Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ct-q6sJOOY
Joe Rogan podcast check it out The Joe Rogan Experience Train by day Joe Rogan podcast by night all day um CNN at one point in time when Bourdain had a show on they were doing some very interesting things they were trying to uh do shows not just the news right so they had no No Reservations was the best one of them where they had you know they just told Anthony Bourdain just be you and just do what you do your best version of your show and they really just got out of the way and it was [ __ ] amazing yeah yeah so they got have his where they let him be the best of himself they figured out how to do that you know Cal Bell had a really good show too is that show still on I don't think so what was that show called I'm sorry forget the name of these shows but uh W Kamal Bell was really good at being like calm he shades of America shades of United shades of America really good at being calm like talking to like KKK people and he's black and he's a comic but he's just like a very nice guy he's a very nice guy like a genuinely nice guy in real life and so when he's doing a show even when he's confronted by the most ignorant racist and he he can have conversations with them and then and you know they're like well you're not like the others well that's the best kind of Journalism you know you you got you can properly immerse yourself in those worlds yeah CNN did that for a while you know they had that other show was it radical with uh that one gentleman who um ranza Aon is that his name that was another good show they did some interesting stuff they did like quite a few interesting shows where they were just shows it wasn't what it is now which is this like bizar version of news Tick Tock just grabbing you with everything is going to terrify you every day and there's so much to terrify you about today you know yeah yeah yeah it's they seem to have lost the Art of Storytelling yeah it's very unfortunate so ladies and gentlemen we started this podcast after a long conversation about Anthony Bourdain but I felt like we were already rolling so let's just roll into it um I really enjoyed you on trigonometry and that's why I wanted to uh talk to you here because it's just I
think your book is the status game that's right yeah and I think what's really interesting about what you're you're talking about um mechanisms that make people understand like Behavior patterns in a way instead of just accepting them you know because I think a lot of people fall into accepting Behavior patterns but what you're what you're showing is like these status games that human beings play they're sort of wired into our our being and we we don't recognize them they can get hijacked by far right movements or far left movements or a lot of different things can happen that can really screw your life up if you get hijacked by these just normal mechanisms of human thinking that's right that's right so I think sort the general thesis is that the humans want two things they want connection into groups and then once they're in the group they want status so so um you know it's not enough to feel like we're a Christian we have to be a good Christian and that means following certain rules and and that's what that's what brains just want to do that brains don't really care about what's true brains are always asking this question who do I have to be and what do I have to believe in order to earn connection and status and we're all vulnerable to this stuff and that's how people end up believing [ __ ] crazy things because the brain's just believing what it has to believe I've seen it with people that get what the what you call audience capture where abely Their audience they find they get some love you can only if you're doing it politically you can only do it once it's a dangerous move it's like changing genders like you can't go male to female and they back to mail again it's [ __ ] it's too complicated one shot you get one shot if you start out a liberal you're a lifelong liberal and then at 36 all of a sudden you become like the most hardcore right-wing Republican like that seems like I well what did you believe before and what happened did you take mushrooms did you fall in your head something happen you just radically change your ideology or did you get captured by the idea of being accepted with much more Vigor by the other side like that's one thing that they really do enjoy when someone baales on the other side and then Jo again you can
only do it once but you get like really embraced that's right and and and the more you're embraced the more you um believe and yes yeah I mean there's this concept that I WR about that I call it active belief like there are loads of beliefs that we have like how long is the Mississippi Ripper you know what how do you what is coffee like we don't argue about these beliefs but there are certain categories of belief that that possess us and these are the beliefs that that that we form our identity around and they're beliefs that we plug our status into so you know like if you're a Christian it's like I believe Jesus died and then three days later got up and and as I said you know like these beliefs are kind of dangerous because they take us over it's not enough just to believe them passively you have to act them out with your life and so that these are the beliefs that drive things like the satanic Panic cult movements communism Nazism um these are beliefs that sort of possess people and take them over it's like a parasite they're kind of scary things but as I said you know we're all vulnerable to these kind of active beliefs yeah I I'm fascinated by Cult documentaries and uh I was talking to my friend Todd we were talking about wow wow country and we both the same thing God in the beginning it looked awesome the beginning they were having so much fun and I think of myself at 21 and I I had no real like confidence in my view of the world I had no I was 21 I was a a young dummy yeah I did not know you know what was correct and what was incorrect I I I had a general sense my family was very left wing we grew up my parents were hippies in San Francisco so I had sort of an ideology attached to that but I had no idea how anything in the world worked yeah and if I ran into the wrong yoga teacher no but that's it but but that's how humans work you know with this tribal animal and we and and nobody has any idea how the world works until they plug into a group and the group has its stories that it tells about how the world works every group has its model of what a hero is yeah and this set of beliefs a hero has and and once we've plugged into that group we be you know we Orient ourselves towards becoming that that person and you know
Cults are interesting because Cults are like all human groups are kind of Cults but looser so so every human group is a status game in the sense that it's a a group of people who um believe the same things and there's sort of rules for being part of that group and the more the better you become at following those rules and and becoming its ideal of self the higher you rise up that status game the only difference between cult and a religion and a business and a political group is just it's much tighter so the rules are much stricter like there's a zillion rules like um you know I've written before about um uh what they call the the there was the what was the cult that they cut they castrated themselves yeah Heaven's Gate Heaven's Gate that's right yeah and they had rules even about like how much toothpaste you allowed to put on your your toothbrush they had they had a rule about exactly how how scrambled eggs were to be cooked and the rule was dry but not burnt so there was a rule about how much B water you put in your bathtub and and was the leader was he castrated as well no he wasn't surprisingly really yeah they were called tea and d and there he is TE yeah just just imagine you are so low in your life that you think that's the guy that has all the answers is that a Bible thing this is what I've always assumed that that's just some hold over from when we were a part of groups of 150 people that needed a leader and generally that leader would be some old warlord he's probably like 35 like you know back then but like had gone through a lot and was a strong leader was someone that you admired as a leader and maybe in in these tribal times that's baked into our DNA and when someone comes along and speaks confidently yeah I am never confident I'm never confident if you're so confident about all these thoughts and about where what life is about and where we're going and what awaits us if you follow these rules God that's so confident I'm not that confident so I could get sucked in yeah any human can get sucked in but is that what it's from is it from tribal times yeah yes and no so one of the really surprising things about tribes the tribes in which we evolved is is that the idea of the big man is a bit of a myth so so they were
