it's just a weird video in general. But
Speaker 1: what it does have is someone in the same outfit
Speaker 1: as Zip Tie guy with no mask on. You actually
Speaker 1: actually can see his full face. Ye. Getting to see
Speaker 1: his full face was a big, big, big help because
Speaker 1: we everyone, everyone was looking for pictures of this guy
Speaker 1: without his mask all like for the entirety of the day.
Speaker 1: So now having a whole video where we're gonna see
Speaker 1: like all of the angles of him was great. It
Speaker 1: was perfect. The best the best thing that was really
Speaker 1: the beauty of of all of of all of all
Speaker 1: the January six documentation is how many people were live
Speaker 1: streaming themselves doing crimes and their friends. Um it did.
Speaker 1: It did make the archiving and uh well the archiving part.
Speaker 1: Archiving is always painful and tedious, but it made the
Speaker 1: actual research afterwards a lot easier because there was so
Speaker 1: much the documentation of it. So, yeah, we we got
Speaker 1: we got this video. I'm gonna explain how I kind
Speaker 1: of took this video and failed to reach the conclusion,
Speaker 1: and then we can talk about how you succeeded. But first,
Speaker 1: but first we're gonna hear some ads from our lovely
Speaker 1: products and services. Robert was here for our previous recording
Speaker 1: uh that we tried to end I failed, and he
Speaker 1: made some very good jokes uh and very good segways
Speaker 1: about how all of our sponsors support insurrection, just like
Speaker 1: January six, And if I tried to repeat the jokes,
Speaker 1: it will be stupid. So I'm just gonna I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna give you the sense there was a joke, and
Speaker 1: now you're gonna be left with that dissatisfaction. So bye, goodbye.
Speaker 1: Here's some ads. Okay, we're back, and I'm going to
Speaker 1: give an extremely brief rundown on how I failed to do.
Speaker 1: Uh well, I didn't fail to do research. I did research.
Speaker 1: I just didn't reach a proper conclusion. And I knew that.
Speaker 1: So the the the other the other thing about Zip
Speaker 1: tie Guy, he had he had the patch of like
Speaker 1: the sim blue line in Tennessee, and then it's then
Speaker 1: I soon after got the video of his face and
Speaker 1: uh interacting with people. And the the other thing is
Speaker 1: I think, um we the hat he was wearing in
Speaker 1: the Zip tie Guy photo was I think was tracked
Speaker 1: back to be um our favorite coffee company, Black Rifle
Speaker 1: Coffy Merchandise. It was it was like, what was what
Speaker 1: was one of the hats they sell? So me, being clever,
Speaker 1: I'm like, okay, here's this Black Raper Coffee hat. This
Speaker 1: patch in Tennessee. I know Black Ripe Coffee is based
Speaker 1: out of Tennessee. I'm gonna go look through everyone who
Speaker 1: works for Black Raffle Coffee, which I mean isn't a
Speaker 1: bad instinct as an outsider, but it did not. It
Speaker 1: did not succeed. But the funny thing is is that
Speaker 1: while looking through all the employees at Black Apple Coffee,
Speaker 1: all of them do look identical to Zip Tie guy.
Speaker 1: They all same characteristics, They all look exactly the same
Speaker 1: on their their beards, their nose, their forehead, their hair,
Speaker 1: all of them identical, every single one of them, to
Speaker 1: the point where the only way I could tell that
Speaker 1: it wasn't a SIPTI guy was being like, Okay, no,
Speaker 1: he has a mole here, he has like a birthmark
Speaker 1: here this way, his like his eyes are his eye
Speaker 1: wrinkles are different. So it's like it's going down to
Speaker 1: the very like fine tuned facial features. Because all of
Speaker 1: their face shapes are like identical. I think there's a
Speaker 1: point that I had the same instinct. I think I
Speaker 1: know there's a point that I went through, um the
Speaker 1: black Coffee Rifle, all of their people look. Um. I
Speaker 1: don't know if it was for Eric Wentel or if
Speaker 1: it was like maybe around the Rittenhouse stuff. I don't know. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So that that's that's what I spent my time doing,
Speaker 1: is going through everybody who works there of Uh. But
Speaker 1: but by the time I kind of gave up on
Speaker 1: that of the identity was already discovered, um and posted
Speaker 1: by your team at a possum press. So how how
Speaker 1: did you get from you know, this zip Tygi picture
Speaker 1: than the light the archived livestream video of him without
Speaker 1: without a mask, to to the point where you could say, hey,
Speaker 1: this is his name. But well, I was I wasn't
Speaker 1: even really in contact with Like we as a group
Speaker 1: weren't messaging each other trying to figure this out together,
Speaker 1: but we were, like it turns out a few of
Speaker 1: us were working separately. So while I'm going through social media, um,
Speaker 1: a friend in Nashville was um going through pictures of
Speaker 1: the protests from there over the summer and they ended
Speaker 1: up finding about five different pictures, I think, and we
Speaker 1: knew we knew most of the people in the pictures
Speaker 1: that are maybe like one or two that we did
Speaker 1: not know, And one was always Eric Munchell and he's
Speaker 1: wearing the exact same gear he wore January six. Um,
Speaker 1: I say, Eric Munchell, we didn't know his name yet then,
Speaker 1: so um. From there, we kind of we went ahead
Speaker 1: and posted what we had to Twitter, and then we
Speaker 1: went back to the social media and I started looking
Speaker 1: through the profiles that were the people we knew, and
Speaker 1: sure enough, one of them, Kurt Dennis, had a live
Speaker 1: stream that was telling the story, um, the same story
Speaker 1: that Eric Mutchell told him, that thirty minute video, and
Speaker 1: he actually while telling it, he's like, yeah, my buddy Eric.
Speaker 1: So at that point we go to his friends list
Speaker 1: and sure enough, he only has one Eric there and
Speaker 1: it's Eric Munchell. And there we go to that page
Speaker 1: and find some of the same gear in the background
Speaker 1: of the pictures that he has publicly posted. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: like puts the pictures of him and his gear with
Speaker 1: like ums and yeah, you can you can track all
Speaker 1: of this like facial like like like like birthmarks and stuff.
Speaker 1: They're all the same. So, yeah, you and that that's you. Uh,
Speaker 1: you definitely got him of Yeah, their own mistakes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's my favorite part. Like they they gave us
Speaker 1: his identity. They often, if not handing themselves to you
Speaker 1: on a silver pilladder, they at least have a platter um.
Speaker 1: They they often there's often enough bread, right. The reason
Speaker 1: why these things are solved because there are enough bread
Speaker 1: comes to follow and often they kind of leave pretty
Speaker 1: big chunks of bread. Um. Just the fact that again
Speaker 1: added to the surreal aspect of that whole live stream video,
Speaker 1: the fact that he's like you matched it by telling
Speaker 1: the same You can hear them someone tell the same story.
Speaker 1: It's just such a weird, surreal thing. Yeah. So I
Speaker 1: think in terms of like oas and stuff, what this
Speaker 1: case study in particular really highlights is the importance of
Speaker 1: archival stuff, right, some why you were able to solve
Speaker 1: this and not me because I wasn't. I mean, I
Speaker 1: I did my own archival thing for archiving, like the video.
Speaker 1: But the way that you were able to really crack
Speaker 1: this open and everyone else who worked on it is
Speaker 1: because you had like those lists of connections of people
Speaker 1: who are already kind of active in this like al
Speaker 1: right far right scene within your local community. Like you
Speaker 1: already had documentation of the major players who they interact with,
Speaker 1: right you. You already had pictures of this guy in
Speaker 1: gear with other known people. So the fact that there
Speaker 1: was already previously work archived really made the success of
Speaker 1: this so much more possible. That's what they but People's
Speaker 1: Plaza and Nashville during their protests, they were really big
Speaker 1: on documenting. Um they documented everything with the police and
Speaker 1: um any counter protesters they would. They had professional photographers
Speaker 1: out there making sure we had good, clear quality pictures
Speaker 1: of like everybody on the other side as well, and
Speaker 1: that definitely helped us a lot. Yeah, because especially before
Speaker 1: January six, they there was they did a decent job
Speaker 1: of archiving themselves, well not not archiving, but like filming
Speaker 1: themselves and documenting themselves. And then you know, it takes
Speaker 1: takes other research to then archive that. So not only
Speaker 1: is important just to like look at the research and
Speaker 1: look at like the documentation of the that people do
Speaker 1: of themselves, but then make sure that you have a
Speaker 1: source for that that's not their own uploading of it. Right. So,
Speaker 1: like a great example is like all of the live
Speaker 1: streams from January six, including like this one from the
Speaker 1: hotel room. Pretty soon it was deleted by the person
Speaker 1: who posted it because they realized, oh maybe I shouldn't
Speaker 1: have this living record of my crimes. Um. But at
Speaker 1: that point people already saved the video. They they already
Speaker 1: like I already ran it through a video of saving
Speaker 1: program that I had. UM. So it's it's important not
Speaker 1: only to again archiving having having having previous documentation of
Speaker 1: people and known players, but then as new information is
Speaker 1: coming out, make sure you make separate copies of that
Speaker 1: for your own sake so that you actually have it,
Speaker 1: and then you're not gonna be stuck looking for something
Speaker 1: that's gone. Right. The worst case scenarios to like you
Speaker 1: know that there was an important thing, but you just
Speaker 1: don't have access to it anymore. It's like you you
Speaker 1: remember seeing it, you didn't save it, and now it's gone.
Speaker 1: That's a horrible feeling to do when you're trying to
Speaker 1: get this kind of research done. UM. And like it happens,
Speaker 1: we all, we all make mistakes like this. UM, I
Speaker 1: definitely have it happened to me actually this week. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it happens all the time, and it happens to be.
Speaker 1: It happens to be all the time. I'll look at
Speaker 1: something and be like, I should probably save this. I
Speaker 1: get distracted or I just don't want to because archiving
Speaker 1: is boring and tedious, and then I check again, that's gone.
Speaker 1: I'm like, well that's should I should have archived it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So on. On top of all of the archiving stuff,
Speaker 1: which in general, anti fascist research is really that's the
Speaker 1: thing that really excels even like um above above journalism
Speaker 1: is like, you know, getting like traditional journalism is like
Speaker 1: getting a good documentation of like key fascist players in
Speaker 1: your area, key people who are kind of pushing far
Speaker 1: right stuff and far right violence. Actually getting like a
Speaker 1: good a good, a good idea of who they are
Speaker 1: and having that knowledge always handy. Um is something that
Speaker 1: this type of research is is really that that is
Speaker 1: really what it excels at, or like what what the
Speaker 1: what those researchers excel at. This is the thing that
Speaker 1: they do very well. I think a lot of us
Speaker 1: probably started doing it just out of curiosity, looking into people,
Speaker 1: and that's that issaraily how I started, Like I've been
Speaker 1: doing it long before. I just didn't know That's what
Speaker 1: it was called because like I'd see somebody make a
Speaker 1: messed up common online, I'm like, who is this person?
Speaker 1: And then you know, trying to find as much as
Speaker 1: I can about them? Yeah, that's that is certainly how
Speaker 1: I got started with this type of thing, because it
Speaker 1: can it can be fun to look for bad people.
Speaker 1: It is, it is. It is kind of pleasurable, UM
Speaker 1: and one of one of the again another big contributing factor.
Speaker 1: And how you got zip tie guy? How how I
Speaker 1: got written? How how a lot of this stuff works?
Speaker 1: Um is uh the beauty of Facebook as a research
Speaker 1: tool because often in order in order in order to
Speaker 1: do the archiving, you need to have stuff to archive,
Speaker 1: and a lot of the stuff that gets posted from
Speaker 1: these things by the people doing them UM is done
Speaker 1: on Facebook, or at least it used to write the
Speaker 1: past five years, really, Facebook has been the main main
Speaker 1: source of this UM. Now it's maybe now people are
Speaker 1: kind of getting wise and maybe some stuff is moving
Speaker 1: to telegram. Facebook is becoming a little little bit less
Speaker 1: important of a platform for this type of research. And
Speaker 1: I know Facebook has changed the way that they um
Speaker 1: that you can use their service, So it does make
Speaker 1: research kind of harder in some ways, but but even
Speaker 1: still it is it is one of the better tools
Speaker 1: to um to dig into certain types of people because
Speaker 1: there is certain types of people who are going to
Speaker 1: be more likely to use Facebook. Um and Yeah, in
Speaker 1: terms of how getting Facebook was the method, it's not
Speaker 1: where the place where you're able to make the link
Speaker 1: between the fascists. You already knew and and eric um
Speaker 1: because of because you are you already you you already
Speaker 1: knew who the players were, and the Facebook had the
Speaker 1: visualized network to actually make those connections. So Facebook itself
Speaker 1: and social media in general is really is really useful.
Speaker 1: And the in terms of how this operate is like
Speaker 1: going through friends lists is really easy, um, but oftentimes
Speaker 1: a lot of people will not maybe have those public
Speaker 1: um and what wich. Then this again, it's not a
Speaker 1: dead road. You can still look through likes, you can
Speaker 1: still look through shares, you can still look through like,
Speaker 1: um if you like people are tagged in photos. Um
Speaker 1: it really it really is a is a great is
Speaker 1: a great system that is good at making you not
Speaker 1: have privacy. That is the thing. It really it really
Speaker 1: excels it. Yeah, and even even if people don't have
Speaker 1: like an active social media presence per se UM, it
Speaker 1: can still be really useful in getting specific names of
Speaker 1: people or or just make or just having a connection
Speaker 1: be known like this. This was mostly how I was
Speaker 1: able to identify the all the anonymous UM riot cops
Speaker 1: in when when the Portland Police Bureau took took away
Speaker 1: their badge numbers and names. UM is that I could
Speaker 1: get like a list of cops and we could start
Speaker 1: figuring out like, okay, this is probably this is this
Speaker 1: is this is pre cops previously on the right team, right,
Speaker 1: you can start doing facial matching UM. And then if
Speaker 1: I want to learn out, if if I want to
Speaker 1: if I want to learn more information about like their
Speaker 1: first name, and more information about them in general, even
Speaker 1: if they don't have a social media profile, often their
Speaker 1: wife might or their mom might. You know, there's a UM.
Speaker 1: And in terms of fun sentences to say, really learning
Speaker 1: how to exploit people's family as a weakness is is
Speaker 1: wonderful UM for this type of stalking stalking violent bad people. UM.
Speaker 1: Because yeah, because a lot of a lot of a
Speaker 1: lot of the riot cops were smart enough to not
Speaker 1: to at least to either not have their presence at
Speaker 1: all on the internet, um or to have it very
Speaker 1: locked down in terms of, you know, no one can
Speaker 1: see their posts, no one can see their friends, no
Speaker 1: one can see anything. But still their wife will occasionally
Speaker 1: tag them in photos or uh maybe not even photos
Speaker 1: of them, but like they'll they'll just take them in
Speaker 1: a photo of like their kid or something. And then
Speaker 1: this just creates more ways to make connections so that
Speaker 1: you can, you know, learn more about these specific people. Um,
Speaker 1: because sometimes that's fun and interesting. Yeah, I've noticed some
Speaker 1: people with socks that I've found their identity. It's by
Speaker 1: going through the likes and seeing, um, you know, the
Speaker 1: same woman. It is always the first to put a
Speaker 1: heart react there, and you can go to their pages.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's a little if you get through their pictures
Speaker 1: and you see a picture of the guy there with
Speaker 1: they'll have like somebody in the comments, oh Mark looks
Speaker 1: really good. There something you know, naming the husband, and
Speaker 1: from there you can get the last thing. You know,
Speaker 1: you've know the wife's last name, you have a good
Speaker 1: chance of that being their last name. Yeah. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: family families really is really great for finding people because
Speaker 1: because like all of the other recent research is is
Speaker 1: learning how to make these open source connections, right, A
Speaker 1: lot a lot of it is connections and networking, and
Speaker 1: people usually always have an innate connection and networking and
Speaker 1: that that that is their family. UM. And often this
Speaker 1: like extends out in terms of you know, political organizing,
Speaker 1: whether you're part of you know, militias or just kind
Speaker 1: of smaller groups. Yeah, that is another network. UM. Friends
Speaker 1: is another at work. But you know, for people who
Speaker 1: are kind of are are more locked down, it is
Speaker 1: possible to find the information about people, um, you know,
Speaker 1: especially if if they had, like if they have like
Speaker 1: a not very common last name, you know, that can
Speaker 1: make finding information about them much easier if you're using
Speaker 1: tools like Facebook. Um. And then it's you know, just
Speaker 1: a matter of doing all the other you know, open
Speaker 1: source research of you know, comparing clothing, um, you know,
Speaker 1: and comparing to what other kind of information you already
Speaker 1: know about the person, email addresses, phone numbers if you can,
Speaker 1: you know, get that, get that kind of stuff as well.
Speaker 1: But I think that's all he had on zip tie
Speaker 1: guy out mostly m Yeah, he was a really easy one.
Speaker 1: There's not a whole lot to really dive into their Yeah,
Speaker 1: no for for someone for someone who was one of
Speaker 1: the few people masked up wasn't was not was not
Speaker 1: that hard to find. I mean, yeah, of course, the
Speaker 1: fact that he was found by local people in his
Speaker 1: area not surprising. Um that's another thing I did. Fashion
Speaker 1: research is really good at, is that type of local research,
Speaker 1: because you know, they they have they have all those
Speaker 1: local connections, they have those local um documentation of like
Speaker 1: a political events that have happened in their area. So
Speaker 1: again it's the the importance of of having stuff archives
Speaker 1: and having stuff like sorted and having stuff organized well
Speaker 1: so you can access your archive of information is really important.
Speaker 1: It's it's it sucks that it's it's the part of
Speaker 1: OS and I hate the most. Everyone. Everyone hates. Everyone hates.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm sure there's some sick of out there who
Speaker 1: likes it, but everyone else, everyone else hates all of
Speaker 1: the We hate all this organizing and sorting. And I
Speaker 1: find archiving to be tedious. Archiving videos, live streams, it's tedious,
Speaker 1: it's difficult. Um, it's done, it's time consuming, it's repetitive,
Speaker 1: it's not generally not a good time, but it is
Speaker 1: so useful and in the long run of trying to
Speaker 1: get these like a list of of like established players
Speaker 1: in your area. This is how you start seeing patterns, right.