kind of leaderless like leaders would Bubble Up by consensus where say we wanted to solve a particular problem to do with hunting then the best hunters would be deferred to and what do you think um so the at some point in time they became leaders I mean they've been leaders for so long when we settled down so when was that like agriculture days yeah that was about 11,000 years ago does don't you think that's enough to bake it into our DNA I I don't know I think what is in our DNA is that idea of a um stories so so you know we're storytelling animals we think in stories every tribe has its particular story about the world and so we we're very good at channeling those stories and and and as I said every story has its design of what is a hero and we we try and become that kind of hero so so that's that hold over from the from the from the tribal day but more fundamentally is again it's that that brain question of who do I have to be what do I have to do tell me what I have to do in order to achieve connection and status and that's what a cult does it's and that's what a charismatic leader does it tells you this is what you've got to do these are the rules this is you this is who you have to become and that's really seductive to us subconsciously because those those two things of connection status are so incredibly important to us yeah it's is it is it something you things should be taught like very early on it seems like this is information we should get to kids as young as we can yeah so they can recognize these patterns that people fall into absolutely I've always thought that that there should be a lesson in school about what is a human what is the basic operating system manual for a human and these are the mistakes that humans make because as I said you know one of the sort of Big Ideas is that we we're not particularly interested in the truth we don't the truth is doesn't matter to human brains what matters is what do I what do I have to believe in order to for people to like me and respect me well that's why religions like even radical religions are so intoxicating like you have to be Allin you're part of a very special group and you all love each other like
brothers and sisters because you're part of this group and you can come up with some radical ideas and get people to subscribe to that especially if you attach things like death for people who leave yeah you know yeah yeah that's you're operating in some Redline territory like that's a wild group and and the religions and the Cults always do that thing of offering amazing rewards but course some point in the future br the best SP and the verion of Heaven differs between how bad the place where you live sucks and it's like I think there's like there's like eight and a half billion people in the world and the amount of I think there like 500 million atheists so that just shows you how many just how wired we are to believe basically any old [ __ ] we're told to believe as long as it we feel like it's going to get a status and secure connection into a supportive group we I remember during the suicide bomber days when that was something that was in the news all the time they talked about 72 virgins and that these gentlemen thought that they were going to get 72 virgins in heaven like that is so cultural yeah like if you offered 72 virgins to a Christian they'd be like what the [ __ ] are you talking about I'm not [ __ ] any virgins you crazy psycho how old are they what are you saying I'm not a pedophile dude I just like women what the [ __ ] you know what I'm saying it's like yeah but I'm not sure how I mean I don't know if that's 72 version think is true I they could be like 21-year-old versions that have been saved for This Moment by the great one but I think that term is not real I think the term 72 virgin is like saying how you know how many times have you lost your phone a [ __ ] million it's like that kind of you know it's not it's an exaggeration but I think the real I think the real promise there though I mean the 72 vergins is yeah but but I think the real promise for suicide bombers is again it's status it's like if you sacrific your life on behalf of the group's Mission you're a hero you're like a God and so so so that's the promise and and again I think it's a really good example of how human beings value status over their lives yeah I mean that's how much we value status we we're the only animal
that kills ourself which is just a weird thing in itself that an animal would voluntarily end its own life and very often the reason that people will kill themselves is because it's a sudden drop in status or they feel completely isolated and alone so so say they're lacking in those essential kind of Psychological Resources to such an extent that they you know in their own lives and that's how much we value these things and suicide bombers are another manifestation of that like like if you're going to consider me a hero and if Muhammad is going to consider me a hero strap me up brother you know that that's how much that that's how crazy we become about these these social rewards God that is such an insane belief it's so insane and when the the most evil thing is when you hear about them talking kids into doing it yeah you know a young child you know you're getting a I mean what is the youngest suicide bomber they've ever used I don't know just the idea that you can buy into it so much that you're willing to let your children go do that yeah but it's wild it's it's evil if you think it's this kind of calculating um uh kind of mathematical algorithm of Advantage but but but they since sinly believe it they really believe it's true right I mean you know I've been as a when I before was an auth I was a journalist I've been meeting kind of crazy people including Nazis um as part of my journalistic career and that's one of the things that always strikes me is that they they really believe it this crazy St so so it's not evil in the sense that um they're doing anything calculating by talking their children into being suicide bombers they think they're doing something heroic they think they're doing something amazing as did the Nazis as as did the Communists as yeah as do the KKK people they can fall into belief structures and they they don't necessarily have to make sense but if they find enough supportive people around them that also believe that then it becomes part of their tribe identity yeah and it can get it could be really stupid really stupid we're [ __ ] way more vulnerable than we like to believe that's one of the things that I was
saying like when I watched those cult documentaries part of me is like thank God I didn't run into those people thank God they would have got me and and when they look at the psychology of people that are vulnerable to falling into Cults it's very often people that have struggled to fit into the status games of ordinary life so they got the family hasn't worked the job hasn't worked the Hobbies haven't worked so they've got no identity they've got no tribe so they're really vulnerable to these Cults which because what Cults offer is absolute certainty yeah if you cook your scrambled eggs this way if you uh only put 2 Ines of water in your bath you're going to you know the um the UFOs will come down and they're going to take you to the level above that's what they were offering T the level above wear the Nikes though remember you have to wear the purple Nikes but that's right and there's this crazy Memoir of one of one one of the guys who was in this group who he C he didn't he didn't cut his own balls off he left before the ball cutting but he was but he was jealous like like he wanted to have his balls cut and there was there was only one person that could have it done at the beginning and they flipped a coin and he was really annoyed that he lost the coin flip oh my God but what was interesting about his Memoir was he said that people talk about brainwashing in Cults and people talk people talk about um how we were forced to follow these rules but we wanted to follow the rules like not following the rules would be like being a NASA astronaut and just not caring about how the Space Shell worked you know so so so so so they're not they don't consider themselves brainwashed they consider themselves whether they're just in a status game like like any other status game it's just a very very strict one right well that's why you know one of the fascinating things about some Cults is that they use very bizarre language and that they all agree to it they have like specific terms that they say like doesn't Scientologist they'll call people they have like an abbreviation for someone who's like a hostile person what is it that they do because I remember someone was some was explaining to me someone who left the church was explaining to me how like if someone