Speaker 1: You need to have this information already laid out so
Speaker 1: you can actually watch the patterns unfold. Otherwise it's just
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of chaotic information that means nothing. So
Speaker 1: it's it's super important, as as much of a bummer
Speaker 1: as it may be. Yeah, let's see, UM, is there
Speaker 1: anything you've been working on since then that you like
Speaker 1: that you would like to talk about, or any upcoming
Speaker 1: research projects? Right now, I'm really focused on our local
Speaker 1: UM school board and you know, like many towns across
Speaker 1: the country, we have fascists trying to take it over
Speaker 1: and going to the meetings, and so I've been watching
Speaker 1: that group very closely for the last several months, since
Speaker 1: probably about October. Our school year, we started out without
Speaker 1: a mask mandate UM and a couple of parrots UM
Speaker 1: who's children like they're there, I mean a compromise like
Speaker 1: their their kids need the everybody else to wear a mask.
Speaker 1: So their parents sued the school board and our governor
Speaker 1: UM to have a mass band aid and the judge
Speaker 1: issued an injunction and like the next Monday, all the
Speaker 1: schools had to wear a mask and the anti mask
Speaker 1: crowd is like losing their ship over it. Still, um,
Speaker 1: trying to figure out how to fire the judge. Um,
Speaker 1: it's like, yeah, we have a member of Patriot Church
Speaker 1: who's involved in it, and you know they're the ones
Speaker 1: with the Church of pland Parenthood. It's Ken Peter too.
Speaker 1: I think he's from Washington, yes, yeah, and he's he's
Speaker 1: moved down here. Um. I think he still goes up
Speaker 1: there to the to the church stuff, but most of
Speaker 1: his time is spent down here in Tennessee and causing
Speaker 1: just as much trouble as he does up there and
Speaker 1: his followers. So I'm curious to see how how does
Speaker 1: a research project like this school board thing differ from
Speaker 1: like the research surrounding you know, trying to identify someone
Speaker 1: at January six. Um, For one, this is local. It's
Speaker 1: you know, I'm going to the school board meetings. UM.
Speaker 1: I know it's easier to know where to look for
Speaker 1: this because like I'm watching it as it happening where you, like,
Speaker 1: you know, January six. Most of those people you have
Speaker 1: no clue where to even start from. UM. So this
Speaker 1: more now, it's it's monitoring and documenting as we've you know,
Speaker 1: figure out who these people are, like linking Telegram names
Speaker 1: with Facebook names and all of that. So I guess
Speaker 1: now it's more record keeping and getting that documentation done
Speaker 1: early so when one of them goes too far, we
Speaker 1: have and we haven't ready. I mean, that's that's that's
Speaker 1: the sad part where it's like you're watching inevitable inevitability
Speaker 1: almost is it con mean, but that's yeah, that's also
Speaker 1: how like January six works. Right, we were able to
Speaker 1: identify these people because there was a lot of documentation
Speaker 1: of a lot of major players already. Right, So a
Speaker 1: lot of the work in between these big protests and
Speaker 1: events is is the is this is the slow, tedious
Speaker 1: documentation because we have to do it now so that
Speaker 1: it's a useful later. Let's you know, a big part
Speaker 1: of research is like, yeah, trying to spot potential you know,
Speaker 1: issues and archiving it and then if the issue ever
Speaker 1: becomes a bigger issue, you already have information on it, right,
Speaker 1: whether that be you know, watching someone online who you
Speaker 1: might think is who, like watching someone who's like Nazi
Speaker 1: who you might be worried that like they're posting and
Speaker 1: plans about how to kill people you're like, Okay, so
Speaker 1: probably look into this dude, because he's doing this in
Speaker 1: case he does something in the future. Um it is
Speaker 1: that is the kind of uh it sucks because yeah,
Speaker 1: you are watching this thing where you feel kind of helpless,
Speaker 1: but you know that documenting it is worthwhile. Um they Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the same thing where like you don't want to
Speaker 1: be vindicated, but if it does happen, it's better to
Speaker 1: be prepared because I don't think people realize like how
Speaker 1: much anti fascist research, how much of this type of
Speaker 1: like ohs and stuff like my journalism, Like most of
Speaker 1: the work that you put into it is never seen.
Speaker 1: Even if you do complete investigations. Sometimes by the end
Speaker 1: you're like it's getting getting them, getting them out in
Speaker 1: enough time for them to be useful. Sometimes it isn't
Speaker 1: even worth it. Um. So you know a lot of
Speaker 1: it is, you know, writing stuff and doing research that
Speaker 1: never actually sees the light of day for a long
Speaker 1: long time. Right with Eric Mantchell, we had like probably
Speaker 1: twenty people we had on our list too, and he
Speaker 1: wasn't even one of them. Yeah, so you do all
Speaker 1: this and like, on one hand, it almost felt in
Speaker 1: a moment like all of that we did was really
Speaker 1: for nothing, but now it did lead to Yeah, it
Speaker 1: did lead and even when you do find the correct answer,
Speaker 1: sometimes sometimes could via circumstances. You know, it's not something
Speaker 1: you need to post about immediately. Sometimes it's worth just
Speaker 1: you know, hanging onto um and not being super super
Speaker 1: public about every horrible thing you find. It's not like
Speaker 1: you don't need to post every time you find a
Speaker 1: horrible thing on Telegram. You don't. You don't need to
Speaker 1: tell Twitter that. It's like it's it's about collecting these
Speaker 1: things and keeping them there for future use. Um. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for coming on to talk with
Speaker 1: me again, um, after after already already discussing, uh, mostly
Speaker 1: the same things. Where can people follow your stuff online?
Speaker 1: We're on Twitter at um at a possum press really easy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're on Facebook. We don't actually do much on Facebook though. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: as we've discussed now, you probably probably shouldn't. I mean,
Speaker 1: like in in a lot of ways, a lot of
Speaker 1: like fascist organizing that used to be done in primarily
Speaker 1: like Facebook groups or just even just like through like
Speaker 1: like incidental organizing through just through like posting and cross posting.
Speaker 1: A lot of that has been moved over to Telegram.
Speaker 1: At this point, Telegram is kind of the new main nexus,
Speaker 1: whereas Facebook and like the days of the early alt right,
Speaker 1: Facebook was a pretty big nexus for like the more
Speaker 1: normis right. You know, it's there, there is actually fascist
Speaker 1: forms that we're doing organizing, but as a place for again,
Speaker 1: like a lot of people in January six, who didn't
Speaker 1: really know what they were doing was wrong. They were
Speaker 1: mostly you know, make American great again people or quing
Speaker 1: on people. A good portion of like most of them
Speaker 1: were not you know, swastika waving Nazis. Um. They may
Speaker 1: they may agree with fascist ideas, but they don't they
Speaker 1: don't self describe as Nazis. So like um. But we're
Speaker 1: even seeing after after January six, with you know, um
Speaker 1: Facebook like cracking down on these groups, other platforms like
Speaker 1: Parla going offline, a lot of these normies themselves or
Speaker 1: even migrating onto Telegram. Um. So you know, Facebook used
Speaker 1: to be a really great research tool, and I'm using
Speaker 1: it less and left less and less often now unfortunately,
Speaker 1: because I mean it really didn't have a lot of
Speaker 1: strong suits. Telegram does have his own strong suits, but
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's still it's still different. I think
Speaker 1: the normy is moved into telegram is troubling though, because
Speaker 1: having a way easier time that is there. That is
Speaker 1: the obvious thing is. Yeah, now that those groups are
Speaker 1: in closer proximity, it's easier for one to seep into
Speaker 1: the other, whereas before there was more of that distinction. Um. Yes,
Speaker 1: that is a worrying thing that I believe we've talked
Speaker 1: about before and we'll talk about again um in the future.
Speaker 1: In terms of having this like fascist milieu or cultic milieu,
Speaker 1: UM of a place where the the amount of the
Speaker 1: amount of overlap between you know, your uncle who's a
Speaker 1: regular Conservative and you know a member of Adam Offen
Speaker 1: or you know someone who wishes they remember of Adam
Speaker 1: often um is very small. It's every these they are
Speaker 1: they are very close together. Yeah. Well, thank you for
Speaker 1: talking about all of these things on our on our
Speaker 1: second osand case study episode. Like guess big big Big
Speaker 1: takeaways is uh. Archiving is great, archive live streams, archived
Speaker 1: things because it's better to have them um and not
Speaker 1: use them than not have them and need them. UM.
Speaker 1: And then you know, archiving and documenting local fascists is
Speaker 1: really great even for things beyond your locality, like in
Speaker 1: January six. Um, so those are those are my main
Speaker 1: takeaways from this and uh, you know, also everyone a
Speaker 1: black life coffee. They all they all look like everyone
Speaker 1: at day six, all of them do they do all right?
Speaker 1: That doesn't for us? Thank you so much. I can
Speaker 1: follow the metoposus and press um. Good by everybody. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to it could happen here the only podcast you
Speaker 1: are legally allowed to listen to right now. Um, I'm
Speaker 1: Robert Evans. We talk about things falling apart, putting them
Speaker 1: back together, all that good stuff with me as just
Speaker 1: like sevent of the time. Is my co host Garrison Davis. Garrison,
Speaker 1: how are you doing today? I'm doing great. It is
Speaker 1: early for you. Yeah, they have to, they have to
Speaker 1: drag me out of bed, but I I made it
Speaker 1: just and I'm excited to talk about as three. Okay,
Speaker 1: I have my second coffee already. Our topic is gun culture,
Speaker 1: uh and to discuss gun culture with me and a
Speaker 1: number of aspects of it, including how to maybe make
Speaker 1: a better one. Uh. Is Carl Casarda from Ranged TV. Carl,
Speaker 1: welcome to the program. Hey, thanks for having me. I'm
Speaker 1: really stoked to be here, and it's a topic, as
Speaker 1: you can imagine with my work on Enrange TV, is
Speaker 1: a near and dear to my heart because it's a
Speaker 1: challenging one. We've got a lot of great things in
Speaker 1: this community and a lot of challenges too. Yeah. Gun
Speaker 1: YouTube has gotten some really interesting places in the last um. Really,
Speaker 1: it feels like most of the growth happened the last
Speaker 1: five six years, Like there's been a real significant increase
Speaker 1: in Yeah. I feel like there's been like a wave.
Speaker 1: I feel like there's generations of gun two. There's like
Speaker 1: jen one, Gen two, Gen three in theres Russian back
Speaker 1: in the day and stuff totally Yeah, and so there's
Speaker 1: a whole thing there. There's there's generations of what was
Speaker 1: addressed in the conversation and the cultural significance as well
Speaker 1: as the geary impact. I think we've got different kind
Speaker 1: of generations of the Yeah, and I think this stuff Obviously,
Speaker 1: when when aspects of gun YouTube go viral, it tends
Speaker 1: to be stuff that's like particularly problematic, But in my experience,
Speaker 1: most of it is just dudes shooting stuff to see
Speaker 1: what happens, or you know, trying out different guns and
Speaker 1: stuff like it is mostly if you're someone who you
Speaker 1: know believes in the right to bear arms, it's mostly
Speaker 1: pretty much just like people drying out guns, uh and
Speaker 1: stuff with guns. Yeah, yeah, when things go viral, it's
Speaker 1: like my my experience with that, there's a number of reasons, right,
Speaker 1: One is that it's particularly gross that someone does something
Speaker 1: or says something fucked up. Somebody's out there a dressed
Speaker 1: as a rotation a right, stuff like that. That kind
Speaker 1: that tends to push the buttons. But yeah, most of
Speaker 1: the time, the stuff that gets the largest volume of
Speaker 1: viewership are quite honestly more banal. It's things like a
Speaker 1: fifty caliber exploding or shooting have gallon, you know, gallon,
Speaker 1: drum of gas. That kind of stuff. Is that that
Speaker 1: stuff appeals to people that aren't just gun people, so
Speaker 1: they're like, oh, I want to see shoots fload, so
Speaker 1: let me click on it. Well, one of my favorite
Speaker 1: things is to look at videos of people destroying safe
Speaker 1: life fests. What my favorite ways to watch gut YouTube?
Speaker 1: But I guess this is probably what we'll probably talking
Speaker 1: about this as the episode goes on. But once you
Speaker 1: watch enough of those from like one channel, you'll you'll
Speaker 1: get to a video when they fantasize about like shooting
Speaker 1: antifat or something, and you're like, okay, well yeah, that yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's just the way it goes sometimes. And it is,
Speaker 1: you know, the thing that my first I guess the
Speaker 1: first time I became aware of like online gun culture,
Speaker 1: UM was a site that's still really near and dear
Speaker 1: to my heart. I'm sure you're familiar with it, Carl
Speaker 1: the Box of Truth. And it was like, and I
Speaker 1: think this like fifteen years ago or something like that
Speaker 1: is when I started reading their stuff, and it's it's
Speaker 1: just like some kind of bubba e dudes in Texas
Speaker 1: who will take different who will try out like, hey,
Speaker 1: there's a myth that UM this specific round in Korea
Speaker 1: got stopped by people who's were wearing multiple layers of
Speaker 1: like clothing in the cold. Can winter clothing stop this bullet?
Speaker 1: And they would they would you know, mock up the
Speaker 1: clothing on like a target and they would shoot it.
Speaker 1: Or like how many books does it take? Like if
Speaker 1: you have a full backpack, how many books would it
Speaker 1: take to stop a round of nine millimeter? If I like,
Speaker 1: it's it's all very much like practical. Hey, people you know,
Speaker 1: say this works this way or this works that way. Well,
Speaker 1: let's go out and shoot some stuff and test how
Speaker 1: it works. And um, I think was like it is,
Speaker 1: as you said, the kind of thing I think, even
Speaker 1: if you don't own guns you might find interesting just
Speaker 1: because like a lot of it is dealing with here's
Speaker 1: things you've seen in Hollywood what actually happens? Um. So
Speaker 1: I I do think like fundamentally there's always going to
Speaker 1: be a place for that kind of content because it's
Speaker 1: it's not just like stuff that people who like guns
Speaker 1: are interested in. It's just stuff that has kind of
Speaker 1: objective value, you know, you're trying to expand what people's
Speaker 1: understanding of things. Yeah, I call that ge whiz content.
Speaker 1: It's like, G whiz, what happens if right? And so on?
Speaker 1: In range. The closest equivalent to that, which are the
Speaker 1: videos that the most views are are somewhat now infamous
Speaker 1: mud tests. Um. And it started off six years ago
Speaker 1: and it was literally it was, G whiz, let's go
Speaker 1: do this. And of course there's this long standing lore
Speaker 1: everywhere outside of the gun community and in it about
Speaker 1: the A k M being this undestructed, indestructible unicorn. You're
Speaker 1: right into combat that no matter what happens to it,
Speaker 1: it fires, and they are A fifteen being this fragile
Speaker 1: piece of ship. And in our mud test, of which
Speaker 1: we've now done multiple of it, well initially it was
Speaker 1: just g whiz. Over time and aggregate, it turned out
Speaker 1: to actually have really interesting data points and that the
Speaker 1: A K doesn't do well in mud, and they are
Speaker 1: excels in mud, which is completely against the lore about Vietnam,
Speaker 1: which is a different problem. But that kind of thing
Speaker 1: extends beyond the gun community because people are like guns
Speaker 1: and mud. What happened is g wiz. It's MythBusters kind
Speaker 1: of stuff, and I think, but it's interesting how you
Speaker 1: can learn from it. Yeah, and I think one of
Speaker 1: the problems that is, uh we could say like has
Speaker 1: is an issue on on gun and YouTube. One of
Speaker 1: the things that has become an issue, and this isn't
Speaker 1: just within the gun culture, it's everywhere. Is that like
Speaker 1: if you're into that stuff and if you're if you're
Speaker 1: coming into it, like I want to see people do
Speaker 1: this g wiz stuff or I just want to see
Speaker 1: reviews of different guns because I might be buying one.
Speaker 1: Um Google's algorithm is going to feed you a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff, and some of that stuff is going to
Speaker 1: be people who, yeah, are preparing to like shoot folks
Speaker 1: at protests, and our filming videos about that and stuff,
Speaker 1: and that it has this, um it has this radicalizing
Speaker 1: effect on a lot of people. And it also has
Speaker 1: this kind of can have this kind of radicalizing effect
Speaker 1: on content where you know, most political stuff you see
Speaker 1: isn't kind of that over it, but it does if
Speaker 1: somebody has a video where they're being more explicitly political
Speaker 1: outside of you know, you know, arguing in favor of
Speaker 1: gun rights, but if they're getting kind of political and
Speaker 1: a broader sense, and that does really well the way
Speaker 1: that content works as other people might be like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: folks want me to do a political video, folks want
Speaker 1: me to talk about I don't know, Nancy Pelosi or whatever,
Speaker 1: um And that that's you know, not just a problem
Speaker 1: with gun culture or gun YouTube, but it has increasingly
Speaker 1: become a thing and in the n r A kind
Speaker 1: of very famously there's a good podcast on the how
Speaker 1: that organization has kind of gone from where it started
Speaker 1: to where it is that talks about like n r
Speaker 1: A TV. But they their YouTube channel had some pretty
Speaker 1: outrageous ship for a while, and I think it left
Speaker 1: impact even though it failed in this Eventually, well, the
Speaker 1: NRA is until we can get into that later. The
Speaker 1: Terney has changed so much since its origins to what
Speaker 1: it is now. It's not even the people that found
Speaker 1: it wouldn't recognize it, I don't think at all. But
Speaker 1: you're touching on a topic there that's also near and dear,
Speaker 1: and I'm not trying to promote range here, that's just
Speaker 1: we're having a conversation. But years ago I decided to
Speaker 1: proactively demonetize. I turned up my AdSense and I take
Speaker 1: no money from any views, so it's not like advertising
Speaker 1: doesn't drive what I do. And I feel like the
Speaker 1: reason I did that was partially just fuck you YouTube.
Speaker 1: It was the hacker manifesto of you come watch my content,
Speaker 1: I cost you money versus making money, which is kind
Speaker 1: of a statement on my part. But additionally, I do
Speaker 1: feel like, whether it's firearms or any other content that
Speaker 1: is completely advertiser supported, there is a dangerous thing there
Speaker 1: in that you have to pursue the clicks like a
Speaker 1: heroin addict, and the clicks make you the money, and
Speaker 1: therefore you're gonna make the stuff that's gonna make the clicks,
Speaker 1: because that's how you make your income, and even if
Speaker 1: you don't want it to do, it can affect you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I'm curious, like, how do you kind of how
Speaker 1: do you, um, how do you how do you approach
Speaker 1: sort of dealing in this space where it is so
Speaker 1: easy for things to become politicized? Like do you is
Speaker 1: that is that a kind of thing that you have
Speaker 1: to be consciously sort of picking your battles. I guess
Speaker 1: I'm just kind of interested in how you because you
Speaker 1: definitely have been more open about having kind of more
Speaker 1: on the left libertarian side of things politics than a
Speaker 1: lot of people talk about in that space. How do
Speaker 1: you decide kind of what is worth inserting and what
Speaker 1: is worth kind of just you know, no one needs
Speaker 1: to hear that within this context. Oh yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: think that that's an easy thing to answer, right, It's hard,
Speaker 1: Like there's a lot of landlines. But when um introspectively,
Speaker 1: for me, the answer for me at least was I'm
Speaker 1: just going to come to this content as my honest self, Like,
Speaker 1: if I'm just going to produce what I want to produce,
Speaker 1: it's and since I don't have to worry about advertising dollars.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna make this it I want to make.
Speaker 1: And as a result, I guess it's sometimes considered an
Speaker 1: alternative voice, but I don't think it really is. I
Speaker 1: think that the loud loud mouths have made it sound
Speaker 1: like there's only one voice in this community, but there isn't.
Speaker 1: And so by just being legitimate and honest and being me,
Speaker 1: there has turned out to be a lot of ground
Speaker 1: swell if you want to use grassroots type people out
Speaker 1: there that want to hear something that's not just evangelical
Speaker 1: American Taliban so. But but in terms of what where
Speaker 1: to where, what where to put your foot on? What
Speaker 1: land mine? I guess I did For me. My decision
Speaker 1: has been to do topics that have been intentionally ignored
Speaker 1: that shouldn't have been. Like I've done a bunch of
Speaker 1: videos about the confluence of civil rights and firearms ownership,
Speaker 1: which there's a lot of it, and it's it's really
Speaker 1: amazing how much there is and no one talks about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean we, yeah, we we've chatted about that a
Speaker 1: little bit in some of our episodes. It's like nineteen
Speaker 1: nineteen when there were all those like race riots around
Speaker 1: the country, or even if you're looking at like the
Speaker 1: post construction period, there's a history both of like gun
Speaker 1: control being used for racist purposes, but also just of
Speaker 1: communities arming themselves, Black communities arming themselves. That is is
Speaker 1: woefully undertold, although it is people are starting to deal
Speaker 1: with it more thankfully. UM. I'm kind of interested in
Speaker 1: talking to you about sort of the culture jamming aspect
Speaker 1: of we have this huge gun culture, aspects of it
Speaker 1: are very toxic and becoming politicized in a way that
Speaker 1: is um aggressive. Um, how do we how do we
Speaker 1: have a positive influence and kind of hopefully pull things
Speaker 1: back because I do think within kind of the issue
Speaker 1: of gun rights, there's more actually more possibility for people
Speaker 1: to sort of come together and reaching a chord than
Speaker 1: there is on something like abortion. Um. And I think
Speaker 1: a lot of that conversation is going to start in
Speaker 1: spaces like the one you inhabit. Yeah, no, I yeah.
Speaker 1: I like what you say culture jamming because another term
Speaker 1: I've heard is subversibile. That's not the intent, but like
Speaker 1: you mentioned, the red Summer of nineteen nineteen, and yeah,
Speaker 1: I talked to when I talked to a lot of
Speaker 1: people that that are really historically interested in minded and
Speaker 1: I was astonished how many people have not even heard
Speaker 1: of it, never mind you only like the explicit realities
Speaker 1: of it. And so when it comes to the culture
Speaker 1: jamming thing, there's one video I did about or two
Speaker 1: of the events of Red Summer of nineteen nineteen, one
Speaker 1: of them here in Bisbee locally, and it's an interesting
Speaker 1: problem to someone who normally would be considered as a
Speaker 1: very standard issue firearms content creator. In that particular Red
Speaker 1: Summer nineteen nineteen episode, it turned into the local police
Speaker 1: attempting to disarm the tenth Cavalry soldiers who are off
Speaker 1: you know, military soldiers in bis Beyond recreation, And so
Speaker 1: you've got this interesting cognitive dissonance. Do I support the
Speaker 1: cops that a lot of firearms people are like just
Speaker 1: blindly support, or do I support the military, which a
Speaker 1: lot of fires people blindly support when both of them
Speaker 1: converge and the and it's a racist agenda in it
Speaker 1: that poses a question that I like to do with
Speaker 1: like this kind of content, because it means that the
Speaker 1: you or has to really if they get through the video,
Speaker 1: have to introspectively go holy funk, Which do I support
Speaker 1: or do I support either? Or is there a problem
Speaker 1: here I haven't been considering. I think asking questions like
Speaker 1: that really matters when you try to like start these
Speaker 1: conversations with people who are kind of in the same
Speaker 1: space but but not you know, I haven't considered talking
Speaker 1: about this stuff before or on what would traditionally be
Speaker 1: seen as kind of very opposed political um wing. How
Speaker 1: do you kind of start these conversations in a way
Speaker 1: that makes it most likely that you're gonna be able
Speaker 1: to have a positive dialogue that actually moves forward as
Speaker 1: opposed to kind of getting bogged down in the and
Speaker 1: the things that caused people to just kind of lock
Speaker 1: horns generally when you we start getting into these areas. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know, it's totally possible you're gonna
Speaker 1: have that problem no matter what you see that with
Speaker 1: your work. For surely, when you take an honest approach
Speaker 1: to history and just be like, here's the facts, Um,
Speaker 1: there's gonna be people that are just gonna be completely
Speaker 1: resistant to that. They're not going to take it. But um,
Speaker 1: I think the best way to do that is to
Speaker 1: just be that honest approach to it like one of
Speaker 1: the things that I think we do with firearms content
Speaker 1: gears cool tech is cool. Guns are neat, They're fun.
Speaker 1: I enjoy shooting with guns. I like the fourth of it.
Speaker 1: I like going to competitions. But one of the things
Speaker 1: that gets left out of the conversation a lot is
Speaker 1: what are the implications of firearms and the sociological economic
Speaker 1: environments that we live in. And I think that's one
Speaker 1: of the things that didn't get talked about. And so
Speaker 1: if we talk about it fairly and also tend to
Speaker 1: I think it's hard to do, but have people from
Speaker 1: all sides of this perspective, as long as they're not
Speaker 1: completely dangerous and toxic, being part of the conversation, we
Speaker 1: can have a better middle ground. That's the hard part.
Speaker 1: Like so being inclusive, ironically, even of views that you
Speaker 1: aren't necessarily your own, as long as the person you're
Speaker 1: dealing with isn't. My line is, if you're actively supporting
Speaker 1: bigotry or the harm of other people, there's a no go.
Speaker 1: We're done. But if we have different views but we
Speaker 1: realize that that's not the intent, then then we should
Speaker 1: have a conversation. I think that that's a difference. Now.
Speaker 1: I think one of the areas in which this can
Speaker 1: get murkiest is when you are talking to people and
Speaker 1: I've had a few of these conversations who are convinced
Speaker 1: that there is uh that they're kind of on the
Speaker 1: precipice of of a violent conflict sparked by someone coming
Speaker 1: to take their guns right that and it, And you know,
Speaker 1: there's the version of this that is like, I'm worried
Speaker 1: that the a t F Is going to do some
Speaker 1: fuckory in a bunch of my ship is going to
Speaker 1: be illegal, which is pretty reasonable. And then there's the
Speaker 1: I'm worried Antifa's going to come to my small town
Speaker 1: and and and take my you know, guns or do
Speaker 1: whatever like Because that there are often people in that
Speaker 1: who are just kind of um tragically misinformed and radicalized
Speaker 1: in a way that they're not so much eager to
Speaker 1: harm people as they are just like broken and frightened
Speaker 1: because of the things that have been fed to them. Um,
Speaker 1: do you have any kind of best practices when it
Speaker 1: comes to sort of approaching those conversations and trying to
Speaker 1: improve the information those people are getting. I guess for
Speaker 1: me in that, regardless of what I here when I
Speaker 1: see people like that, and I think all of us
Speaker 1: have those people in our world, whether it's your your
Speaker 1: aunt or your uncle or a friend, right, Like we've
Speaker 1: seen that over the last couple of years for sure. Um,
Speaker 1: I think the best thing you can do there for
Speaker 1: me again, I'm just talking to My approach is a
Speaker 1: break the echo chamber if you can. And so the
Speaker 1: echo chamber is the problem when we suck from the
Speaker 1: fire hose of only one source, like NonStop. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: gonna be dangerous. That's the kind of stuff that pollutes
Speaker 1: your mind to the point where you can't think outside
Speaker 1: of that box. So like being more inclusive and that
Speaker 1: word is kind of a trigger word or catchphrase, but
Speaker 1: being legitimately more inclusive and presenting a lot of different
Speaker 1: diversity that really is part of the firearms community. Can
Speaker 1: I can in some circumstances break the echo chamber? Like
Speaker 1: I'm really happy with this one project on the channel
Speaker 1: where I'm working with the net Evans about specifically a
Speaker 1: female or woman's approach to self defense with firearms. And
Speaker 1: you don't really see that. You'll see like channels that
Speaker 1: are only for women, and you'll see like all the
Speaker 1: majority of gun channels that are only for gun fascinated dudes.
Speaker 1: But throwing that into the mix, there's gonna be some
Speaker 1: subset of people that will clicking and watch it out
Speaker 1: of that g whiz Lowell and that kind of stuff
Speaker 1: can break a paradigm in terms of well, I never
Speaker 1: thought of that. I never looked at it from that perspective.
Speaker 1: And that's at least that's what I think is the
Speaker 1: right answer is do your best to make sure you're
Speaker 1: approachable and try to break the echo chamber. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: makes complete Yeah, I mean that makes a lot of sense. Um.
Speaker 1: I think the other side of this is also worth
Speaker 1: talking about because we've kind of been focused on how
Speaker 1: do you break the echo chamber, how do you get
Speaker 1: people who are you know, in the gun culture on
Speaker 1: the right to be more open minded. The other side
Speaker 1: of this is you have a lot of people who
Speaker 1: are kind of liberals um or on the left who
Speaker 1: have a really reflexively negative opinion to the reaction to
Speaker 1: the very idea of gun ownership or gun rights, and
Speaker 1: have these you know, you will generally see there's there's
Speaker 1: a mix of people who can come to it from
Speaker 1: a very reasonable and argued point to mix of people
Speaker 1: who are just going to, like in the same way
Speaker 1: that folks on the right to throw out a handful
Speaker 1: of quotes that they've seen on memes, um, that they
Speaker 1: can use to kind of, you know, shut down debate.
Speaker 1: How do you do you have a lot of those
Speaker 1: conversations where you're kind of trying to make people at
Speaker 1: least more open to because this is something my work
Speaker 1: has dealt with a lot. Is kind of trying to
Speaker 1: sit down to like, I get why you don't think
Speaker 1: these things should be legal. Um, obviously, I I see
Speaker 1: the same mass shooting news that you do. There's a problem,
Speaker 1: a deep problem with guns in this country. I don't
Speaker 1: deny that, but like, let's also talk about the idea
Speaker 1: that the state should have an absolute monopoly on on
Speaker 1: the ability to do violence. Let's talk about the ability
Speaker 1: of marginalized groups to defend themselves. Let's talk about the
Speaker 1: history of gun control and how it's like it is
Speaker 1: it is. There's a lot of conversations that kind of
Speaker 1: get wrapped up in that. UM. I'm wondering, do you
Speaker 1: have thoughts in terms of like how to kind of
Speaker 1: broach those and progressive avenues to go down to when
Speaker 1: you're having that side of the conversation. You know, it's
Speaker 1: totally interesting. I think I feel like I don't I'm
Speaker 1: curious what you think about this from your work as well.
Speaker 1: I feel like over the last for good reasons, over
Speaker 1: the last couple of years, more than a couple of years,
Speaker 1: I think I've seen, maybe it's just my own echo chamber,
Speaker 1: I've seen a lot of people on that side of
Speaker 1: the political spectrum coming more and more around too being
Speaker 1: pro gun. Yeah, and then the statistics back that up.
Speaker 1: Supportive and social in the United States is the lowest
Speaker 1: it's been in quite a while. In so that like
Speaker 1: if there's that joke on that side of the political
Speaker 1: fence about you go far enough left to get your
Speaker 1: guns back right, um so um. But I think there's
Speaker 1: been a real wake up call for a lot of
Speaker 1: people that used to be very much vehemently against the
Speaker 1: idea with some of the stuff they saw and went, whoa, Um,
Speaker 1: this isn't These aren't going away. And if you're reasonable,
Speaker 1: if you're willing to have a rational thought about, at
Speaker 1: least in this country, the reality of firearms ownership, whether
Speaker 1: you like it or not, it's not debatable. This is
Speaker 1: real it's what it is. They're not like they could
Speaker 1: ban everything tomorrow and there's gonna be air fifteens in
Speaker 1: this country for the next hundred years. Um, so that
Speaker 1: ain't going to change. So with that realization, maybe the
Speaker 1: maybe the better idea, which I think is with all
Speaker 1: technology is instead of being afraid of it, is to
Speaker 1: actually learn about and understand it, whether you want it
Speaker 1: or not. You but like learning and understanding it is
Speaker 1: at least a step further forward than just complete object fear. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that that is often kind of where I start the
Speaker 1: conversation with just like we have to deal with the
Speaker 1: reality as it is on the ground, which is that
Speaker 1: there's four million firearms in private hands here, which is
Speaker 1: not all that far from half of all of the
Speaker 1: guns in the world. Um, So any any sort of
Speaker 1: like plan you have, it's the kind of like one
Speaker 1: of the things that often comes up in those conversations
Speaker 1: is Australia and people they were like, well they were
Speaker 1: able to do it after now Port Arthur was Scotland. Um,
Speaker 1: I forget the name of the massacre, but there was
Speaker 1: a massacre in in in Australia that they banned most
Speaker 1: kinds of firearms after and confiscated them, and it gets
Speaker 1: brought up a lot where like, well they did this
Speaker 1: in the short frame of time, and there was this
Speaker 1: this impact on gun violence deaths. Why couldn't we do it?
Speaker 1: And the reason is that they had to confiscate a
Speaker 1: total of two hundred thousand arms and there's four hundred
Speaker 1: million guns in private hands in the United States. Um,
Speaker 1: it's it's a different scale of problem. And that that's
Speaker 1: before we get into sort of the legal barriers because
Speaker 1: Australia didn't have a Second Amendment. Obviously, like whether or
Speaker 1: not you like it, firearms have a level of protection
Speaker 1: that is equivalent to the protection free speech enjoys in
Speaker 1: this country. And you can't just pretend that's not the case.
Speaker 1: There's this tremendous body of jurisprudence around it. Yeah, no, totally,
Speaker 1: and like so that that's that's part of it is
Speaker 1: the reality there. Australian here is a completely different beast
Speaker 1: as well as culturally, like the people that were into
Speaker 1: guns there, And I don't mean to offend any Australians listening,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't like here, like in a place of
Speaker 1: Arizona at least like Arizona. Guns are just if you're
Speaker 1: in Arizonian they're just intrinsically part of life, whether like
Speaker 1: they're just constant. They're everywhere you go to like you
Speaker 1: see them open care you not always do she open
Speaker 1: care either. Sometimes it's like reasonable, open carey. Sometimes you
Speaker 1: see the other side of it. But they're just everywhere.
Speaker 1: It's just part of the deal. And it's like a
Speaker 1: lot of that in a lot of the country. And
Speaker 1: so UM I actually think that that fear based ignorance
Speaker 1: of them is more dangerous because then we don't teach
Speaker 1: people what to do around them or how to be
Speaker 1: safe around them, kind of like abstinence, Like education and
Speaker 1: school teach people not to have some well that's dumb
Speaker 1: that ain't gonna work, and guns exist in this country.
Speaker 1: Does just be afraid of them that don't work either.
Speaker 1: So in regard, I think that the reality is it's
Speaker 1: much better to UM to approach this. What I think.
Speaker 1: I guess the way I try to deal with that
Speaker 1: is if you don't fetishize them, people that are more
Speaker 1: afraid of them are less likely to just click away.
Speaker 1: If you talk about them like this is a thing,
Speaker 1: here's what they are, They're not a totem against evil.