would be hostile you have like a very specific way you describe them and that they all do it in the group and it's like suppressive persons that suppressive persons yes you're suppressive person or potential trouble sources dude I ordered Dianetics in like 1994 I had just moved to LA and I thought it was a self-help book I was like all right yeah [ __ ] look it your brain's going to explode you're going to get your [ __ ] together look at all these people that are succeeding on diic you know I was 26 or whatever I was so I ordered this book and they never stopped sending me things I mean they [ __ ] never stopped sending me things was there ever report when you thought hang on a minute this is quite interesting all right no no once I realized it was Scientology I was like oh Dianetics is Scientology yeah I was like okay but then part of me was like damn a lot of these scientologists are doing really well in Hollywood like maybe that's a good culture join maybe if they just let me be me because it seems like that was part of it there was a big Allure of how many successful people were following that religion I mean some of the most successful actors Tom Cruz is one of the most successful actors of all time and he's literally the poster boy for that yeah that's right it's somebody was saying to me the other day that they thought that actors were particularly susceptible to Scientology because they've got this weird they don't really have an identity actors they were always sort of slipping into everybody different people's identities I thought that was interesting ESP if you're the you probably lose who the [ __ ] you are who am I am I Rocky am I the Miss impossible guy yeah well when they're walking around everybody treats that way I'm sure they treat St Stallone like he's Rocky and you got to give respect to Tom Cruz though because Tom Cruz is like 60 years old and he still does his own stunts including jumping a motorcycle off a cliff yeah that's how much he believes in this stuff yeah but but that's but that's why these these groups are kind of functional as well it's like I kind of have a weird kind of sympathy like what I grew up in a very strict Catholic household with very strict Catholic parents and I was very I hated it I was very rebellious as a
teenager and I guess in my 20s and 30s I was very very atheist and you know hated religion um but but then I kind of did a lot of This research and and when once you accept that what humans need to be healthy psychologically and physically is connection and status you see that that that's actually what religion provides people that that's what religion provides my parents is that they're connected into community and they feel important they feel they're good Catholics because my dad conducts the choir and you know this that and the other and so that that that's invaluable that's what humans need to survive and in our you know in the in in the current world in the huge uh populations in which we live it's very hard to feel securely connected I mean as you said a moment AG the tribes in which we evolve were very small like 30 to 50 people so it was quite easy to feel securely connected it was quite easy in that environment to feel important like valued by the people I mean probably it was not rare in the tribe to feel in invaluable like you're needed because everybody was needed there wasn't many people around to find the tubers and catch the rabbits or whatever um but in this day and age in these huge groups in which we belong to it's it's much harder to feel relative status because you're competing with millions of people especially online so and I think that's a source of a huge amount of sort mid misery in the modern world and stress sort of and I call and identity anxiety you identity stress we we we we we are we feel really unsatisfied with the amount of connection and status that we have because we we we exited these [ __ ] massive International tribes now I I think there's another factor and the the other factor is I think because of the nature of uh commuting in public transportation and of going to work all day and then you know you know being under someone else's control most of the day and then commuting home you I think we're conversation starved yeah I think the way human beings figure out what's the best way to behave and what's the the nicest way that we can all get along what what makes the most sense is when we talk the most yeah and most of the day you can't really talk most of the
day you can't sit down for a couple hours like this and just say why do we behave this way why is there this weird pattern that is so strong it's so such a tightly cut Groove that cutting your balls off and wearing purple sneakers becomes appealing like it can fit right there like it seems to be there's like a pathway for this yeah and and what and that's how humans communicate is you know we sit down and we tell stories to each other and and and if we don't get to talk yeah absolutely we're we're very lucky we get to talk yeah but most people don't get to talk like this yeah of the time absolutely yeah and that's to our huge cost like it really because where do we get the stories from we get them from social media we getting them from the news which is increasingly politicized and hysterical yeah and so we you know the outrage goes up like if you're a used car salesman and you talk to people you're bullshitting people all day long when do you ever turn the [ __ ] off do you know how to anymore you probably become a used car salesman forever yeah well that's what we do I mean that's that's a perfect example of how the status games work is that used car salesman is a status game and it has its particular um model of self which which we kind of the brain identifies and turns us into by the way I should just say there's a lot of very cool used car sales it's just a joke it's like it's a term but you you do know there's a difference between sales people that are just real friendly folks and then Super S guys and those Super S guys I'm like how does that guy turn that off like that's such a [ __ ] way to talk yeah Jo Jo Paul SRA wrote about this he called it bad faith and he was sitting in a cafe in Paris at one time and he was watching the waiter and he realized that the waiter was just behaving like a waiter like a like a classic pran waiter he's going look at his movements and it was just really annoying thatat he called he's acting in bad faith he's doing the dance of the waiter that's not really who he is right he's just he's just being the waiter and he said there's the dance of the auctioneer there's the dance of the used car salesman and and that's kind of what we do and I think the dance of the strip club DJ yeah and the dance of the member of the cult you know like like dance of
the lead singer of a rock and Rolland yeah and and and that's that's what that's what the brain does though it it it it identifies okay what group am I in what does a hero look like right got to turn myself into this person yeah that was a giant thing in standup to the point where uh the the punchline in Atlanta Georgia had a back green room and people would write on the walls yeah and someone wrote in big letters quit trying to be Hicks when Jamie tore the place down he not this Jamie Jamie that owns the club to tore the place down he swore he saved that for me I want that little piece of memorabilia cuz it was it was just so there was so many people that saw Hicks and were like God he's so profound I want to be profound but you don't have [ __ ] to say you don't even read it's like I know do we talk about Denis ly in this there's no need to okay yeah there's no need to but yeah okay I've said enough about that okay but yeah there's there's just a lot of that there's a lot of uh posturing you know like that's not really how you feel but you see how this is appealing and you see that there's a pattern that seems to be successful and then you just mimic that pattern marck that pattern yeah and and that's why it's so incredible when someone comes along and does something in that space that's new but still works like that's like for me the definition of a genius that anybody can experiment but most experiments go wrong but if you experiment with the form of standup or whatever if everyone's doing Hicks and you come out with something new and it works that's incredible like it's just people are so easily influenced when someone is really stunningly good like there's a David tell problem okay the David tell problem is David so good that when you work with him all the time you start delivering your punch lines like him but they're not as good as his punch lines and you [ __ ] sound like David tell but it's it's uh not even they're not like plagiarists they're just easily influenced people that are starting they're not good yet you know what I mean you get susceptible to patterns yeah I don't even know if I would say that was easy influence I think it's just normal that's how brains work you know they they mimic they they copy and when guys work together all the time I
see they start making the same sort of similar hand movements on stage they start doing the same kind of things well it's the same with writing if you read a book that you really love the next day you'll turn your computer on and you'll be writing in that like in a slight [ __ ] version of that style well that's what said he did didn't he write The Great Gatsby over and over and over again just to get us a sense of the rhythm of the words when he was learning how to write I believe he did that but I think he also did the Book of Revelations didn't he yeah yeah which I thought was amazing cuz you can really sense that in his writing this kind of apocalyptic Madness I'm sure similar thing about I don't know if he rewrote the revelations or whether he he used to read it over and over again but I'm sure I remember reading that about Hunter Thompson I believe that for sure typed out the great casby and Farewell to Arms word for word uh a method for learning how to write like the Masters wow that's that's someone dedicated that's commitment that's dedicated to it he's another guy it's like man if you just like drank half as much you'd probably still be around yeah yeah yeah yeah I would have loved to have met him amazing on this yeah at the end though man [ __ ] I remember he did an episode of Conan O'Brien and you couldn't understand a word he was saying yeah and it was so it's so sad it's like when you watch an old boxer and they can't talk anymore it's kind of a similar feeling cuz like in the early days like when he was running for Sheriff of picking County in Colorado in Aspen I mean he was on fire he was amazing he was like at the height of his verbal skill he was young and and vibrant and then to see him at the end where he could barely you couldn't understand what he was saying it's like everything was a slur it was all this weird like he had a bunch of health problems hip replacements you know was before he killed himself but not not much before yeah and and and the suicide tragically almost becomes predictable in a way because again it's that he was he had this status he was his incredible brain and he knows that he's he's down here now and that's intolerable for somebody that to to live with that's the that's the tragedy of that yeah you got