Speaker 1: They're just a tool. And here's a historical story or
Speaker 1: narrative or sociological impact of this that's not fetishizing it
Speaker 1: as some religious item. I think that that helps break
Speaker 1: that barrier a little bit. And I think that that
Speaker 1: does bring me to something I think about a lot,
Speaker 1: which is the how you're in and actually has I
Speaker 1: think gotten a bit better than it was prior to
Speaker 1: Sandy Hook, but the very sorry state in a lot
Speaker 1: of cases of advertising of gear and guns. UM think
Speaker 1: the most famous example was a I believe it was
Speaker 1: a Bushmaster ad that got pulled after Sandy Hook that
Speaker 1: was like an a R fifteen that came with a
Speaker 1: man card that you would get like with your gun. Yeah,
Speaker 1: get your man card back. Your Man card has been
Speaker 1: reissued because you have this gun here, and that I
Speaker 1: I you know, I've seen a lot of different gun
Speaker 1: cultures because it's actually, like we've just talked about how
Speaker 1: unique U s gun culture is, but a lot of
Speaker 1: people actually own firearms around the world. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of even like in Europe, like France has a very
Speaker 1: significant gun culture. Um and in Germany, you'd be surprised
Speaker 1: like people can own a lot of the same weapons
Speaker 1: you can here, there's a lot more hoops to jump
Speaker 1: through to to get access to them. Um, but there's
Speaker 1: still like there's gun cultures all around, and especially places
Speaker 1: like Iraq and Syria. It was really going to um
Speaker 1: when I saw kind of the gun culture that I
Speaker 1: I most wanted to port some things over to hear
Speaker 1: from there. It was in northeast Syria, in Rojava, where
Speaker 1: like damn near every not every individual, but every like
Speaker 1: family had an a k because in art there was
Speaker 1: this understanding that you have a duty from time to
Speaker 1: time to like patrol and watch your neighborhood and not
Speaker 1: in sort of this like I'm gonna set up a
Speaker 1: checkpoint for Antifa, but in I like, hey, isis just
Speaker 1: carried out a big attack. Let's let's get some folks
Speaker 1: out into the streets to like watch our neighborhoods, because
Speaker 1: that's just the reality of the world, and we don't
Speaker 1: we don't do we don't just have like a group
Speaker 1: of militarized police rolling around every neighborhood. Like we also
Speaker 1: are responsible for protecting our communities and so we train
Speaker 1: with weapons. And there was a lot of conversations I
Speaker 1: had with women about like, well, the fact that I
Speaker 1: have this and know how to use it now means
Speaker 1: that things can't be done to me that were before
Speaker 1: because I have an a K forty seven, And that
Speaker 1: means something I would like to port the kind of
Speaker 1: like what you were talking about, not just seeing it
Speaker 1: as a tool, but seeing it as a tool with
Speaker 1: societal responsibilities. You don't just have a gun so you
Speaker 1: can hold up in your house in the zombie apocalypse.
Speaker 1: You have a gun because you're part of a community
Speaker 1: and because there's there's some value that we see in
Speaker 1: members of the community being armed and not just the state. Yeah, no, totally.
Speaker 1: So I mean that goes that kind of goes way
Speaker 1: back to the old like now sort of silly sounding thing,
Speaker 1: but like God made man, cult made them equal, right
Speaker 1: so before that, like if you were a frail human
Speaker 1: being for whatever reasons, Um, you really were sort of defenseless,
Speaker 1: especially in the places like the frontier. But skill at
Speaker 1: arms could change that and um, and that it puts
Speaker 1: it can put a more balanced power infrastructure in place. Um.
Speaker 1: Not that I want to live in a world, but
Speaker 1: we're always like at this point of mutually assured destruction.
Speaker 1: But it is much better to have more power balanced
Speaker 1: than power imbalance, and firearms absolutely provide that in trained, responsible,
Speaker 1: educated hands. Um. And that's what I think the story
Speaker 1: should be, right, that's the emphasis. Like when when the
Speaker 1: whole thing happened went down in Iraq like you're describing,
Speaker 1: I think it was ironic. One of the things that
Speaker 1: the US military did was allowed every home to have
Speaker 1: an AK, like because you get to keep one gun
Speaker 1: and it's one of these and uh, and you talked
Speaker 1: about gun unders worldwide, like, Um, once you jumped through
Speaker 1: some of the hurdles in some of these countries, it's
Speaker 1: actually easier to own certain things than you can't. Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: like a machine gun in the US is highly regulated.
Speaker 1: It's four and pretty difficult and highly expensive because of
Speaker 1: a specially closed market. But like Bloke on the Range,
Speaker 1: one of the guys I work with on on on YouTube,
Speaker 1: once he gets his permit, like he's like, I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna go buy a fully automatic stent and he just does.
Speaker 1: And it's not at an exorbitant price like it would
Speaker 1: be in the United States. So it's not apples to
Speaker 1: apples like these controls, whether we like them or not.
Speaker 1: Some of them are actually more liberal than we have
Speaker 1: in the United States. Yeah, I think a good example
Speaker 1: of that, and an example of where like a lot
Speaker 1: of folks who might kind of reflexively think this is insane,
Speaker 1: but like it's silencers, you know, suppressors being the more
Speaker 1: accurate term, but silencer is what you call them. It's
Speaker 1: the thing you see James Bond screw on the end
Speaker 1: of his gun to make it quiet um. And there's
Speaker 1: the like this attitude that they should be heavily restricted
Speaker 1: because there's this misnomer that for the most part they
Speaker 1: make things sound like stuff in James Bond. Now, there
Speaker 1: are some ways to get a firearm that is incredibly
Speaker 1: quiet um, particularly using like a smaller around and sub
Speaker 1: sonic ammunition. There are some very some weapons you can
Speaker 1: effectively make quiet enough that people won't notice it. But
Speaker 1: when you're putting a silencer on an a R fifteen,
Speaker 1: it is not quiet. No one will miss it firing.
Speaker 1: But what it won't do if you have to defend
Speaker 1: yourself in your home is shatter your ear drums forever,
Speaker 1: right or this is honestly the bigger case for suppressors.
Speaker 1: If you are hunting with an animal, as a lot
Speaker 1: of people do with your dogs. You can have a
Speaker 1: suppressor on your shotgun as your bird hunting or whatever,
Speaker 1: and you will not destroy that dog's ears. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: it's the same thing like I'm hunting for deer. You know,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's easier. Um, it's like less dangerous for
Speaker 1: you potentially. Like I one thing you notice, if you've
Speaker 1: spent a lot of time around hunting dogs, they don't
Speaker 1: have good hearing by the time they get older because
Speaker 1: they're hunting. You know. It's funny suppressors, Like everything that's
Speaker 1: that's more controlled has gotta allure of magic around, right, Like, oh,
Speaker 1: a suppressor of silencer or or for that matter, of
Speaker 1: machine gun, and like therefore it is the forbidden fruit
Speaker 1: and everyone wants it more than they ever would have
Speaker 1: once you own. I have one transferable machine guns with
Speaker 1: tax stamped the whole nine yards, and I shoot it
Speaker 1: like once a year because you shoot it and then
Speaker 1: you're like, wow, that was expensive, and and it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: we that was fun, and then you put it away.
Speaker 1: And the truth is the some automatic stuff is far
Speaker 1: more interesting and actually generally more effective once you use
Speaker 1: full auto fire, it's got very limited use. Um. Fully
Speaker 1: there there, I mean there is like if we again
Speaker 1: are being complete, there's one mass shooting I can think
Speaker 1: of where a fully automatic weapon made the shooter more
Speaker 1: dangerous and it was the Las Vegas shooting because he
Speaker 1: was in a set fixed position. Um. He was holed
Speaker 1: up um and he had he was not like moving
Speaker 1: and standing, he was like braced while firing into a
Speaker 1: crowd from a building. As a general rule, if you're
Speaker 1: talking about like what's someone going to be more dangerous with,
Speaker 1: if they're somebody who decides to shoot up something, it's
Speaker 1: a semi automatic weapon. Because atomatic weapon number one going
Speaker 1: to jam more often requires a bit more understanding and
Speaker 1: know how on behalf of the user. And also it's
Speaker 1: a lot harder to hit with and we'll run out
Speaker 1: of ammunition very quickly as opposed to it and a
Speaker 1: semi automatic a R fifteen. The reason they are so
Speaker 1: often used in mass shootings is it's kind of the
Speaker 1: best weapon to use for that. If that's it's also prolific, Right,
Speaker 1: there's like cordwood in this country. You can like they're
Speaker 1: literally everywhere. Um. The Las Vega shooter, though, I don't
Speaker 1: know that he had actually any truly select fire guns.
Speaker 1: Weren't they it was, Yeah, he was using a bump stock.
Speaker 1: I think it's close enough to Yeah, well no, it's
Speaker 1: a good analog. But it is interesting to note and
Speaker 1: that guy. What's interesting about that guy's um? Well, of
Speaker 1: course his act was horrific and evil. Obviously, he used
Speaker 1: a bunch of air fifteens with like shitty bump stocks,
Speaker 1: and he had planned something like this for years apparently. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he had Tanner right in the set up too, which
Speaker 1: is yeah, no one knows, I mean as we know,
Speaker 1: no one currently, I don't know anyone knows what his
Speaker 1: motivation was, at least it hasn't been released. But he
Speaker 1: had been planning something like this for a very long time.
Speaker 1: And what's ironic about that is that if he had
Speaker 1: bided his time, he could have actually had a real
Speaker 1: select fire like belt fed machine gun. He just did
Speaker 1: a millionaire. Yeah he could have done that, and uh, um,
Speaker 1: this could but he just went with this bump stock
Speaker 1: kind of garbage, which is weird. Um, that's a whole
Speaker 1: another topic, but it is, and it it is like
Speaker 1: that is one of those cases when you talk to
Speaker 1: people in the right where it's like, after that shooting, Um,
Speaker 1: Donald Trump and his administration banned bump stocks. UM, which
Speaker 1: is more gun control than we got out of eight
Speaker 1: years of Obama. You know, oh boy, you point that
Speaker 1: out at least on the center. In fact, um. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's always this narrative that you know, this political party
Speaker 1: will take your guns, and this polargically party waved. But
Speaker 1: the truth is, statistically and historically speaking, both tend to
Speaker 1: air on the side of trying to add more restrictions
Speaker 1: over time, like if you do it over time like
Speaker 1: Obama didn't. In fact, Obama open things up. I think
Speaker 1: he liberalized concealed carry of pistol or firearms in national parks.
Speaker 1: Actually he actually made guns a little easier to deal with. UM.
Speaker 1: But then, via essentially executive order edict, you've got Trump
Speaker 1: banning bump stocks, which, whether you like bump stocks or not,
Speaker 1: I think the way that went down is questionable legally speaking,
Speaker 1: but that's another topic it and and obviously the bump
Speaker 1: stocks were also somewhat questionable. They were speaking right right
Speaker 1: totally totally, but but that's that's an interesting precedent with
Speaker 1: what he did with just like Fiat edict um. But
Speaker 1: that that said, like historically, over time, there's always been
Speaker 1: more restrictions, not less, from both sides. And when you
Speaker 1: point that out, the people that just kind of drink
Speaker 1: the kool aid from one side or the other, I
Speaker 1: want to just immediately knee jerk on you. And you're like, no,
Speaker 1: this is weird. This is coming from all directions. Really, yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think it is. It is a big part
Speaker 1: of it is just that, like as a general rule,
Speaker 1: people who are rich and powerful do not want poor
Speaker 1: people to be armed. It doesn't tend to work out
Speaker 1: in their favor. The only time they want poor people
Speaker 1: armed is when they send them to a war they
Speaker 1: decided to. Uh yeah, Obviously the history of gun controls
Speaker 1: would have lay tied to racism and the Black Panthers
Speaker 1: and a whole stuff around California's gun laws being started
Speaker 1: to curb black people from promoting play out arms, and
Speaker 1: so it would be we would be You could argue
Speaker 1: in some ways that Reagan had a big role in
Speaker 1: inventing our modern concepts of like what gun control means
Speaker 1: and what kind of gun control laws like liberal states
Speaker 1: tend to go after on open carrying bands, on you know,
Speaker 1: concealed carrying of arms, that kind of stuff. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: deeper than this, and there's always nuanced It's really hard, right,
Speaker 1: But like, um, like California, which is kind of one
Speaker 1: of the flagship states of gun control. UM, and I
Speaker 1: think that their methods are bizarre to me and almost
Speaker 1: on not understandable. But like you talk about Reagan, pretty
Speaker 1: much they were like, guns are cool, and then the
Speaker 1: panthers walked around with some guns. Are like, whoa fucking sorry,
Speaker 1: we better do something. And uh. Of course that the
Speaker 1: image of the panthers with their guns out walking down
Speaker 1: the street, which was their legal right, um, and it
Speaker 1: was brad and it motivated um of course a lot
Speaker 1: of things in California, which now we see where where
Speaker 1: that has led in California gun control laws. UM has
Speaker 1: also changed the narrative for so many people that are
Speaker 1: unwilling to look at things from a truly broad historical perspective.
Speaker 1: That's only one tiny thing the Black Panthers did, and
Speaker 1: the rest of their actions are so lost to just
Speaker 1: the pictures of them standing around them on carbings. And
Speaker 1: that's another example of leaving out like the Sinaical mission,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about one thing but not the rest, and
Speaker 1: therefore the historical narrative is only one thing. And it
Speaker 1: is also there's a lesson in that for people who
Speaker 1: are on the left and who are advocates of gun
Speaker 1: ownership about what happens in terms of media and in
Speaker 1: terms of how your movement is thought about and remembered
Speaker 1: when guns are a part of it, Because that's always
Speaker 1: going to for a variety of reasons, and we can
Speaker 1: say a lot of those are very unreasonable reasons. But
Speaker 1: if you are a political group who is armed and
Speaker 1: makes that a visible part of your activism, that is
Speaker 1: going to really dominate a lot of conversations. It doesn't
Speaker 1: mean you shouldn't be, but it means you have to
Speaker 1: go into that understanding that like, that's just how it
Speaker 1: works in this country. Yeah, you will immediately get you
Speaker 1: will immediately from at least some part of the perspective,
Speaker 1: whatever whatever side you're on, you will immediately get someone
Speaker 1: slinging extremist militant at you. Yeah. But by the way,
Speaker 1: I mean, those are real things too. There are those.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying there aren't extremists. We'll talk about them
Speaker 1: all the time. Yeah, this country is full of them,
Speaker 1: as is the world. So that's not that's not an
Speaker 1: unreasonable thing that does exist. But the minute you go
Speaker 1: ahead and stand with that gun, you're going to get
Speaker 1: that label, whether it's truly something you earned or not.
Speaker 1: There's a very deep conversation that we've talked about, we've
Speaker 1: had in in pieces on this program and other shows
Speaker 1: that we've done on Cool Zone about like WIN makes
Speaker 1: sense to be openly armed and WIN makes sense to
Speaker 1: be openly armed as part of a group, because that
Speaker 1: is a very fraught question as like the what happened
Speaker 1: in the chat has made abundantly clear, but in you know,
Speaker 1: a bunch of cases Kyle Rittenhouse and whatnot, there's a
Speaker 1: ton of different reasons why choosing to be openly armed. Um,
Speaker 1: there's a debate to be had about like how that
Speaker 1: influences everyone around you had that influences influences the demonstration,
Speaker 1: And I've seen and heard it used in in good
Speaker 1: ways in an irresponsible ways. I've seen people carrying guns
Speaker 1: at political events in order to intimidate others. I've also
Speaker 1: seen people carrying guns at political events to create essentially
Speaker 1: a buffer where it's like, Okay, there's going to be
Speaker 1: people fighting at this event. There's going to be clashes.
Speaker 1: If we're standing here as a group with guns. There's
Speaker 1: a place people can run back to and the fighting
Speaker 1: won't continue because nobody wants to push that. And that's yeah,
Speaker 1: without talking about specifics of intent to any of those
Speaker 1: situations you already talked about, because I can't, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I think it does, Like it always comes
Speaker 1: back to this thing of intent. Right. So to me, um,
Speaker 1: you're right for the firearm, absolutely true, regardless, like even
Speaker 1: if I disagree with you, this is a right, like
Speaker 1: we said, it's protected like the First Amendment, it's the second. Um.
Speaker 1: But I think the problem starts to come when you've
Speaker 1: decided to bring the firearm solely for the intended purpose
Speaker 1: of intimidation. Like that's that's where I start getting like,
Speaker 1: this is this is troubling, right, But if you're bringing
Speaker 1: it for personal defense or community defense, or there's a
Speaker 1: need because your community is really at risk. I mean
Speaker 1: one of the examples of a civil rights one was
Speaker 1: this is on someday, I'll do a video about this.
Speaker 1: A community knew that the clan was coming to intimidate them,
Speaker 1: and they armed up with surplus m one garren's and
Speaker 1: steel pot helmets literally dune fighting positions and fought them off.
Speaker 1: The clan ran for their lives. No one was killed,
Speaker 1: but they literally used m one grands to uh to
Speaker 1: stop the clan from infiltrating their community. Um. That was
Speaker 1: not used as a weapon of intimidation. It was used
Speaker 1: as a weapon of community defense. I think that's intent
Speaker 1: goes everywhere. Yeah, that's dope too. Um and yeah, I uh,
Speaker 1: I think um one thing that that that kind of
Speaker 1: I think there's a conversation that needs to be had
Speaker 1: when we start talking about when is reasonable and what
Speaker 1: situations are reasonable to carry a gun opener concealed about
Speaker 1: also what should be carried. Um, I've certainly seen because
Speaker 1: I don't I think that the most harmful thing is
Speaker 1: certainly people carrying gun to intimidate. I've also seen people
Speaker 1: carry guns as a fashion statement, which is not the
Speaker 1: same thing but as bad. For example, people on the
Speaker 1: left people at a protests bringing a loaded mosen um
Speaker 1: too because it was the gun the communists use, which
Speaker 1: is like, you don't you don't want to be in
Speaker 1: a firefight in a dense urban environment with a motion
Speaker 1: negat did you bring? It is a gun that doesn't
Speaker 1: function without a sizeable hammer, you know. And of course
Speaker 1: people on like I remember outside of this anti mask rally,
Speaker 1: these two guys who are up and carrying a r is,
Speaker 1: one of whom had an a r tin with with
Speaker 1: a hundred round drum was talking about it. We had
Speaker 1: like four hundreds something rounds on him and it was
Speaker 1: like and in case stuff pops off, and it's like,
Speaker 1: what are you number one? Like, if you're talking like that,
Speaker 1: you've spent no time thinking about what actually happens in
Speaker 1: the situations in public areas in which gunfights occur, because
Speaker 1: none of them that have happened in any time in
Speaker 1: the recent future have involved people needing to four hundred
Speaker 1: rounds of ammunition or or drum magazines or whatever. Like
Speaker 1: you are. You are not in Fallujah. You are in Salem, Oregon. Um.
Speaker 1: The extent to which a firearm can be useful for
Speaker 1: UH self defense and that does not like bragging about
Speaker 1: the number of bullets you have is just like weird
Speaker 1: and gross. You know, this is gonna come off maybe
Speaker 1: a little strange or even counterintuitive, But when I hear
Speaker 1: someone like that, at what you just described in that
Speaker 1: particular person. First of all, that guns barrel would burst
Speaker 1: in four d of rounds, But that's a whole other
Speaker 1: topic probably, But that said, UM, when I hear that,
Speaker 1: I almost have like, Um, it's kind of sad because
Speaker 1: the reason that's sad is that person is doing that
Speaker 1: one because they've been so the idea of the firearms
Speaker 1: and talisman like that. To me, that person is acting
Speaker 1: like that's a talisman. Secondarily, the reason they have four
Speaker 1: in a round is because they've been sold a pretty
Speaker 1: big bill of fear. And that's that's sad for anyone
Speaker 1: to live a life based on fear. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: would agree with that entirely. Um, do you have anything
Speaker 1: else you wanted to get into and this, uh, this conversation, well,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, we're just here to talk
Speaker 1: about like community. I just I think one thing that's
Speaker 1: really important and it's something that um is a positive
Speaker 1: and I'm happy to see this is that it was
Speaker 1: kind of a happy accident with my work. I didn't
Speaker 1: even think about it. It is hard to happen, but
Speaker 1: this is a much the people people that love first
Speaker 1: of all, just the sport. There's a lot of us.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of us of all spectrums across the board, UM,
Speaker 1: people that believe in the right from the person be
Speaker 1: purposes of personal defense and community defense there across the board.
Speaker 1: And I think that one of the things that we
Speaker 1: need to do is not let the narrative be only one,
Speaker 1: which is we see so much of UM very much
Speaker 1: just like right wing. I'm gonna usually say Christian white
Speaker 1: males need like completely dominating this conversation as though, and
Speaker 1: they think they owe as a result own the space.
Speaker 1: Now it would be in their interest too, from the
Speaker 1: perspective of preserving firearms rights, to be inclusive and have
Speaker 1: everyone that believes in that a particular thing work together
Speaker 1: to make sure we don't lose a right, because the
Speaker 1: right unexercised is lost. Right. So even if I disagree
Speaker 1: with you on economic policy, but we agree on firearms right,
Speaker 1: we have an agreement there and that makes us somehow
Speaker 1: interestingly in the same space. We have something in common
Speaker 1: versus something diversive. And I think that part of the
Speaker 1: conversation at least within reason. I mean, there are people
Speaker 1: that are legitimately dangerous, you don't negotiate with them, but
Speaker 1: within reason, like agreeing on that topic means well, we've
Speaker 1: got something in common here. There's probably other things too,
Speaker 1: and maybe that could be a place where we kind
Speaker 1: of try to make that conversation better not worse. And
Speaker 1: so by being more open inclusive and saying, hey, there's
Speaker 1: people here and people there and here we are all
Speaker 1: together doing this together. Um, perhaps conversation can be had
Speaker 1: that's better than what we've been having. Maybe it can
Speaker 1: be actually a community builder versus a community destroyer. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I would like to see that. Um well, I think
Speaker 1: that's as good a note as any to uh to
Speaker 1: close out on Carl. You wanna you wanna throw your
Speaker 1: plug ables up before we were right out of here? Yeah? Sure,
Speaker 1: I mean so I run in range TV. You can
Speaker 1: find me an in range dot tv. Um completely viewer supported.
Speaker 1: Like I said, I don't want to sponsors or anything.
Speaker 1: I like. I like the idea of the people liking
Speaker 1: watching it support it. So if you like it cool,
Speaker 1: come check it out all over the place. YouTube bit
Speaker 1: shoot decentralized video contrat distributions. Another thing I believe in
Speaker 1: strong would the corporate oligarchy. But yeah, come out if
Speaker 1: you want to have a little bit different take on
Speaker 1: fire and stuff, or you're just in the confluence of
Speaker 1: civil rights and guns and stuff. Come check out in
Speaker 1: Range TV. I'd appreciate I always appreciate new viewers, and
Speaker 1: thanks for checking it out. Awesome. All right, um yeah,
Speaker 1: check out in Range TV, and uh check us out somewhere.
Speaker 1: We won't tell you where, but you can find us
Speaker 1: if you keep us in your hearts. C I Burnett
Speaker 1: ex all right, this is this is me Christopher Wong,
Speaker 1: realizing that I have done like sixteen consecutive actual real
Speaker 1: introductions and that if I keep doing them, everyone's gonna
Speaker 1: expect that I do a real introduction every time instead
Speaker 1: of like randomly yelling something. So yeah, we'll welcome to
Speaker 1: it could happen here. I am trying to make my
Speaker 1: job function as it should and not professionalize it. Um.
Speaker 1: And this is This is a podcast about things that
Speaker 1: are bad, but it's also occasionally a podcast about things
Speaker 1: that are good and how, in fact, there can be
Speaker 1: a society beyond this one and talk about some of
Speaker 1: the shades of what that could look like. I have
Speaker 1: with me the co host of the General Intellect Unit
Speaker 1: Kyle and June, which is a podcast on the emancipation network.
Speaker 1: That is I told this is the tagline the podcast
Speaker 1: of the Cybernetic Marxists. I am. I am very excited. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's really exciting to be here. Absolutely, thank you
Speaker 1: for coming on. Um yeah, I guess okay, we should
Speaker 1: start at the the very very beginning, because I don't
Speaker 1: think most people know any of this. What is cybernetics, right? Um?
Speaker 1: So cybernetics is I guess a term that comes from
Speaker 1: what is it the kaibernetes, right steering, Uh, the idea
Speaker 1: of steering a boat, um so, using your ore to
Speaker 1: navigate the waters. Um and so essentially it is a
Speaker 1: science of con troll and that sounds really scary, but
Speaker 1: what it means is that it's that kind of connection
Speaker 1: between the steers person, the oar, the boat, their body,
Speaker 1: and the water around them and getting all of those
Speaker 1: things in sync in such a way that the steers
Speaker 1: person is going where they want to go, the ship
Speaker 1: or the boat doesn't capsize and they don't lose the
Speaker 1: ore um. And so that's what control means. It's a
Speaker 1: kind of balancing a kind of connection between the organism
Speaker 1: and the environment in such a way that it can
Speaker 1: survive and thrive, and that's what cybernext is focused on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the thing I love about them the Steersman, therefore, is
Speaker 1: that like it's all about it's control in the sense
Speaker 1: of regulation, but all also like very importantly in cybernetics,
Speaker 1: it's almost always self regulation UM because like the one
Speaker 1: of the kind of core principles again like the because
Speaker 1: the term usually calls to mind this like kind of
Speaker 1: terminator like UM, like cyber gothic kind of domination. It's
Speaker 1: actually not with the field is about at all. It's
Speaker 1: UM because one of the core insights of cybernetics is
Speaker 1: actually that any given system UM, the only thing that
Speaker 1: can really control it is itself because of the sheer
Speaker 1: complexity of systems. So that like UM, like the kind
Speaker 1: of like top down external domination of an organism that
Speaker 1: we all fear is kind of like actually, if you
Speaker 1: look at the cyber cybanetics literature, that's not not actually
Speaker 1: really possible because the the the the external controller would
Speaker 1: never have enough complexity to match what the organism is
Speaker 1: capable of. UM. And you know, organisms are self regulating
Speaker 1: system The steersman with his boat is a self regulating
Speaker 1: system that like regulates its upright position in the water
Speaker 1: and regulates its course that's directed towards its goal. Um.
Speaker 1: So it's it's that's why it's so important. I think.
Speaker 1: Well that's the why we think it's so important for
Speaker 1: the left and like people who are concerned with these
Speaker 1: like you know, visions of a politics of autonomy and
Speaker 1: liberation that really need to look at this stuff, because
Speaker 1: it turns out there kind of is a science of
Speaker 1: like autonomous, self guiding organic systems you know, sEH no
Speaker 1: terminator here, Yes, and yeah, I mean you know when
Speaker 1: you see uh, scary videos of militarized robots and they're
Speaker 1: learning to you know, jump and fire weapons and all
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff, there certainly is cybernetics involved there,
Speaker 1: but that is a kind of domain application of cybernetics.
Speaker 1: Rather than defining what cybernetics is, it's really kind of
Speaker 1: holistic systems thinking in general is what cybernetics is. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that that's that's that's that's probably worth emphasizing, right that,
Speaker 1: Like um, um, cybernetics in some ways is kind of
Speaker 1: like out of fashion these days, like it it kind
Speaker 1: of evolved into systems thinking, and like, um, I guess
Speaker 1: a lot of its lessons got kind of absorbed in general,
Speaker 1: but we find there's great value in going back to them,
Speaker 1: the kind of originators and like focusing on that field.
Speaker 1: It's like we on the show. We got into the
Speaker 1: cybernetics angle by reading Andrew Pickering in his book The
Speaker 1: Cybernetic Brain, in which um, he kind of acknowledged that
Speaker 1: like there's he kind of split it into two, like
Speaker 1: there's American cybernetics like which had that kind of like
Speaker 1: um dour kind of military domination sort of flavor to
Speaker 1: us that like it's kind of an earned reputation there.
Speaker 1: But Pickering was more concerned with British cybernetics. Um. It's
Speaker 1: like a lot of British thinkers that and had a
Speaker 1: very different flavor there where it was more open ended.
Speaker 1: It was kind of had more of a focus on
Speaker 1: kind of liberation than like politics and stuff. And in fact,
Speaker 1: some of those like Gray Walter was like explicitly an anarchist,
Speaker 1: like wrote in Anarchist um like journals and stuff like that. Um,
Speaker 1: and for him, like those two things went hand in
Speaker 1: glove right like that like um liberatory politics as like
Speaker 1: um the politics of like human flourishing, like as human
Speaker 1: human beings, as autonomous units flourishing in their own contexts,
Speaker 1: and of like social systems that would enable that kind
Speaker 1: of flourishing. To him, that was just hand in glove
Speaker 1: with cyberan attics. There was no real distinction there. It
Speaker 1: was just like, yeah, these these two things fit each
Speaker 1: other perfectly, which you lose later with like general systems
Speaker 1: theory sort of stuff. You know, it's like, there's there's plenty.
Speaker 1: I don't know who am I thinking of here, like
Speaker 1: them that the Talipe, that guy with the like black
Speaker 1: Swan sort of stuff, Like he's big into systems and stuff,
Speaker 1: but like isn't so much um, isn't so much into
Speaker 1: the liberal Tory politics. I guess, you know, a lot
Speaker 1: of that angle is kind of lost. Yeah, And I
Speaker 1: think this is awesome. This is you know, this is
Speaker 1: sort of a product of, I guess, the broader ideological
Speaker 1: course that's going on while sucho Cybernie comes in and
Speaker 1: out of fashion. And I think I think we should
Speaker 1: go back a bit to the beginning to sort of
Speaker 1: situate this because I know, like when when I, like
Speaker 1: before I ever did any reading, let's ever next, Like
Speaker 1: my imediate assumption was that it was. It was you
Speaker 1: know this, this is the thing that was entirely just
Speaker 1: based off of computers, right that this is like this
Speaker 1: is and that's not really true from might understandtanding of it.
Speaker 1: Can we go back and sort of like talk about
Speaker 1: where this came from a bit and how it's sort
Speaker 1: of moves over this over certain sages. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think you can kind of trace it back in it's
Speaker 1: sort of European origins to UM. You could probably say Hagel, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, his his move towards like UM understanding being
Speaker 1: not just a substance but as subject, I think is
Speaker 1: a move towards a kind of cybernetic understanding, where you
Speaker 1: understand the whole system as a holistic entity as opposed
Speaker 1: to just an individual interacting with an external environment. UM.
Speaker 1: And you can also see this come up in say
Speaker 1: there was a ecologist x skill in the German ecologists
Speaker 1: in the early twentieth century, I believe, who was trying
Speaker 1: to understand, you know, the organism in its environment. The
Speaker 1: sort of precursors to ecology can be seen as precursors
Speaker 1: to cybernetics UM. And then when you get to the
Speaker 1: kind of development of cybernetics as a science or as
Speaker 1: a discipline UM in the mid twentieth century. It's not
Speaker 1: exactly about computing, it's UM. It's more about balancing a
Speaker 1: machine with its environment. So UM. Sort of prototypical UM
Speaker 1: machine of this kind was the servo mechanism, which was
Speaker 1: used to help guide a like an anti aircraft gun
Speaker 1: in shooting down enemy aircraft, so making sure it tracks
Speaker 1: properly with the target and doesn't lose the target and
Speaker 1: is assisting the operator in operating the gun instead of
Speaker 1: us being a inanimate object that has trouble tracking what
Speaker 1: it's a very fast moving target. I mean, you can
Speaker 1: even think back to like the you know in World
Speaker 1: War One when they discovered, hey, we could actually like
Speaker 1: synchronize the timing of the propeller and the timing of
Speaker 1: our gun on the front of this plane so that
Speaker 1: our guns aren't destroying our propellers and shooting and we're
Speaker 1: we're we're shooting our own planes down with our guns
Speaker 1: when we're dog fighting, right Like it's uh, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: the system's understanding, right, So that's UM. That's that's Norbert
Speaker 1: Lenard Rice and working on the automated gun turret stuff,
Speaker 1: and that's he coins the term cybernetics to like um
Speaker 1: given name to the thing he was starting to discover.
Speaker 1: And it's like he was kind of pulling together a
Speaker 1: bunch of threats there, and like one of those kind
Speaker 1: of important insights is that like um, like they couldn't
Speaker 1: get an improvement in like targeting and accuracy without like
Speaker 1: basically making the gun turret and agent of its own
Speaker 1: that like and the like the turret and the gunner
Speaker 1: would be cooperative agents that in combination would achieve their goal.
Speaker 1: But like there was there was there's something strange and
Speaker 1: spooky about that. And I think that then the sort
Speaker 1: of feedback mechanism inside the turret gives it a sort
Speaker 1: of weird agency that combines with the agency of the
Speaker 1: gunner to like going to the whole system towards the goal. Um. Yes.
Speaker 1: And what it ends up becoming then is a kind
Speaker 1: of boundary space where the distinction between human and machine
Speaker 1: uh starts to become ambiguous because they both start to
Speaker 1: possess they're both understood to have a kind of agency,
Speaker 1: they're both understood to have kinds of like functions, and
Speaker 1: then you kind of get this sort of like human
Speaker 1: machine interface idea. And you can start to bring in
Speaker 1: all of these different ideas from like anthropology, from physiology,
Speaker 1: from math, from ecology, uh, and they all start to
Speaker 1: interact in this domain of cybernetics. And like the core,
Speaker 1: the core idea of them that kind of ties everything
Speaker 1: together is that of feedback. UM. So like weener realizes
Speaker 1: that what he needs to do achieve this goal is
Speaker 1: is a feedback mechanism, and that would is error correcting feedback,
Speaker 1: right like if the if the gun is slightly too
Speaker 1: fair to the left, it corrects itself right words and
Speaker 1: so on. UM. But that, as you said, that that
Speaker 1: connects across all sorts of things, right, Like you start
Speaker 1: to realize that's present everywhere in ecology, in neurology, in UM,
Speaker 1: like that learning is based on feedback, you know. So
Speaker 1: it's really funny to read to read Norbert Leaner like
Speaker 1: in the fifties basically describing what would become machine learning,
Speaker 1: and he's just like he just off the cuff, is like, yeah,
Speaker 1: like if you could if a machine could like UM,
Speaker 1: or if if any system could just like UM analyze
Speaker 1: its own performance and then feedback onto itself, it would
Speaker 1: it would learn any old pattern you wanted it to
Speaker 1: and he's like yeah, he turns out he was completely correct.
Speaker 1: And that's that's where kind of like gets into it.
Speaker 1: Like you get later thinkers like Ross Ashby, who was
Speaker 1: um and like other folks like in or in and
Speaker 1: around psychiatry, we were like really interested in how the
Speaker 1: brain worked. And that's that's the other thing that feeds
Speaker 1: into like cybernetics is like, um, it's it's why Pickering
Speaker 1: called his book the Cybernetic Brains, because like the brain
Speaker 1: and like nervous systems show up so much in that field,
Speaker 1: right that like the brain being a kind of learning
Speaker 1: and adapt an adapt adaptation machine attached to the body
Speaker 1: or whatever, and like, um, yeah, do you know there's
Speaker 1: there's something fascinating there, and like, um, the I mean
Speaker 1: there's something kind of possibly troubling and kind of melting
Speaker 1: down the distinctions between living organisms and machines or whatever,
Speaker 1: but like there's also something very compelled and just link
Speaker 1: recognizing the same patterns happening at all these different levels,
Speaker 1: right that link, Um, like you get similar behaviors and
Speaker 1: similar kind of outcomes, and then you know it turns
Speaker 1: out like you can kind of do a science on
Speaker 1: these things and and come up with an even better
Speaker 1: explanation to my frameworks based on your observations across many fields. Yes,
Speaker 1: and so it is in a sense about computers. But
Speaker 1: the computers are really just understood to act like a
Speaker 1: kind of brain, and that's connected to a nervous system
Speaker 1: which is connected to you know, like actuators of some kinds,
Speaker 1: some kinds of like machines that actually do things in
Speaker 1: the world. So it's not about like say computer science specifically,
Speaker 1: it's more about, like, well, computers are a useful way
Speaker 1: to do cybernetic design because as they can act as
Speaker 1: a control system and they're flexible. It's not that this
Speaker 1: is about computers really. Yeah, absolutely, And like that you
Speaker 1: brought you brought up something very important there that like,
Speaker 1: um in all cases of like cybernetics, like the systems
Speaker 1: that we're considering are not like isolated like braining a
Speaker 1: box kind of things. They're all things that are directly
Speaker 1: engaged with a world, um Like. So it's it's not
Speaker 1: that kind of like monadic kind of rationalism of like
Speaker 1: computation just happening in a box somewhere and like per
Speaker 1: perfect intelligence or that kind of kind of stuff. These
Speaker 1: are always, like the separantations are always working with systems
Speaker 1: that were engaged in real time emergence situations um. And
Speaker 1: because of that, they rapidly kind of like acknowledge that
Speaker 1: for so many of these important like systems, the only
Speaker 1: way to figure out what it's going to do is
Speaker 1: to let it do it um because you can't like
Speaker 1: pre compute all the possible outcomes you know, of these
Speaker 1: like very sticky and complex real world situations, the best
Speaker 1: way to figure out what it's going to do is
Speaker 1: to let it do it and watch. Yes. And I
Speaker 1: think I think that's an interesting sort of like if
Speaker 1: if you look at where a lot of the sort
Speaker 1: of like techno fetishist like social attempts to sort of
Speaker 1: like manipulates side the technology have gone, It's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you get like like blockchain smart contracts, and it's like
Speaker 1: the blockchain smart contract is like, Okay, we are going
Speaker 1: to think of literally everything that could possibly happen and
Speaker 1: attempt to put it in like a very small amount
Speaker 1: of code. And if anything like literally anything at all
Speaker 1: happens that you know that we didn't expect, where now
Speaker 1: everyone is now screwed because we have just made this
Speaker 1: thing beautable and put it in such a way that
Speaker 1: we can't change it. So I think that, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a I think this is a useful sort of I
Speaker 1: mean corrective just just in the way that we've we've
Speaker 1: we've now like like we've gone backwards, like we've we've
Speaker 1: gotten into this place where you instead of we need
Speaker 1: to let these systems play out, we need to let
Speaker 1: them control themselves, We've gotten to like we think that
Speaker 1: we can actually just sort of like you know, turn
Speaker 1: turn the entire system into code that we can break
Speaker 1: ahead of time and have you know, the basis of
Speaker 1: some sort of social system off of Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it's I think it's something that like the serpetitions and
Speaker 1: like maybe Pickering would described as like a kind of
Speaker 1: perversity of modern caught like the modern mindset like that
Speaker 1: that kind of like rational like um kind of mindset
Speaker 1: right like um, And like to the sarpetitions that that
Speaker 1: whole thing with like the blockchain stuff will be just
Speaker 1: truly laughable because it's immediate, it's immediately obvious to them
Speaker 1: that the problem there's like okay, proposing we're going to
Speaker 1: use a blockchain to regulate some sort of social process
Speaker 1: or whatever, smart contracts, whatever, and it's like that thing
Speaker 1: has nowhere near the fidelity required to regulate social processes.