to manage the biology kids yeah you got to manage your biology yeah and you've got to manage the decline I mean I think when you when you've got as high as you know status wise as he has it's that level of genius and then you've hit that decline it's it's a dangerous place to be it's also it has to be just tied to the alcohol because the mind was still the same mind like when 9911 happened he still wrote a brilliant piece about 911 did you ever you ever see that Johnny Depp narrated it in the movie and it was [ __ ] great he narrated a couple these Hunter pieces in the movie and one of them was like how the 60s see if you can find that Jamie when Johnny Depp uh does this Hunter S Thompson uh n uh he narrates this this story about The Wave pulling back it's the wave of culture and the it's so eloquently brilliantly written and it's about the hope that he had in the 1960s and how the 1970s came and it all pulled back oh yeah it's a brilliant piece it's brilliant and it's it just this is a strange memories on this ner W that beautiful yeah it was so accurate yeah and you know when we think about the way our world changed four years ago I mean it's kind of similar in a way like the whole like what the [ __ ] happened four years later you're like what the [ __ ] happened yeah yeah and I think with us though there's hope that we'll eventually get to some place of normaly and and and some semblance of Peace but what what happened in the 1960s is [ __ ] bananas yeah I mean they they basically turn this counterculture hippie love movement into Charles Manson and the Manson family and the [ __ ] CIA was dosing people with LSD and they were doing anything they can to stop the anti-war movement anything they can to stop these hippies and made everything illegal they made marijuana well marijuana was already illegal but all the schedule one substances it's all the sweeping part of the 1970 psychedelic act that was all about the Civil Rights Movement it was all about just arresting people for any kind of protests any anti-government anti-war let's find these hippies everything's illegal [ __ ] you go to jail and they put water on it they just put the fire out wow I didn't know that they pulled the foot the fire out on this psychedelic counterculture that was the
1960s and we paid for it artistically if you look at the 1980s is a [ __ ] disaster what happened in the 1980s it's like these people all they have was cocaine they're just doing cocaine and alcohol and the movies are out of control yeah I mean the 1980s the other thing that changed was of course was the economy in the 1980s and that was the for me that's the big thing that that changed like like like the like the economies of the West fell to bits in the in the 1970s like before the 1970s the gas crisis yeah I think we forget about that that ruined American automobiles yeah and then so Thatcher and Reagan yeah came up with this neoliberalism idea of increasing competition everywhere getting rid of the big state um selling off the you know privatizing all the national industry is going to war with the unions um and when I was doing my research for my book selfie I was sort of because I was interested to know like if you change the rules of the the status game do we change as a as a as a as a culture as as a bunch of people um and it really does seem like that like if you think about who we were in the 1960s versus who we were in the 1980s you go from [ __ ] the man to Greed is good you know we you know like and I found this really quite sin interview from 1981 with Margaret Thatcher where they're interviewing her about you know what are your big plans and um she said uh she was going on about um how you know in the last 30 years everything been about the collectivism and getting together and now that we're going to get rid of all that and increased competition and she said this thing she said the method is economic but the object is to change the soul which is a really like megal Maniac James Bond villain thing to say but she did do that they did do that like J yeah like so so by by changing the rules of who we have to be in order to achieve success they changed who we were like we became you know as a people Gordon gecko Material Girl Madonna Whitney Whitney Houston um The Greatest Love of All is loving yourself like we we became the you know this big as you say we went from pot to cocaine it was there was a really interesting study that they found in 1983 they were looking at um changes in birth names and for generations and generations babies
have been called things like you know Alfred and John and Barbara like all the the traditional names but in 1983 suddenly we started naming our kids weird names because we wanted to our kids to stand out and be a star and and when you look at um the changes in values between like the 60s and the 80s and 90s suddenly um money becomes a dominant value celebrity becomes a dominant value being good-looking becomes a much more dominant value but there was there was a um a study about 20 years ago they asked 2 and a half thousand British under 10 what is the best thing in the world and these under 10s number one was being a celebrity number two was being good-look number three was uh being rich like that's who we've become um and and the big change is the economy like we've become these kind of neoliberal profit obsessed celebrity obsessed individualists I don't know what number four was I want to know why yeah I think cuz they're young though right when you're young that's what seems like everybody wants but not in the 60s and 70s like when they did a when they did a similar um study in the 60s I think it was 19 65 it was less than half of people thought being rich was a important thing in your life and now it's way over 75% that's interesting I wonder how many of those people wanted to be famous before the invention of social media and reality shows well I yeah I think you know I wonder if there was like less of an aspiration there was yeah so all of that celebrity stuff comes out of the 80s and and the 80s what defines the 80s is these big economic changes yeah you know like in order to survive in the 80s you had to be an like a radical individualist you had to be a get up and go um profit motive uh self- sustaining individualist like a like a competitive individual um because before that we had the big state we had big Social Security cushions we had public housing and they they they got rid of all of that I feel like there's a comfortable medium in there yeah that's we're missing out on like don't be competitive to the point where you're a [ __ ] psychopath you're saying greed is good don't don't be that guy but also don't be lazy and rely on the state to take care of you either
well yeah I think I'm not sure if it was Tony Blair but certainly I I I think it was Tony Blair that talked about the idea of neoliberalism with cushions which I love that idea where because it's true that it kind of worked it was brutal in the 80s but we most of us are much wealthier now than we were in the 80s like it's kind of worked but but it's also created much more um separation between between the top and the bottom much more inequality so the rich are much richer now and the poor are much poorer than they were in the middle of the 20th century so say is created a lot more unfairness as well so you do need those cushions I think well it also becomes an insurmountable position too like when we say the rich get Richer there the poor aren't getting any richer so there's that's a part of the problem it's like there's no escape from like severe poverty very few people escape and when you're in severe poverty especially if you're in another country like when people look at this Caravan of people coming in through uh South America through Mexico I would do it too 100% 100% I don't I'm not a terrorist I would hope that I wouldn't be a terrorist you know in a different life but 100% if I was living in a place that sucked with dirt floors and I found out I could walk to America abolutely I can get a job there let's go you you would do it 100% it's natural seems like a normal thing that people want to have a better life I think that we've just got to figure out why we have these parts of the world why we have these communities that are just never getting better and help them yeah it's just seems super simple you want the world to be a safer Place take all these places that suck and give them Economic Security give them education and healthare set up school systems that are really good you're going to change the whole atmosphere you're going to change everything provide job opportunities set up places where we should make how about here's a law here's a law that should make you can't sell anything made by people who make less than would be legal here wouldn't that be an amazing law if we passed that if we just said listen we all know this is [ __ ] okay we all know that if you're buying an iPhone