Speaker 1: Because social processes are unimaginably complex and have just incredible variety.
Speaker 1: There's a there's a there's like a law that's at
Speaker 1: the House of Cybernattics called Ashby's law of requisite variety,
Speaker 1: And in short, it basically states that given a system, um,
Speaker 1: the only thing that's really capable of regulating is regulating
Speaker 1: it is itself, because a regulator needs as much variety
Speaker 1: as the thing it's regulating if it's gonna like actually
Speaker 1: succeeded it um. And so that's that's the kind of
Speaker 1: thing that nudges everyone towards like like when you get
Speaker 1: to someone like Stafford Beer is his whole model of
Speaker 1: like organization pushes all a lot of the intelligence downwards
Speaker 1: to the to the bottom layers, because there is basically
Speaker 1: the people on the ground on the shop floor are
Speaker 1: the people who are best informed to actually deal with
Speaker 1: their own situation. And that's that sounds like a banal observation,
Speaker 1: but like it for Beer, that was actually quite a
Speaker 1: step forward to like just admit that like trying to
Speaker 1: trying to like in his context, was like often the
Speaker 1: organization of a firm, like at our company, Like trying
Speaker 1: to manage a company from the boardroom is just fucking dechrius, Like,
Speaker 1: no nobody there has enough information to act on. They're
Speaker 1: all dumbasses anyway. So for Beer, it was just a
Speaker 1: like this is where it starts get interesting and it
Speaker 1: connects to the politics, right that, Like for one of
Speaker 1: these scientists just observing reality and like you know, using
Speaker 1: you know, pretty pretty good stray intuitions and like scientific frameworks,
Speaker 1: just looking at it and going like, oh, it is
Speaker 1: obviously the case that the best way for society to
Speaker 1: organize is bottom up self organization. Um. And that that
Speaker 1: like it's not just a moral point, it's actually a
Speaker 1: technical point as well. Then like, um, these these top down,
Speaker 1: bureaucratic kind of micro tyrannies are not only morally objectionable,
Speaker 1: they're also technically inferior to the kind of like cyber
Speaker 1: communism we want to institute. Yeah, and I have like
Speaker 1: one off one of my what if one of my
Speaker 1: favorite stories about So I worked as a maintenance worker
Speaker 1: for a while and one day my boss was like,
Speaker 1: there was some problem with the sink, and my boss
Speaker 1: was like, no, we don't need the plumbers. I can
Speaker 1: do this. And so he goes in there and it's
Speaker 1: it's what it's like. It's it's like a sink in
Speaker 1: like a building, right, So it's it's just one of
Speaker 1: those things where there's like a pipe that connects to
Speaker 1: the top of the sink to like the wall. And
Speaker 1: he goes, Okay, here, look at this. I'm gonna I'm
Speaker 1: gonna turn this valve and this is going to turn
Speaker 1: the water off. And what he instead does is he
Speaker 1: take he takes the pipe off of the wall and
Speaker 1: just like a torrent of water is just now shooting
Speaker 1: out of this pipe because he has removed the thing.
Speaker 1: He's removed the pipe from the wall. This is you know,
Speaker 1: this is this is why I think like, yeah, go
Speaker 1: this this, this, this this, you know this this is
Speaker 1: like a particularly funny example of how these sort of
Speaker 1: top down management systems. And this guy like like used
Speaker 1: to be a maintenance guy, right, but he just like
Speaker 1: most a plumber and so you know, and he accepts
Speaker 1: into it and he's like oh no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: hold on, I know I know how this system works,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be fine. And it just there's a guys.
Speaker 1: The guys are of water has so much force. It's
Speaker 1: like it's like pushing our tool cart across the room.
Speaker 1: It's like a fighter hydrants. Now I wanted to I
Speaker 1: guess Beers is an interesting way to go to go
Speaker 1: into the sort of the politics of what this actually
Speaker 1: looks like. Do you want to talk about and I
Speaker 1: know I briefly talked about this in an episode in
Speaker 1: The Liberalism while back, But do you want to go
Speaker 1: into sort of more detail into what Beers was up
Speaker 1: to and the eventually failed attempt, because of military coup,
Speaker 1: to try to implement like a cybernetic system for organizing
Speaker 1: essentially an economy. Yeah sure, Um yeah, So Stafford Beer
Speaker 1: was a UM management consultant UM he and a cyberneticition.
Speaker 1: He got his start sort of doing operations research UM,
Speaker 1: which is kind of a precursor to cybernetics UM that
Speaker 1: is kind of like interested in logistics and organizing systems
Speaker 1: UM in the British military UM in World War Two.
Speaker 1: And then he came out of that and became a
Speaker 1: corporate UH consultant for Operations Research and Management UM and
Speaker 1: so in working in the corporate world. Um, he saw
Speaker 1: all of the things that were really screwed up with
Speaker 1: the status quo UM way of doing business and of
Speaker 1: organizing things. You know, the way that autocratic power of
Speaker 1: management creates all kinds of ridiculous problems, The way that
Speaker 1: managing organizations according to org charts, which are there to
Speaker 1: assign blame more than anything else, creates all kinds of perversities.
Speaker 1: The way that organizations fail to adapt to their environments
Speaker 1: because they get into these kinds of strange neuroses um.
Speaker 1: And you know, just sort of going through all of
Speaker 1: that and more often than not being unable to intervene
Speaker 1: in an effective way uh to um address these problems,
Speaker 1: and just sort of like seeing how these little instances
Speaker 1: of perverse corporate culture are indicative of the broader problems
Speaker 1: of our society as a whole and of capitalism, right. Um.
Speaker 1: And so you know, he had a basis from his
Speaker 1: time in India during the Second World War in uh
Speaker 1: kind of like contra uh kind of like you know,
Speaker 1: Eastern or specifically Indian um, spirituality, yoga, all this kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. So he kind of had a cult countercultural
Speaker 1: side to his personality. Um, and he was always doing
Speaker 1: tinkering strange experiments with cybernetics. He wasn't just the straight
Speaker 1: laced corporate guy, uh. But it was a combination of
Speaker 1: that sort of countercultural background with his growing frustration with
Speaker 1: corporate systems that led him to start to develop ideas
Speaker 1: about how things could be different. And this kind of
Speaker 1: meshed up with the thoughts that were happening in Chile
Speaker 1: during the Chilean Revolution in the early seventies. Um. So
Speaker 1: they reached out to him uh to come and help
Speaker 1: out with organizing their economy as they were undergoing this
Speaker 1: revolutionary process of trying to sort of throw off the
Speaker 1: shackles of imperialist dependency and create a society that was
Speaker 1: focused on the flourishing of workers, uh, and of society
Speaker 1: as a whole, as opposed to one that was based
Speaker 1: on sort of you know, resource extraction where everything flows
Speaker 1: to the top. Yeah. You want to explain some more
Speaker 1: about how that went well? So, um, yeah, it it
Speaker 1: went well and then it went badly, I guess. Um.
Speaker 1: But from from from the reading we've done and from
Speaker 1: our research, it seems like if basically, if the if
Speaker 1: the US hadn't sent in the fascist to kill them all.
Speaker 1: Um this this would have worked like it was working,
Speaker 1: and it was that the project was actually going pretty
Speaker 1: well explained pret what like I think it becomes it's
Speaker 1: called product cybers but what what exactly, like what was
Speaker 1: it doing? So? Um So, like Beer's big kind of
Speaker 1: innovation is what we call the viable system model or VSM,
Speaker 1: and it's a model that's, um it's a model for
Speaker 1: these like autonomous social systems that is kind of taking
Speaker 1: It's not I wouldn't say it's entirely based on like
Speaker 1: the structure of the human body, but it's like taking
Speaker 1: a lot of lessons from biology and neurology and neuroscience
Speaker 1: and and cybernetics and just kind of meshing them alltogether.
Speaker 1: Um So, basically, like it's like if your body is
Speaker 1: basically a bunch of autonomous organs that all take care
Speaker 1: of their own business, plus a nervous system that synchronizes
Speaker 1: them and unifies them into a workable hole, then you
Speaker 1: can kind of see the whole system as having this
Speaker 1: kind of mixture of vertical and horizontal aspects. Like on
Speaker 1: the one hand, it has this horizontal aspect where the
Speaker 1: autonomous like system one units are are well autonomous, more
Speaker 1: or less, like the heart takes harrish, takes care of
Speaker 1: its own thing, the lungs take care of their own thing.
Speaker 1: But then the nervous system meshes them together in layers
Speaker 1: so that it can say, oh, hold on too much oxygen,
Speaker 1: dial it down a bit, and then the organs responds
Speaker 1: dynamically to those those signals. Right, So it's kind of
Speaker 1: like up down feedback loops right where them the lower
Speaker 1: levels of the system are the smart bits that are
Speaker 1: doing all the important work, but there's this supporting infrastructure
Speaker 1: of the nervous system and the brain that unifies the
Speaker 1: whole thing and keeps it all on the rails um so,
Speaker 1: and importantly, it's a kind of recursive model. So like
Speaker 1: a human being is an autonomous unit, and then that
Speaker 1: it's that unit is composed of more autonomous units, like
Speaker 1: the organs and the muscles, and then each of those
Speaker 1: is composed of cells which are autonomous units, and then
Speaker 1: you know, so on. But like that latter goes upwards
Speaker 1: as well, so that like a team is an autonomous
Speaker 1: unit composed of human beings. A firm, or like a
Speaker 1: department is a autonomous unit composed of team. A firm
Speaker 1: is composed of departments like a sector as composed of firms,
Speaker 1: and it's the same kind of structure at each layer. Um.
Speaker 1: So that the kind of upside there is that like, um,
Speaker 1: you don't like you kind of have a unit fairly
Speaker 1: unifying like set of principles and like a science for
Speaker 1: doing this kind of like co coordination of autonomous units
Speaker 1: at every level, at every every layer of society. So
Speaker 1: like in principle, the sort of like the Serbanetic principles
Speaker 1: that get applied to cohering members of a team are
Speaker 1: the same story principles that get applied to like sectors
Speaker 1: in an economy. Um, with the same kind of you know,
Speaker 1: bottom up kind of feedback going on as well. Um.
Speaker 1: So Stafford was an invite to Chile to by the
Speaker 1: all end a government in so that that was like
Speaker 1: v right, Um that that that election happens. So he
Speaker 1: arrived in late vent I think, um, I mean certain
Speaker 1: on the timeline, but we're looking at those those first
Speaker 1: few years of the seventies as as the time when
Speaker 1: this is happening. Yeah, yeah, I d elected in setting
Speaker 1: n seventy. Yeah, so it's towards the end of that
Speaker 1: year that he's he's invited and he's basically kind of
Speaker 1: given the task of like, hey, do all this stuff
Speaker 1: but with this entire economy, and he's like, yeah, sure, cool.
Speaker 1: UM so puts together Project cybersen UM And there's kind
Speaker 1: of long story there of like and them building out
Speaker 1: this kind of infrastructure and like it's it's all highly
Speaker 1: experimental UM and highly tensive. Like they one of the
Speaker 1: big problems they run into is that like they don't
Speaker 1: have very much in the way of like hardware, especially
Speaker 1: because they're under embargo. So they had like, um a
Speaker 1: pretty what what at the time was a pretty crafty
Speaker 1: old mainframe that they ran the around the software on UM.
Speaker 1: But like step step one was like UM installing this
Speaker 1: like huge communications network amongst all the factories and UM
Speaker 1: like setting up like the workers committees and stuff and
Speaker 1: would feed information into us. And they would kind again
Speaker 1: this like feedback thing where you kind of take signals
Speaker 1: from the economy, integrate them, and then go, oh, you're
Speaker 1: producing too much steel, route some of your product over
Speaker 1: to this this factory and it will be better used there.
Speaker 1: And then you know, you guys over there turn up
Speaker 1: this dial. You turn them down this dial. So and
Speaker 1: then if that plan doesn't quite work out, then you've
Speaker 1: got another layer of feedback tomorrow to say, Okay, that
Speaker 1: plan didn't quite work here's an adjusted plan. So it's
Speaker 1: it's just like both bottom up and top down sort
Speaker 1: of loop of feedback. That's like I think that the
Speaker 1: phrase pickering is is reciprocal adaptation, where at the economy
Speaker 1: and its firms and its workers are all kind of
Speaker 1: adapting to each other in real time in a kind
Speaker 1: of in a in a full system. Um uh yeah, anything,
Speaker 1: no that I mean, that's that's essentially what Cyberson was.
Speaker 1: It was a system designed too largely, I think, at
Speaker 1: first supplement the market, although Beer later realizes that like, actually,
Speaker 1: if you have a good system of this kind, you
Speaker 1: probably don't need a market. Um. But essentially it was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: our economy has been one that has been built around
Speaker 1: dependence too, uh, you know, especially the United States, and
Speaker 1: it's been organized in that way, and we need to
Speaker 1: reorganize the economy both to promote the well being of
Speaker 1: the workers, the autonomy of the workers, realized the ideals
Speaker 1: of socialism in that way, and also to create a
Speaker 1: system that is less dependent on those existing structures of imperialism,
Speaker 1: and so having this reciprocal adaptation um, having systems in
Speaker 1: place to connect things that were previously disconnected would allow
Speaker 1: you to move in that way of increasing autonomy and
Speaker 1: increasing freedom Um. And that was generally the idea of
Speaker 1: cyber sin Um. Yes, yeah, And there was something very
Speaker 1: interesting like when we were reading the reissue of his
Speaker 1: book Brain of the Firm, where he has a section
Speaker 1: at the end that that documents this whole experience in Chile. Um.
Speaker 1: There's a really interesting parents where towards the end of
Speaker 1: it he's like, and this is like getting up towards
Speaker 1: the coupe where he's like, um, he and the other
Speaker 1: cybersin operatives like on the people are putting this together
Speaker 1: realize that like the workers and like people in towns
Speaker 1: are like just on their own, just like using this
Speaker 1: stuff and these kind of principles to just like abolish
Speaker 1: the value form basically like but notably without the involvement
Speaker 1: from above, like as in Beer and Company, stumble upon
Speaker 1: this just happening where they're like, oh my god, they're
Speaker 1: just they're just dismantling the market, and it's like it's
Speaker 1: all just kind of happening, and that's there was something
Speaker 1: really wonderful to that. Then like it it indicated like
Speaker 1: there was there really wants something to it that like
Speaker 1: you could like as in people working, people could use
Speaker 1: these tools and this like new way of organizing themselves.
Speaker 1: Two just like liquidate market relations and wage relations like
Speaker 1: spun spontaneously. But it's a spontaneity that's that's not really
Speaker 1: it does. It's it feels very different from the kind
Speaker 1: of spontaneity you often get in like the way leftist
Speaker 1: sort of like anarchists talk about it often, like the
Speaker 1: kind of spontaneity is like a magical sort of thing
Speaker 1: that is like where freedom just arrives from out of nowhere.
Speaker 1: But this this was like installing infrastructure to enable freedom
Speaker 1: and then it actually kind of happening until the fascists
Speaker 1: showed up. You know. Yeah, what I think is really
Speaker 1: interesting about it is that so you know, you have
Speaker 1: you have like you have this sort of central control
Speaker 1: center from which a lot of stuff is being run.
Speaker 1: But you know, yeah, it's it's it's it's it's a
Speaker 1: weird system because it's trying to link together like a
Speaker 1: lot of different kinds of firms like you have something
Speaker 1: saying in private firms, but you have a lot of
Speaker 1: you have a lot of state run firms. You also
Speaker 1: have firms that throughout this whole process, people like workers
Speaker 1: just taking over factories. They're setting up these sort of
Speaker 1: like callum industrial cordons. I think I'm remembering my Spanish
Speaker 1: rights like yeah, they they you know, they start setting
Speaker 1: up their own institutions, and it's it's this becomes this
Speaker 1: way of sort of like networking these groups together. And
Speaker 1: the thing that's the other thing thing is it's interesting
Speaker 1: is you know, so you have you have them on
Speaker 1: the one hand, like just getting rid of markets and
Speaker 1: going like okay, well we can just coordinate production through
Speaker 1: this and like not have markets. And then the second
Speaker 1: thing they do is it's the freedom immediately becomes political
Speaker 1: in the sense that like yeah, like one of one
Speaker 1: of the things they do they there that that's what's
Speaker 1: going on in this period is that and there's Chile
Speaker 1: has a very very right wing like it's basically like
Speaker 1: the even today it's like it's like really like one
Speaker 1: of the only like union like huge unions left in
Speaker 1: Chile is the truckers unions and those guys are extremely
Speaker 1: right wing there in this period of being backed by
Speaker 1: the CIA. They're being trained by f l c i
Speaker 1: O as I say, like every episode, but like yeah,
Speaker 1: and and they're you know, they're intentionally doing strikes, trying
Speaker 1: to oversaw the government by blocking production, and you know,
Speaker 1: like the workers are like, Okay, hold on, we can
Speaker 1: just use this symenetic system to figure out where these
Speaker 1: blocks are, figured out where materials needs to move through,
Speaker 1: and we can just you know, we can just stop
Speaker 1: the kind of revolution. We can just sort of like
Speaker 1: we can we can just we can just fight our
Speaker 1: way through it. And and it's interesting, is like this
Speaker 1: happens and so then that that like the the original
Speaker 1: plan of using sort of of using these truckers is
Speaker 1: like the sort of right wing like the first attempt fails,
Speaker 1: and once that fails, it's like they have to go
Speaker 1: to the military, and the coup eventually works. It's hard
Speaker 1: to resist who outright, isn't it. M Yeah, Yeah. The
Speaker 1: thing with the truckers strike is not like yeah, it's
Speaker 1: you can very well imagine like the CIA and stuff
Speaker 1: going into a thinking that this is what we'll do.
Speaker 1: That's right, this will sell it up but not realizing
Speaker 1: that the workers actually had in their hands a like
Speaker 1: vastly more sophisticated system for out maneuvering them. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that system works like a charm, like like clockwork, just
Speaker 1: like and even like you really accounts from this thing,
Speaker 1: like both in eating Medina's cybernetic revelation areas and in
Speaker 1: Beer's on account And there's like the sense that was
Speaker 1: actually kind of spooky and weird. But I'm like even
Speaker 1: the people involved didn't quite expect it to work out
Speaker 1: that way, and that like they were surprised at how
Speaker 1: effective it is, but that it gets back to the
Speaker 1: core of cyberneticscent like feedback is weirdly effective at getting
Speaker 1: things done. You know, these like highly tuned feedback systems,
Speaker 1: they give you a lot of power to out maneuver
Speaker 1: this comebacks, you know. Yeah, And I think in some sense,
Speaker 1: like this is like people talk a lot about Chile
Speaker 1: is sort of like the sort of foreclosed future of
Speaker 1: like an elect told democratic socialism. But I don't think
Speaker 1: that was the potential of the moment. The potential of
Speaker 1: the moment was this. And it's interesting to me that
Speaker 1: well because Beers kind of traces out a political history
Speaker 1: that never quite happened, which is so okay. One of
Speaker 1: the one of the sort of big political trends over
Speaker 1: the course of the twenties century is you have all
Speaker 1: these people who were sort of like they they basically
Speaker 1: got turned into planning bureaucrats during in June World War two,
Speaker 1: because every government basically turns into a giant planning engine.
Speaker 1: And then you know, some of them go into some
Speaker 1: of them, you know, essentially stay on in the government
Speaker 1: doing planning stuff. Beers like goes into corporate world, and
Speaker 1: the corporations are also you know, they start doing they
Speaker 1: also start doing this planning stuff, and you know, but
Speaker 1: Beers is interesting because he he pivots like he pivots
Speaker 1: in a direction that the world doesn't, which is he
Speaker 1: pivots towards Okay. The solution to sort of you know,
Speaker 1: the kind of like decay of these like authoritarian planning systems,
Speaker 1: whether whether they be like the corporate versions of it
Speaker 1: or the sort of like state administered like total economic
Speaker 1: planning from the top down versions, is oh well, okay,
Speaker 1: we need to have planning from the bottom up and
Speaker 1: distributed planning. Yeah. Yeah, And he like everyone involved with
Speaker 1: iverson gets murdered. The only reason Beer survives because he
Speaker 1: wasn't in the country and it's it's just really interesting,
Speaker 1: like like it's just kind of not a story. Everybody
Speaker 1: got murdered, but some of them did and some of
Speaker 1: them were in exile. Uh, some of them were imprisoned. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was, it was, it was, you know, it was
Speaker 1: not a good time. Beer got out early and he
Speaker 1: knew things that we're getting we're getting bad, and everybody
Speaker 1: around him knew things were getting bad. Um. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: he was on him. He was on like a kind
Speaker 1: of I guess, like it's almost diplomatic mission to like
Speaker 1: try and get some of the blockade stuff. Like he
Speaker 1: was trying to think he was trying to flog like
Speaker 1: a container ship full of iron or something, you know,
Speaker 1: shopping shopping it around to try and trying to help
Speaker 1: out the likely in mine to the world that's what
Speaker 1: it wants. Yeah, but um yeah, it's um hold on,
Speaker 1: I had a thought there. Um. And then like after afterwards, um,
Speaker 1: like Beer spent a fair bit as time like trying
Speaker 1: to get his his comrades out of out of Chile
Speaker 1: and get them out of prison and got got them
Speaker 1: resettled in UM, in the UK and so on, and
Speaker 1: yeah America as well. UM, but yeah, I think that um,
Speaker 1: this is like, that's a very interesting point about the
Speaker 1: the you know, the sort of the real value of
Speaker 1: this moment being that movement towards autonomy, that that reorganization
Speaker 1: of society, not towards uh neoliberal engineering of markets and
Speaker 1: uh sort of reinforcement of private tater ships, um, but
Speaker 1: towards a kind of like holistic control system that is
Speaker 1: still informed by you know, the principles of autonomy and
Speaker 1: UH and and and science. Um. It's it's definitely like
Speaker 1: an answer to the crisis of the seventies which was
Speaker 1: not taken up. And in that sense it is a
Speaker 1: foreclosed future, but of course one that we can take
Speaker 1: lessons from now. Yeah. I think there's something else that's
Speaker 1: very interesting me about this, because you know, if if
Speaker 1: you look at how like if if you look at
Speaker 1: how the socialist block sort of responds to to the
Speaker 1: crisis and seventies, and you know, they're sort of decaying
Speaker 1: the eighties, like they have this option available to them, right,
Speaker 1: they have they have they have made a lot of ways,
Speaker 1: they have a lot they have a lot better technology
Speaker 1: than with the lands are using that have more resources,
Speaker 1: and every single one of them goes no and instead
Speaker 1: just sort of like transitions, you know, instead of I
Speaker 1: think it has to do with there. There there's a
Speaker 1: line this this is This is like slightly before this,
Speaker 1: there's a line in um a debate Maw and Joe
Speaker 1: and Li are having in and I think it's seven.
Speaker 1: This is like the peak of the sort of workers
Speaker 1: led part of the culture revolution, like the works have
Speaker 1: taken Shanghai, and Maw and Joe and I are talking
Speaker 1: and they're they're trying to figure out, like what are
Speaker 1: they gonna do? You know, they they set off this force,
Speaker 1: it's now become uncontrollable. And there's there's this line where
Speaker 1: they're talking about, Okay, well if if we give if
Speaker 1: they give them, if you give them a commune, they
Speaker 1: have to have free elections, and Joe and La is like,
Speaker 1: well that would be anarchism, and then they're just like,
Speaker 1: oh god, we can't do that, and they never do
Speaker 1: in the end, you know, the end result of this
Speaker 1: whole sort of that whole sort of processes that trying
Speaker 1: to like instead of doing, instead of sort of like
Speaker 1: devolving any level of control down to like any of
Speaker 1: the workers who are doing things, they're like, Okay, well
Speaker 1: we'll just just we'll just you know, we'll we'll we'll
Speaker 1: do capitalism instead. Well, well you will, you know, we'll
Speaker 1: create markets, will sort of like maintain our firm structure.
Speaker 1: But you know, the countries into it. Yeah, yeah, And
Speaker 1: it's it's this, it's it's a very interesting thing to
Speaker 1: me too, because like there have been other like you know,
Speaker 1: like they're like lots of socialist parties have sort of
Speaker 1: various like degrees of radicalness have come to power like
Speaker 1: since nineteen seventy three, and to my knowledge, not a
Speaker 1: single one of them has ever picked any of this
Speaker 1: stuff back up, like even even you know, like like
Speaker 1: the most radical sort of like like you know, like
Speaker 1: like like early Chavas never like touches this like even
Speaker 1: like I don't like I don't I don't think like
Speaker 1: I don't think the easy Lends ever done it, Like
Speaker 1: I mean, they have fetological issue is there, but like
Speaker 1: it's it's it's it's interesting to me that like basically
Speaker 1: no one who's ever taken power since has ever attempted
Speaker 1: it again. M h. Which get is changed because this
Speaker 1: is you know, one of one of the sort of
Speaker 1: like this, you would think this is like this is
Speaker 1: at least a potential solution to sort of this this
Speaker 1: this this problem of the stagnation and sort of collapse
Speaker 1: of the old sort of bultis there's a plenty of economies,
Speaker 1: but no one takes it up. But I'm interested to
Speaker 1: think what you too think about that, like why this
Speaker 1: doesn't happen. Yeah, there's a I think there's an interesting
Speaker 1: dimension of Beer's work in Chile that kind of I
Speaker 1: think um might provide some answers to that, which is
Speaker 1: that you know, he he was in charge of setting
Speaker 1: up Cyberson and Cyberson was kind of a system are
Speaker 1: optimizing the economy, but he had other concerns and other
Speaker 1: briefs that he was working on at the same time.
Speaker 1: And what he came to realize was that there was
Speaker 1: a layer of management and experts in the organization of
Speaker 1: the economy that were happy enough to sort of work
Speaker 1: on a cyber sin that was designed to improve production numbers,
Speaker 1: but they had real resistance to the idea of worker
Speaker 1: autonomy because of the because of wanting to maintain their
Speaker 1: their job privileges, and because of the prejudices of their
Speaker 1: their habitats. I guess you could say that what they
Speaker 1: learned when they were educated as engineers or managers or whatever.
Speaker 1: And you know, where the people who know things, the
Speaker 1: workers don't know things, they shouldn't be in charge that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. And so he starts to he starts
Speaker 1: to realize that in order to really make cybersen effective
Speaker 1: as an engine for autonomy, what needs to happen is
Speaker 1: that um, sort of what you are describing with the
Speaker 1: Shanghai commune, Uh, the the workers need to learn the
Speaker 1: cybernetic principles themselves and implement them through autonomous action. UM.
Speaker 1: And so he starts to try to kind of like
Speaker 1: right up, like right pamphlets that can be distributed to
Speaker 1: the workers so that the information that he has as
Speaker 1: theory is not being filtered through a bureaucracy, but is instead,
Speaker 1: like you know, involved in an educational process of self
Speaker 1: mode of mobilization among the workers. UM. And so you
Speaker 1: know this really UH doesn't mean that expert knowledge is irrelevant,
Speaker 1: but it does mean that it does imply threatening the
Speaker 1: social privileges of management and expert knowledge, because in Beer's
Speaker 1: conception of management, management is something that is done by
Speaker 1: anyone who has the power to affect an organization or
Speaker 1: change in organization. So if the workers are able to
Speaker 1: change their organizations, they are also managers. That's not something
Speaker 1: exclusive to experts t Beer management as a function. It's
Speaker 1: not a person. In Beer's ideal worlds, like management would
Speaker 1: just be these like decision nodes that emerge among among workers.
Speaker 1: I can like the management manager would never be a person.
Speaker 1: A manager would be like a kind of structural information
Speaker 1: processing like, um, thing that happens among people. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so like when you see in for example, the
Speaker 1: uss are the option of creating a planning network, a
Speaker 1: computerized telecommunications planning network throughout the whole union. Um, it's
Speaker 1: basically shot down for two reasons. One, it would be
Speaker 1: very very expensive for them to develop. It would be
Speaker 1: on the order of of doing, you know, their nuclear
Speaker 1: weapons development, perhaps more expensive than that. Uh. And Two
Speaker 1: it is simply at odds with the system of like
Speaker 1: playing the command economy that had that had grown up
Speaker 1: in the wake of the revolution. Right, It's simply at
Speaker 1: odds with the power of all of the factory managers,
Speaker 1: the planners, all that kind of stuff. It just kind
Speaker 1: of makes. It threatens their identity and it threatens their
Speaker 1: position of power. And so I think that when you
Speaker 1: look at the socialist countries and why they didn't adopt
Speaker 1: this system, I think it's because they it would require
Speaker 1: the people in power to really rethink their entire role
Speaker 1: and identity as members of society. Um. Yeah, And then
Speaker 1: it's kind of there's dreadful irony really and that like
Speaker 1: it's it's stafford me or somebody who comes out of
Speaker 1: like bourgeois like management stuff and is deep in the
Speaker 1: pocket for that he's the one who actually sincerely pursues
Speaker 1: the most radical projects in like socialist history that we've
Speaker 1: ever seen, vastly more radical in its intent, and it's
Speaker 1: like kind of it's the beginnings of its impact than
Speaker 1: anything any Leninist has ever done. And it's basically because
Speaker 1: he actually did want real freedom and autonomy for working people,
Speaker 1: and your average lendiness just doesn't, you know, Like again,
Speaker 1: like to go back to the example from earlier, right
Speaker 1: that like when when under pressure, they will they'll do
Speaker 1: capitalism before they'll do anything that even resembles um autonomy
Speaker 1: for workers. They'll take that path rather than doing the
Speaker 1: right thing, you know, that does speak to the character
Speaker 1: of the thing, and it's it's it's it's it's it's
Speaker 1: that class interest basically off those kind of functionaries, right like.
Speaker 1: And the thing that makes Beery different is that he
Speaker 1: sincerely actually wanted to do it, you know. And the
Speaker 1: worker's autonomy thing wasn't just a smoke screen for him,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah. And when when he starts to come
Speaker 1: up with these ideas of like thinking like, okay, like
Speaker 1: an economic planning system is not adequate, we need to
Speaker 1: go beyond that to thinking of out the constitution of
Speaker 1: the social body, he he quickly finds that he's being
Speaker 1: marginalized within those circles of planners in the Chilean government
Speaker 1: because this is not something that they are enthusiastic about.
Speaker 1: They're actually quite concerned about this idea. Even if I
Speaker 1: end a would be you know, all for it, right
Speaker 1: because he was he was very sincere about his interest
Speaker 1: in an autonomy. UM, there were still many people around
Speaker 1: Beer who did not particularly like the idea. UM. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: And I think if we look at it, you know,
Speaker 1: in terms of why hasn't it happened since then in
Speaker 1: in all of these intervening decades, I think you also
Speaker 1: have to look at, um, the international system and the
Speaker 1: way that countries figure into it, because we have all
Speaker 1: of these um, neoliberal structures of management and organization that
Speaker 1: were created in the eighties and nineties and early odds
Speaker 1: UH that a socialist government has to contend with if
Speaker 1: they are to embark on a program like this, which
Speaker 1: isn't to say it's impossible, but what it does mean
Speaker 1: is that there are all these sort of um, highly
Speaker 1: complex regulatory and organizational structures that have roots deep in
Speaker 1: our societies right now, and it is the path of
Speaker 1: least resistance to not attempt to engage in a in
Speaker 1: in uh an effort to kind of, you know, let
Speaker 1: the market atrophy as you develop an alternative structure for
Speaker 1: social organization UM, because all of these structures are there
Speaker 1: and you have to kind of like route them out
Speaker 1: and replace them with something new, as opposed to having
Speaker 1: all these ready mades of what's already there, the market
Speaker 1: centered solutions, the the the kind of autocratic solutions, UM.
Speaker 1: You know, all of the management systems that have been
Speaker 1: developed with an autocracy in mind instead of something that
Speaker 1: is truly democratic and uh kind of self just dating
Speaker 1: mm hmm. And I think as well. And there's there's
Speaker 1: a kind of other thing that like, um, like the
Speaker 1: left has been kind of in a very weak position
Speaker 1: for quite a while now, like since then, since the seventies, right,
Speaker 1: and like, um, yes, like we we're just we're just
Speaker 1: starting to come around to maybe being on possibly an upswing.
Speaker 1: But also like I think there was this kind of
Speaker 1: long depressive phase at the end of them, at the
Speaker 1: crossing the centuries, right, where a lot of like leftist
Speaker 1: kind of and this this this actually gets into like
Speaker 1: why some of the reasons why we started a general
Speaker 1: intolact unit that like we felt like we needed to
Speaker 1: bring this kind of like systems thinking and like technical
Speaker 1: seriousness back to the table after the kind of weird
Speaker 1: depressive phases where like you know, like say the alter
Speaker 1: globalization stuff for the occupy stuff, where people kind of
Speaker 1: take an almost explicitly anti strategic kind of turn and
Speaker 1: like a kind of anti technical turn. You know, there's
Speaker 1: that kind of depressive hangover of like oh my god,
Speaker 1: like capital and it's it's it's technology, is is hegemonic?
Speaker 1: Like how the fund are we ever going to get
Speaker 1: out of this? Like it would have been heard to
Speaker 1: make an argument for a scientific and like technical kind
Speaker 1: of fusion with with the humanist kind of impulses of socialism.
Speaker 1: But that's I think we're getting to a point where
Speaker 1: we can start actually having that conversation again, Like we're
Speaker 1: we're seeing a bit more of a turn towards that,
Speaker 1: and it kind of turn towards like this kind of
Speaker 1: serious kind of like more and more serious kind of
Speaker 1: discussion of like hey, like okay, like okay, like we
Speaker 1: we we we fucking hate the current order of things.
Speaker 1: We want to we want to see it gotten rid
Speaker 1: of what would we actually replace it with, like functionally,
Speaker 1: how would things actually work? Like I think those kind
Speaker 1: of conversations are coming back on the table in a
Speaker 1: way that those were just impossible in the nineties, like
Speaker 1: after the Berlin Wall came down or whatever. They were
Speaker 1: impossible a couple of years ago. You know, Yeah, the
Speaker 1: the market as the fundament of society basically seemed to
Speaker 1: be invincible at that time. Um, and there was a
Speaker 1: lot of just sort of wrongheaded assumptions about what was
Speaker 1: and wasn't true about it and about society as a whole.