there's a lot going on that you wouldn't like to see yeah there's a lot going on from the mining of the Cobalts to the people in the factories I don't want to see that I want the shiny titanium thing it's so pretty you know you move it around your hand like wow that's amazing that's what you want you don't want to know how the sausage is made but if you really want to I mean if you want to try to fix everything everywhere say I'm not buying anything from anybody who doesn't get paid what you're supposed to get paid here yeah but the you got to account for the economies are different in different parts of the world aren't they let's balance it out for the economies of those places yeah yeah I think that I think that's a good rule do they do that though they might actually I mean what is the economy in if you're in Mexico what what are you allowed to pay people in Mexico and how much does it like let's say um let's pick a place Warz that's a kind of a Border Town like if you if you have own a factory in war how how much do you have to pay those people what is that I don't economists have that Big Mac test where they look at how much a Big Mac costs in each territory and and from that they can work out the relative strength of each economy it's like so the test would be you'd have to be able to buy x amount of Big Macs per day with your with your with your daily wage if you you know we just have this re real weird desire to never stop making more like real weird desire to like maximize profit expand expand make it big nobody ever has a company and goes we're good just like leave it like this that's because status is relative right and and so you're you're always insecure about your like you don't status is this imaginary resource like it only exists in our minds in the minds of other people so you can't keep it you can't you can't put it in a box so you're constantly having to make sure that it's still there it's still there you're constantly measuring your state like apple are measuring their status versus Google and Samsung or whoever so there that there's that constant chippiness so so you're always trying to ratchet up there was this really hilarious study they did where they they
got a bunch of multiple Millionaires and billionaires and they asked them how much more money would you need to be perfectly happy and uniformally they said between two and three times more money but it's and it's like you're not going to be perfectly happy you delusional but that's that's the human so so so so we we think well when I when I've achieved this thing I'll be perfectly happy but of course we were happy for about 10 seconds then we want the next thing and the next thing and the next thing and actually like it's exhausting but it's also how we built civilization is also an incredible amazing thing that we're Restless We're Never Satisfied we want better and better and better and better like it drives us forward well it's I was going to say about the McDonald's thing it's also a function of being being a part of a public company you have an obligation your shareholders to make more money like the whole idea is let's make more money we have to make more money let's make more money like hey I'm looking at the money and it's not more I make more money that's the slight problem with because because you can measure your status in all kinds of different ways and any you know there's infinite ways you can measure your status and money being just one of them but that's part of the problem with the the public company is that is that money becomes the only important and it's not it's not just money it's shortterm profit like it has to every quarter has to go up and go up and go up and go up and go so that's a sort of damaged incentive in a way how much different would the world be if we made that illegal I'm not saying we should I'm not saying we should but how much different would the world be where all corporations have to be private yeah all of them you just have to be a company yeah you can't just sell your stuff to people like whatever you are what piece of this and whatever you want to call it stocks call it whatever you want you're selling chunks of your company right no you have to own it you want to be in business you got to own your own company because because yeah there are two ways that you can measure the status of your company I guess two main ways one is how much money it makes and the other is the quality of the
product right and what you see in today's world of course is that stock price yeah so so so so quality tends to go down and down and down you've got shrinkflation you know so it's not just the quality it's this it's what you're getting for your money goes down and down so it's this kind of like fake gives you illusion the illusion of growth in the company we're making more money yeah because you're putting less berries in the yogurt you know that's why it's you know it's it's not a a positive uh productive growth it's a it's a growth that comes from cutting all the good stuff out also you would eliminate all the Gordon geckos because that's not a business anymore yeah yeah you can't just sell stock anymore doesn't exist you can't do that anymore own something [ __ ] own own a company make a product to stop that was it's a fascinating thought and again I'm not a supporter of this nor do I know anything about economics but I would imagine that that was would be better if like the companies had to be owned like you have to own the [ __ ] company yeah do you but then everyone's pensions would be [ __ ] because basically people's pensions are all in stocks aren't they we'd have a it would be a yeah I think we're in this now for good but but but yeah also this dirty thing where you can't buy stock if you know things yeah you know like if I knew that some [ __ ] was about to pop off and I bought a bunch of stock it's must be so tempting like if you know for a fact yeah that tomorrow this stock is going to be up here oh oh yeah it's tempted the [ __ ] out of me I don't know whether I'd be able to not uh you have to not yeah I don't I'm not that motivated by money that I would do that but it's there's a there's just it's a just a natural desire people have for yeah because we attach whatever we've attached our status to we want moreing number thing and it doesn't matter how famous and Rich we we become it never ends bottomless pit you it's a game you can never win and I think it's designed to make human beings create aliens that's what I think this is my thought I think that is design I think this whole like competing with the Joneses keeping up with the Joneses what is it it always fuels technology at the end of the day because that's the thing
you buy like every year people buy phones and laptops if you're really balling you buy a new laptop every couple years you know and that is you're constantly looking for new processors new innovation what is it AR how big's the battery what's the battery like and it's constantly going in this general direction of ever complex technology that interfaces with human beings and now with AI and it's going to be an artificial life form and whether it's 10 years from now or 20 years from now or it's already happening in a [ __ ] lab in Ohio yes it might already be happening right now where they have an artificial life form and that's going to be the new dominant life form form on Earth it'll be far smarter it'll hopefully will coexist with it wait it comes from yeah and it comes from the tribe it comes from well it comes from before we were human we've been competing for status since before we were humans since we're animals well we still are animals but since before we were human animals and in the in in the tribes in which we evolv the more status that you earn the more food you got the better food you got the safer your sleeping sites the greater your access to your choice of mates so basically every the more status that you get in your group everything gets better and wouldn't that motivate you to make the most complex thing a human being has ever made 100% an artificial human yeah and it's not about the money or The Bling or the it's about I want to be better than you and I want to be the best inventor of artificial life form there is in the world better than that dude and that person and and yeah then that's what motivates people that's what pushes people to create amazing things we have this distorted idea of what is like a fiercely competitive person m when we think of fiercely competitive people we only for whatever reason consider basketball players football players baseball players Fighters athletes race car drivers we consider fiercely competitive people the people that are engaged in sports and activities every day but no no there's fiercely competitive people that are involved in business and government and all sorts of other things and they're they're [ __ ] psycho about this game that they're playing whatever
it is whether it's stocks and bonds or selling pharmaceutical drugs they're [ __ ] psycho competitive about that and that psychon is the status Instinct it's like I I you know I need the status like I love there there was a great story that I found for the statusc about Steve Jobs and like the true origin story of the iPhone I don't if you've heard this the true origin story of the iPhone which is that Steve Jobs his wife used to hold these Barbecues in wherever they lived Silicon Valley wherever and um one time he was at this barbecue and the husband of one of her friends work for Microsoft and he's like rubbing Steve Jobs face and it's saying oh we've we've invented the future of computing you're done it's this pad thing with a stylus and apparently he really annoyed the [ __ ] out Steve Jobs so Monday morning jobs comes into Apple Furious swearing and going right we're going to prove this prick wrong it's not stylist it's a finger he Ed the finger and from that barbecue came his rage and from the rage came the iPhone and and and that story was told by Steve forol who was um you know intimately involved with all this stuff and he he said it was not good for Microsoft that that guy went to that barbecue that day and he's absolutely right but but but that status like like that that it was personal for Steve Jobs it was Microsoft telling Apple that they were [ __ ] and that they they'd solved Computing that's a perfect example of a psycho competitive dude who would have probably won bike races but inad he's running Apple yeah and you know back in the day like 20,000 years ago he'd have been the best warrior in the tribe like stabbing the [ __ ] yeah for sure and and that's that that that's the kind of upside of aggression in a way you know it's um it creates things it creates value in the world it certainly has created a lot of great things right it certainly has created a lot of amazing inventions that enhance our lives but it's also it's like it's moving this non-stop Direction it always seems to me like we're a bunch of [ __ ] Buffalo being hurted off a cliff like any even know where this Cliff is we just keep going with this stuff like I mean with all the International chaos that's going in the world the conflicts the wars the Ukraine thing and
the Israel Hamas thing it's like [ __ ] man how much longer I mean that's a status thing too right ultimately ultimately I mean when you can get groups of people to go after other groups of people and be convinced that those people that you don't even [ __ ] know are your problem the fact that that game is still being played in 2024 but it would never stop being played because we're storytelling animals and we tell stories about about about status and and and and I think one of the sort of key things that things that I kind of realized when I was doing the book was that the conscious experience of life is a story but the subconscious reality is this game the brain's constantly playing a game for status and this we've got all this insane subconscious technology that we use for measuring our status versus other people that we're completely unaware of like there's one about the tone of voice during conversation they call it the parav verbal frequency band and you can't hear it um consciously but but but it's a way of organizing status hierarchies when we meet people and the person who top sets the tone and everybody else matches to meet the tone and these um psychologists studied a bunch of Larry King interviews a bit a bit like this one and they and and they stripped out the parav verbal frequency band and they could work out who he felt Superior to versus who he felt inferior to so he he he felt inferior to I think it was uh Liz Taylor and and and Superior to Dan quail and there were particular interviews which were very erasable and didn't go very well and they was they were kind of they weren't getting along and one of them was Dan quail and they found that those they were just not matching so so there's all this stuff going on beneath the hood of Consciousness which is constantly organizing us into kind of status games um and so you know so and and it's that that causes the hierarchies of life that's the reason why communism can never work because you know they're trying to wipe out the the effects of status in society but you can't Wipe Out the effects of status in society because it's in our it's in our brains you go into an elevator with three other people and you've already figured out within seconds who's the highest status you
know where you sit in the pecking order who's got the nice luggage who's getting out of the the Suites floor at the top you know we can't help but do it and and so that's that constant work of the subconscious brain figuring out where we sit in the status hierarchy creates human life yeah that's why Fidel Castro lived in a [ __ ] Mansion yeah absolutely yeah there's communism that's how it works one guy and a bunch of [ __ ] people with guns tell you what the [ __ ] you're going to do yeah that's it I mean he treat like a god I me like the the whole idea of Communism they wanted to create a kingdom of equality they called it it's like come on I mean the funny thing is when you talk to people about this and you just point out just logical patterns of human behavior it doesn't work you can't just have equality of outcome it doesn't exist they will always just point to that it hasn't been done right yet come on come on but isn't that amazing isn't that amazing that despite of the many how many thousands of people are in jail is it Millions how many millions of people are in jail despite all that despite all the crime and poverty and chaos that somehow or another you're just going to bring this all together yeah if you just do it this way and everybody just divides the money up yeah just who gets to tell people they got to give their money up people with guns you take people's status away like years ago I went to Poland to do some reporting on like at the time the big story in the UK was all these Polish people coming to the UK to do all this work and so remember that yeah where's all the Polish people come from so I went to Poland to find out where all the Polish people had come from and we went to this old steel works this old s of sort of Stalin era steel works and and the Polish journalist who was my fixer said oh you know um I I just mentioned Cas how the polls are such hard workers and she was like we're not hard workers we're lazy we're like I I can't believe that you Brits think we're hard workers and she said we've got this post Soviet mindset so I said what do you mean the post Soviet mindset and I said well when everyone's getting paid anyway youve not motivated to do any work so in a steel works like this um that um nobody would do any work and if somebody came in all
enthusiastic and ambitious they'd be bullied to [ __ ] until they calm down and sto doing work so that was how how it worked and there there was a phrase like you can you can turn up for work or you can not turn up for work you're still going to get paid so removing that stuff from Human Society removes something that we need which is individual status we're like you know if you don't reward individual status you don't motivate people to contribute to work and that's partly why Communism collapsed because is incompatible with human nature like capitalism is the only system that we've got that is compatible with human nature it rewards the status Instinct yeah yeah it's it's really fascinating when you break it down that way because it kind of makes it undeniable yeah it seems this pattern just constantly happens over and over and over again but there's always people that they play to the most charitable and the kindest people in the world and they phrase things in a way that if you oppose this idea that somehow or another you're cruel or that you're greedy or evil that there's something negative about you being competitive and it's essentially I think the roots of it is kind of a copout of people that have been beaten in life yeah you know there's this thing that certain people do when it's they're things aren't going well they want to tank anything that's going well you know that's right and and and I think there's a big Miser understanding about what that what that competitive Instinct what that status instinct is and when and I found it with talking about the book A lot of people just really don't like it this idea that I'm arguing that status is a human need that everybody has it they go I don't I'm not interested in status you know and you are you're definitely interested in the benefits of it do you like iPhones yeah exactly exactly get they're tapping on their iPhone this [ __ ] idea it's crazy right but what all that status is technically is the is the reward that we get for being of value to the tribe so back in the days that we evolved there were three essential ways of earning status for human beings aside from boring things like looks and height and whatever there's dominance games so this is the animalistic you can force somebody to attend to you in status