Speaker 1: And you know, we've had a lot of chaos in
Speaker 1: the years since then. That was um that affected not
Speaker 1: just the countries that we were you know, being restructured
Speaker 1: by the I m F, but actually came in affected
Speaker 1: the core of the world economy as well. Uh. And
Speaker 1: I think that that that's sort of like, you know,
Speaker 1: in the same way that World War One kind of
Speaker 1: disproved the idea of the white man's invincibility and superiority,
Speaker 1: like having those like market chaos dynamics come home to
Speaker 1: roost in the core of the world system has has
Speaker 1: undermined that invincibility. That that that idea that oh, the
Speaker 1: market is just naturally the best and there's nothing that
Speaker 1: could possibly be better. At the same time that we
Speaker 1: have all of this technological development that's happening, um, you
Speaker 1: know in our economy that could be used for something
Speaker 1: different as opposed to you know, I don't know, making
Speaker 1: n F T s or something. Yeah, absolutely right, that
Speaker 1: that's all super important. I think that that kind of refines,
Speaker 1: like it might might be his thought is refining in
Speaker 1: my head now like that like right now, Um, that
Speaker 1: that kind of market chaos and especially even like the
Speaker 1: chaos of like the system's response to COVID and stuff,
Speaker 1: really puts um like in general and for the left
Speaker 1: in particular. It puts like the question of governance back
Speaker 1: on the table in a way that it had kind
Speaker 1: of been off the table for a while. Like I
Speaker 1: think there was there was a period on the left
Speaker 1: where like left activity was kind of like railing against governance.
Speaker 1: Like it was like we we want freedom from governance
Speaker 1: and that sort of thing. Right, And I'm not going
Speaker 1: to say those are necessarily bad impulses, right, but I
Speaker 1: think they're also kind of a bit wrong headed as well. Right,
Speaker 1: But like the kind of reality is that, like, for
Speaker 1: for human life to flourish, and for our lives to flourish,
Speaker 1: we need governance. And like because like governance actually like
Speaker 1: as a word has the same route as cybernetics does.
Speaker 1: So kaibernetes, the Greek word becomes kubernettes, becomes cybernetics. Right,
Speaker 1: but that's also the root of governor, so kuberner, kubernator,
Speaker 1: those are the roots of governance. So government and some
Speaker 1: cybernetics are one and the same kind of concept. Um
Speaker 1: And this question of like if we intend to create
Speaker 1: a world of self governance, um that is effective, it's viable.
Speaker 1: In Beer's terminology, like viable self governance, that what we're
Speaker 1: proposing is opposed to the chaotic vortex of nonsense that
Speaker 1: we have to put up with right now. And that's
Speaker 1: back on the table in a big way. That like,
Speaker 1: because I think especially with with COVID, people look at
Speaker 1: like just the sheer idiocy and ineptitude and chaos of
Speaker 1: our governments and realizing like, oh, those are decrepit completely
Speaker 1: screwed up systems and in parat because their goal is
Speaker 1: the maintenance of capital accumulation. So this gets us back
Speaker 1: to the goal directed behavior of cybernetics, right, Like the
Speaker 1: steersman steers the boat towards a goal, right, and it's
Speaker 1: it's always about or like a you know, a cybernetic
Speaker 1: device like a thermostat has a goal temperature that is
Speaker 1: trying to regulate the temperature of the water towards um
Speaker 1: You know, we have these vernance systems that are completely awful.
Speaker 1: They're just like not suitable for like the regulation of
Speaker 1: human life, for flourishing. They're only suitable for the regulation
Speaker 1: of this insane system that just keeps capital accumulation going,
Speaker 1: like that's the control variable that it regulates. And we're
Speaker 1: now in a position. We're on the left, Like more
Speaker 1: and more of us are saying, like what we're proposing
Speaker 1: is not like a sort of magical escape from governance.
Speaker 1: We're proposing, really, you know, we should have sane governance.
Speaker 1: And it turns out that same governance is bottom up
Speaker 1: self organized governance. Um. And that's that's both the moral
Speaker 1: position and a technical position, and I think they're both
Speaker 1: of those. The moral and technical valences feed off each other.
Speaker 1: Like we're we're we're able to be the serious people
Speaker 1: in the room. This this is a very big change
Speaker 1: of pace, right for us, because like for a while
Speaker 1: we were railing against like the very serious people of
Speaker 1: like the Centrists and like the fucking Blair rights and
Speaker 1: the Clintonite sort of people. We're the serious people now
Speaker 1: saying why what this what this system actually does is
Speaker 1: absurd and ludicrous, and it needs to be dismantled and
Speaker 1: rebuilt with a totally different like feedback circuits, a different
Speaker 1: kind of goal orientation, um. And it needs to be
Speaker 1: oriented towards human flourishing. And that's it turns out there's
Speaker 1: a science of doing that, and it's called cybernetics, you know. Well,
Speaker 1: and we also have a runaway ecological crisis where we
Speaker 1: learn about we see that you know, like the capitalist
Speaker 1: market system is absolutely leading us all to death and
Speaker 1: the earth to death, and so it is human flourishing,
Speaker 1: but we also are concerned with the flourishing of life
Speaker 1: in general. Right, Um, So I think that that that
Speaker 1: is something that wasn't as much on the horizon in
Speaker 1: the seventies. You know, I certainly think you know, people
Speaker 1: worth thinking about it. But breaking down this barrier between
Speaker 1: economics uh and uh and ecology, I think is a
Speaker 1: very cybernetic impulse. And I think one then, you know,
Speaker 1: we need to keep working at because like you know,
Speaker 1: whenever we think about these things as separate domains, were
Speaker 1: already uh, we're already engendering more destruction of the environment. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think cybernetics will also help us in that kind
Speaker 1: of link um on a kind of for left projects,
Speaker 1: like on an aggressive footing of like if we recognize
Speaker 1: that like the capital and its kind of government system
Speaker 1: is it is cybernetic, Like it has its own feedback
Speaker 1: circuits and like saying that the explosive feedback circuit that
Speaker 1: we're on with with ecology, right, Like, how do you
Speaker 1: intervene in a system to halt and disrupt those circuits
Speaker 1: so as to so as to disintegrate the system. Is
Speaker 1: um is something like you can you can learn a
Speaker 1: lot from cyber NICs to to lessons and how to
Speaker 1: intervene there. The last thing I want to talk about
Speaker 1: is just what is the society that is non capitalist
Speaker 1: and based off of sort of cybernetic governance principles. What
Speaker 1: does that look like for just a person? Because I
Speaker 1: think you know this, this is in one of the
Speaker 1: big sort of like political challenges of the last you know,
Speaker 1: fifty years. It's just the complete foreclosure of the ability
Speaker 1: to even just sort of imagine assistant that's not this mhmm, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it. It means UM In the first instance,
Speaker 1: it means a different orientation to your workplace and your community, right,
Speaker 1: because when you grow up in a society where UM
Speaker 1: power is exercise as autocratically, it has an infantilizing effect
Speaker 1: on on you as an individual UM and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe your relationship to work is your workplace is one
Speaker 1: of sort of emotional detachment or of tantrum throwing, right,
Speaker 1: because these are these are reactions, These are natural reactions
Speaker 1: to being in an abusive environment. Um. But if you
Speaker 1: are in a system where the work of management is
Speaker 1: not only open to you but expected of you, you
Speaker 1: have a different orientation to that workplace, to the community
Speaker 1: you're in because it's your responsibility. If you don't do it,
Speaker 1: you know, you're going to lose your autonomy and also
Speaker 1: you're going to have real problem ms that you have
Speaker 1: to grapple with as an individual. So there is a
Speaker 1: responsibility that comes there. But also like that means an
Speaker 1: opening up of horizons in terms of well, things don't
Speaker 1: always have to be the same. Things don't always have
Speaker 1: to be handed down to you for management on high.
Speaker 1: They can actually change. Like you can see the possibilities
Speaker 1: in front of you, you can plan for the future
Speaker 1: in your context, and you can have that meaningful freedom
Speaker 1: in your life and be you know, a a full
Speaker 1: human being in that sense, right, um. And so I
Speaker 1: think that that's a very core every day change that
Speaker 1: you could see, um, in terms of you know, sort
Speaker 1: of your horizons of where you might work or what
Speaker 1: you might do. You know, you could expect that there
Speaker 1: would be more possibilities for each person and to be
Speaker 1: like quote unquote entrepreneurial right to to have initiative in
Speaker 1: their life and be able to envision and create things
Speaker 1: around them that uh, you know, they can't do right
Speaker 1: now because they either are stuck in a job that
Speaker 1: doesn't give them that freedom, or they are actually not
Speaker 1: even able to have a job right now where they
Speaker 1: can have a reasonable expectation of survival because their workplace
Speaker 1: is oriented around just making sure the work gets done
Speaker 1: and you know, the consequences be damned. Um So I
Speaker 1: think that you know, that is another area that's important.
Speaker 1: Um And that sort of freedom of management um extends
Speaker 1: all the way up to uh, you know, working in
Speaker 1: different minds of capacities or jobs. Like some people in
Speaker 1: kind of a middle middle ranking area in a corporation
Speaker 1: these days might get shuffled around from department to department
Speaker 1: to try to kind of get a well rounded understanding
Speaker 1: of what the corporation is, uh and how it functions.
Speaker 1: But you know, we can kind of expect that these
Speaker 1: roles would be more open to everybody because again, you know,
Speaker 1: a system in the v s M is not a person.
Speaker 1: A system is a function and that function should be
Speaker 1: fulfilled in a way that is as flexible as possible. Um. So,
Speaker 1: there's a lot less kind of well, I'm stuck in
Speaker 1: accounting and that's my life now, and that's all there
Speaker 1: that will ever be. Of course, there are limits to education,
Speaker 1: their limits to specialization, all of that kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: Like you know, it takes time to learn these things,
Speaker 1: but you could expect some more flexibility be there without
Speaker 1: having that terror of oh yeah, you know, in the
Speaker 1: neroliberal era, everybody's expected to have like fifteen jobs in
Speaker 1: the course of their quote unquote career. But also each
Speaker 1: of those jobs is going to be interspersed with a
Speaker 1: period of absolute terror as they live with unemployed in
Speaker 1: a society without a safety net. Right, Um, I think
Speaker 1: that that's that's you know, those are real consequences for
Speaker 1: everybody's life. I think, yeah, yeah, absolutely, And I think like,
Speaker 1: at a very very high level, the way Beer puts
Speaker 1: that is that we are trapped in this kind of
Speaker 1: crazy system that like its control variable as profits, like
Speaker 1: that's the little variable that it's it's like doing feedback
Speaker 1: onto to maintain um. Whereas what we're proposing is like
Speaker 1: that the sort of cybernetic future will be a society
Speaker 1: that's optimizing flourishing. Like what what Beer be the word
Speaker 1: he uses you demony, which is borrowing from Aristotle just
Speaker 1: did like flourishing. Um And yeah, a lot a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff flows out from that. Like to imagine a
Speaker 1: world where, because we we all feel it right that
Speaker 1: like everything around us is kind of like micro tuned
Speaker 1: as like a little feedback loop to keep money and
Speaker 1: profit flowing and to keep capital accumulating. Les imagine a
Speaker 1: world where that's just not true anymore, and the the
Speaker 1: sort of social infrastructure that you grow up in is
Speaker 1: an infrastructure that instead optimizes for the flourishing of life. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: And I think you know, when we we we look
Speaker 1: at sort of the broader patterns of society today, we
Speaker 1: see all of these hair brained schemes that you know,
Speaker 1: very rich men are embarking on, and they're they're setting
Speaker 1: the agenda for society. You know, we're that you know,
Speaker 1: Mark Zuckerberg is telling us that the metaverseus the future
Speaker 1: and you just have to get on board with this,
Speaker 1: even though anyone can see that this idea is patently ridiculous. Um.
Speaker 1: And in a society where that kind of management, that
Speaker 1: kind of money power doesn't exist anymore, Like you don't
Speaker 1: have to live under that kind of future horizon anymore,
Speaker 1: where it's like eight men with absurd amounts of money
Speaker 1: cook up, you know, ridiculous schemes and everybody has to
Speaker 1: follow them, just like they were following the orders of
Speaker 1: Pharaoh back in the day. I think do not be
Speaker 1: ruled by pharaohs is as kind of places. And he too,
Speaker 1: leave off unless you tell if anything else do you
Speaker 1: want to get to? Okay, there's there's one little line
Speaker 1: from Beer's book at what it's actually a set of
Speaker 1: presentations called Designing Freedom, that I absolutely love. It cracks
Speaker 1: me up every time I read it, so I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna beat that for the listeners. It gives you a
Speaker 1: sense of his absolute like ridiculous radicalism, like these off
Speaker 1: the fucking chats with this stuff. Um. At some point,
Speaker 1: he says, I'm quoting here, every time we hear that
Speaker 1: a proposal will destroy society has been we should have
Speaker 1: the courage to say, thank God at last, Yeah, a
Speaker 1: real maniac. Yeah. And and and you have this this
Speaker 1: dictum of if it works, it's out of date. So
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's like like, yeah, don't be complacent,
Speaker 1: you know, don't be a traditionalist. I think also that
Speaker 1: there's been there's been really horrific consequences of sort of
Speaker 1: the right being the ones to like take the urge
Speaker 1: for creative destruction, just like you know what was that line.
Speaker 1: There's some I forget some some venture capitalist things like
Speaker 1: move fast and break things, and it's like, yeah, so
Speaker 1: when they move fast the things they breaks us. But
Speaker 1: you know we can move faster and break things that
Speaker 1: are bad. Yeah, it's to create of and playful kind
Speaker 1: of motive being right that like you you might be
Speaker 1: able to work, wake up in the morning and think, God,
Speaker 1: you know, it would be really cool if we could
Speaker 1: have like like a child care nurse ory just like
Speaker 1: like out in the out in the common area between
Speaker 1: these buildings and stuff, and like go to your go
Speaker 1: to your local like your your workers council or whatever,
Speaker 1: and have a really plausible like the way of actually
Speaker 1: getting that and like collaborating with people to make that happen,
Speaker 1: and then being like, Okay, well we'll try it as
Speaker 1: an experiment for twelve months, we'll keep we'll see how
Speaker 1: it goes. And then there's a feedback cycle where it's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: some aspect of this design didn't really work out. We'll
Speaker 1: we'll go talk about it some more and then it
Speaker 1: aerate on that. And that's that's like as it's it's
Speaker 1: an entrepreneurialism that doesn't bear much resemblance to what that
Speaker 1: word means right now. It just means that human beings,
Speaker 1: living real things, real workers, will be able to actually
Speaker 1: control their environments in this the substance of their lives
Speaker 1: and in a meaningful way. Yeah, and like this, I
Speaker 1: think you know, back in the nineties early odds, sort
Speaker 1: of before the two thousand eight crisis, in the hoary
Speaker 1: days of your um it's there was a lot of
Speaker 1: talk about flexibility and dynamicism and adaptation. But what that
Speaker 1: always meant was we make decisions about what's going to
Speaker 1: change and you have to adapt, right it was it
Speaker 1: was it was, you know, always this arbitrary power from
Speaker 1: outside that would just be changing the social fabric, and
Speaker 1: you had to be flexible enough to cope with what
Speaker 1: you were being subjected to. It's very different if you
Speaker 1: know the planning is being done by you for you,
Speaker 1: and you're moving towards adaptation and flexibility out of a
Speaker 1: sense of oh, yeah, this would be better and I'm
Speaker 1: going to adapt to be in a better state to
Speaker 1: to work with my environment, uh, in a more healthy
Speaker 1: and a more flourishing way as opposed to just like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, you've got to work three jobs now, so
Speaker 1: figure it out right. That's a very different kind of flexibility,
Speaker 1: very different kind of adaptation. And you know, those things
Speaker 1: have sort of become dirty words in some ways, but
Speaker 1: they are really core to the way that we all
Speaker 1: exist as organisms in the world, and they don't have
Speaker 1: to be just synonyms for abuse. Mm hmm exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think okay, we can take this as a place
Speaker 1: to leave off. Yeah, do you two have stuff you
Speaker 1: want to log and I know you you want to plug,
Speaker 1: but plug the things that you want people to listen
Speaker 1: to because they are Um yeah, we're General Intellecting us.
Speaker 1: Um you could to General Intellecting a totness and it's
Speaker 1: got all the episodes on there around Twitter, ask g
Speaker 1: nice pod Um, yeah, you can find us on all
Speaker 1: the podcast things. Um. We're also part of a podcast
Speaker 1: network called Emancipation and so that's emancipation dot Network on
Speaker 1: the web. Um, and yeah, some really excellent shows on there.
Speaker 1: We were collaborating with Swampside Chats and um, Mortal Science
Speaker 1: from Alpha to Omega Jumps in Utopia. They're they're really
Speaker 1: wonderful shows that are all um it's it's a variety
Speaker 1: of different sort of takes on things, but like um,
Speaker 1: there's a sort of common there's a sort of spiritual
Speaker 1: common grounds they all have. Um yeah, we we all
Speaker 1: were all interested in thinking systematically. We're all interested in emancipation,
Speaker 1: as the network name says, and we're all interested in
Speaker 1: sort of building something going forward, trying to construct an
Speaker 1: alternative as opposed to simply getting caught up in day
Speaker 1: today politics or getting caught up in uh dum mentality. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's it's systematic, it's critical, but it's also
Speaker 1: constructive and I think that's what we're all trying to
Speaker 1: do there. Yeah. Yeah, Well, thank you too both for
Speaker 1: coming on. Thank you it's been wondering. Thanks for having us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this has been Make it happen here. You can find
Speaker 1: us that happened here pod in places. There's also stuff
Speaker 1: at Coals on media that you can also find in
Speaker 1: those same places and possibly also different ones. We have
Speaker 1: a we have a website. Everyone asked me for my
Speaker 1: sources every single week and they get posted there once
Speaker 1: a month. So yeah, go go to Culson Media dot
Speaker 1: com and you will find all of the sources so
Speaker 1: you don't have to DM me every week, all right,
Speaker 1: by h Hey, We'll be back Monday with more episodes
Speaker 1: every week from now until the heat death of the Universe.
Speaker 1: It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
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