either physically or with social violence of the kind you see on social media um there's virtue games so people compete to to be have a reputation of being very virtuous so courageous somebody who knows the rules follows the rules believes the sacred beliefs so a religion is a virtue game the royal family weirdly is a virtue game because it's about being difference and knowing the rules um and then their success games I call them which is about competence about being a great hunter a great honey finder a great sorcerer um and that's what that's what defines the West that that that that's what made the West what it is is that we started playing six like for for for Millennia we were mostly playing virtue games it was cast Kingdom Game of Thrones kind of land and then in the starting with the the Industrial Revolution we started playing success games so we started mostly like much more rewarding competence and so that that that competitive instinct is channeled into figuring out how to solve problems how to create wealth and it's right that we reward that we've we've evolved to reward people who offer value to the Human family that's status it's not a a negative thing in that sense it's massively positive um and and and weirdly capitalism is a is a is an economic system that that does the same thing it works with how status games work it works with how we've evolved to operate in human tribes that's why I love how you talk about this because it the you change the term in a lot of people's eyes as well that listen to you because status for a lot of people is kind of a pejorative yeah it is yeah yeah it's it's like a dick like you status yeah yeah yeah you're just an [ __ ] but it's just a natural human pattern that if we can recognize we can also like mitigate some of the problems that come with it yeah I mean and that's what I mean that's why I like talking about communism because communism was the biggest experiment we've ever had in eradicating status so so marks and Engles their big idea was that um status comes from private property from private ownership so you could have a house and it's a perfectly functional house and you're happy with it but then somebody builds a big Palace next door suddenly you feel [ __ ] so so so they said you
know like communism could be sunned up in one sentence which is the abolition of private property get rid of that we get rid of people being interested in status everybody works together but it it just didn't work like there were some anthropologists Sor sociologists that went to the Soviet Union in the 50s and they found 10 distinct social classes in the Soviet Union all they did was they took the existing status game hierarchy with the wealthy at the top and the workers at the bottom and they flipped it so the workers were at the top and the wealthy were the wealthy and former wealthy really were at the bottom and those former wealthy the Bourgeois the children of the Bourgeois were absolutely discrimin ated against openly and horrifically if you weren't tortured and killed you were held back in you know in every sense and that and that's the thing about utopians utopians often talk about we're going to get rid of the hierarchy but they don't want to get rid of the hierarchy they just want a new hierarchy with you at the top every single time yeah um that's what got Brett Weinstein in trouble when he was uh teaching at Evergreen University do you remember this story I do yeah it was the same situation um Brett they they had had a it's like I think it was like a day of appreciation for people of color where people of color could stay home they still get paid and go wow I wish Mike was here he's very helpful you know whatever it was and they decided one year to switch it and make it so that white people can't come you cannot come and then which is a very different sentiment then you can stay home if you like and you still get paid but you can come yeah but if you want stay home you just get paid and everybody just chose to stay home it's nice right and thank you for appreciating me that's not a negative right if you have the money to do it and it doesn't [ __ ] stop everything in its tracks sounds great sounds great sounds like a nice liberal hippie thing to do but the other one doesn't the other one scares me because that's racist yeah if you're you're saying white people can't be here like why not yeah what did I do I didn't do anything like you're you're saying that white people shouldn't be allowed to be in a place where they work yeah because you
decide cuz you decide they have to stay home look there's better ways of going about this it's a bad idea it's the idea behind appreciating people is great but the idea about discriminating people in any way is bad if you're saying white people have to stay home that's bad but that but that but that also characterizes I'm not saying that the kind of woke thing is the same as communism but it has Echoes of it and it's the same flipping of the hierarchy so so when I was doing my research into communism there was this phrase that came up so the the the the the former bouri wealthy business people and the children of them were called former people you it's a dismissive you were former people wow and that's how you know when you think about how especially you know men especially white men especially straight white men are treated at the moment talk preach brother they're for they're former you know they made it feel like former people like there's a whole generation of guys who have been raised in a culture where they're being made to feel you've had your turn sit down shut up the future is not for you the future is for people who don't look like you and think like you and so so so that that that former people really resonated with me it's like you you straight white men you're former people you're yesterday's people you're not the future you're not tomorrow argument on Twitter where this man and this woman were going at it and the man said something that was factually correct and the woman said if you think that I'm going to take information from a straight white man that was their comeback that was their comeback I'm not taking that information coming from a straight white man like the last thing we need right now is straight white man speaking well I've had don't speak just listen it's time to listen that's my favorite just please be quiet and listen like hey sometimes that's good advice and sometimes you're just selling people you want to talk yeah ex yeah it's so ignorant and I had a similar experience once I used to teach um a storytelling course at the Guardian newspaper um science of Storytelling and so so it's like how to use Psychology and Neuroscience to make yourself a better Storyteller so I'm
talking about studies and this study and that study yeah and then during a break this woman came up to me and she worked for a major um she worked for a major academic like one of the biggest academic journals and she said to me there's a problem with I've got a problem with what you've been talking about and it's that most of what your most of these studies are by straight white men and I was like so like like okay and what's the point and she and she she was saying well you can't really trust them because they've got their own you know they they've got own they're all their perception of the world is is wrong and I you know I felt actually a bit intimidated by that because I'm standing in the guardian with this woman telling me that effectively I guess I've been racist somehow or sexist somehow so I just said to her I'm not going to have this conversation with you okay I'm and she kind of went away but I just thought but but it was the fact that she worked for a major scientific publication she was telling that because the work was done by straight white men it could not be trusted like that's that's Mississippi level like Mississippi 1932 level racism it was absolutely a baffling kind of moment and she was a smart person she was clearly a smart person but again that's the that's the human brain it believes what it has to believe in order to make itself feel important and valued I've got an amazing example of that that I just sent Jamie I want you to see this I want you to see this headline please make sure this headline is real first cuz I have been duped before but someone uh sent me this on the Instagram and if it is true praise the baby Jesus cuz it's as good as the Babylon be it's so good it seems like satire it's so good oh I think I know what it is oh hope please is it real I got to check all is it the teacher he's trying to no no no no no he's trying to he's trying to um type with Carl I was a little buddy 2017 it's from 2017 yeah but it's real right I mean I'm seeing other people talk about it so just post it then let me see let's see the article look at this TR black men are the white people of black people that's South Park level that's South Park level that is amazing yeah it feels counterintuitive to suggested straight black men as a whole possess
any sort of privilege oh my God oh my God oh my God this is the great irony of these people it's amazing the you know that these kind of woke people talk about privilege and there there was a study that was done in the UK a few years ago it was the mor in common report it's the biggest ever psychological study of Britain's social psychology uh you know over 10,000 respondents and they were looking at the kind of kind of these belief sets and they found there were seven distinct belief groups in the country um one of those belief groups they call them Progressive activists and these are people for whom the fight for social justice is at the heart of their identity you know they believe that how you get on in life is about um not about your talent and your hard work but about your race and gender so we know who who they're talking about yeah and so what was interesting about these people was it just astonished me um first is that they are the richest of all the seven groups so they had more people earning over £50,000 per year as a family secondly that they were the most highly educated of all the seven groups so so these people that are constantly going on about privileged if they're the most privileged people in Britain they're amongst the most privileged people in the world so that was the first thing the second thing which I thought was amazing was that they they they were six times more likely to make political comments on what was then called Twitter and they make more social media contributions than all of the rest of the groups combined doesn't it make sense though completely yeah they don't have uh any finan stress y right they probably feel real guilty and if they're white they feel super guilty and then they're young and you get status from being Progressive and an activist and you don't have to be competitive in the workplace you're out here throwing paint on the Michelangelo yes AB absolutely yeah so so so and they also the numbers so so in the UK they they make up 133% of the population in the US to make up 8% of the population so on social media because they dominate social media they feel like sometimes the majority of the country but their their beliefs are actually
really marginal like like what one of the one of these I think was Yuga asked people um who do you think should be the next governor of the bank of England a man or a woman this is the kind of story that that drives arm media into paroxismo found that 5% of people thought it should be a woman 3% of people thought it should be a man the V everybody else pretty much didn't give a [ __ ] you that's the reality good progress yeah most people think it doesn't matter seems indicative of the general population that I come across exactly and but but because these people these 133% or 8% in in the in the US are so highly educated and so wealthy they they dominate the media they dominate the gatekeeping positions in publishing companies and TV companies so so so they really have the kind of commanding voice in our culture very often but they're a tiny minority of of of who we are but it really does behave like a religion in a lot of ways it really does and you know Mark andreon broke it down very eloquently where he's explaining that has all of the things that are cult has it has the indoctrination it has the excommunication we're shamed and kicked out of the group The disconnect from the group members it's a it's got all those things to it and that's like a big part of it is like worried about being shamed and and cast out of the the group yeah which is terrifying for people so they're willing to say and believe things that aren't that logical you know just if they can stay in the group yeah absolutely they they um it's natural we we believe what we have to believe in order to earn status in our in our groups and that's true for these people as it is true for for anyone else and yeah and I agree with the cult thing but but I would just add that all all human groups have cult elements they have special languages they have rules hierarchies rewards and punishments it's just that Cults are the tightest possible form of human group I learned that when I started doing martial arts cuz one of the things that was really interesting about the martial arts world is it's very cult-like yeah especially in when I did it in like the 80s the early ' 80s when I started they were um you know they were the Masters you bowed to them you know you bow and you enter the I was so committed to this that I
had this girlfriend when I was in high school and I had the keys to the gym because I would work out there like anytime I wanted I taught classes there and stuff and she wanted to have sex in uh the and I couldn't do it I wouldn't do it she was so hot I was I wouldn't do it I was like I can't do it here like this is not this can't happen here at like 17 I was so horny and so stupid but I was like uh-uh we can't do it here yeah guess the power of the stat is it was like a like like now i' be like where what you to do you want to do more like but back then I was that was a religious place for me I didn't think about it that way at the time I just knew what the rules were yeah and I was not violating those rules in any way there's no way you know but that's uh there was a lot of weird stuff where like some of the Masters would date some of the uh married women it was it got real weird got real weird yeah got real culty i d doubt it it's very culty because these you know you adore this person who is commanding the group and getting everybody to March like to the bark of his voice and everyone's doing and he just commands all this attention and respect M so it was a there's the gym I went to was a very good place where it was very little that Shenanigans going on but there was a bunch of them where it was like it was a big thing where like you hear that about like yoga places too like the yoga Guru Guy starts binging people's wives it's just like there was a place that I uh bought out here that was owned by a cult I bought a place for my comedy club and I didn't wind up completing the deal I got out of it because there was there was some problems with the property and then I bought the place that I bought on 6th Street but before it I bought this place called the One World Theater and the One World Theater was created by this guy his name was haime Gomez and he was a gay porn star and a hypnotist he started a called he started a called it West Hollywood there's a documentary about it called holy hell and then they moved out to Austin and he had his followers build him this theater so that he could dance in front of them and that was the place that I bought so he could dance in front of them dance in front of them he put on performances and dance from them just
the followers and he had a gang of them man he had a gang of them in um LA and West Hollywood and then when the cult awareness Network started going after people he took off he thought they were on to him because the parents are like where's my [ __ ] kid so then he moves to Austin and builds this one World Theater so my friend Ron White tells me about the theater he's like cuz I tell him I'm I'm looking for a comedy club location he goes you should get that theater it's amazing so uh Ron White's the my hero so I'm like all right I'll get that theater and as I'm like in the middle of the purchasing it my friend Adam calls me and goes did you watch the documentary on that cult I was like oh no there how bad is he go oh dude it's bad you got to watch it it's crazy and it's these people that just get sucked into believing that this guy can give them Enlightenment and connect them to God by touching their head that's status yeah yeah and they all and the thing is man even after this guy got exposed and you know he was hypnotizing the men and having sex with them was crazy [ __ ] right but even after he got exposed the people that went through the experience of having this guy touch their head when it was it was called the knowing it was built up for days and weeks and some people were denied The Knowing they could never get it and other people today is your day and they couldn't believe it and they would sit there on their knees this guy would touch their head and they would be in ecstasy and it looked real and they talked about it even after they like this guy's a fraud he's a he's crazy he was this he was that he was a manipulative and a liar but that moment I felt like I was connected to God yeah yeah like he did something to me and I felt I felt the world change forever God the mind is a powerful thing crazy how it works so what stopped you buying that theater then there was a problem with the property uh it wasn't because no no there was just some some issues and we couldn't negotiate it and I was like this is and then I was like you know what it probably better to be in the city city like where people walk you know just make it more convenient for folks to CU people are used to going to Sixth Street and then I found that place and I got the place that's there but the
C the C that would a real problem because a lot of people think I'm already running a cult that would have been a real problem I like how he bought a cult building but ALS for to me it was the real problem was I don't necessarily know if I believe in energy but I not energy you know I believe in energy but I mean like that energy gets left in a space Oh yeah that like my stepdad went to Gettysburg and he said you can feel the sadness and he's not like spiritual [ __ ] Ouija board type dude he's a very rational architect and he's like you feel the sadness it go it's like you feel it you feel how many people died here yeah I get that feeling when I'm in Berlin like like Berlin people go on about how great Berlin is but there's I always get this immense sense of heaviness when I've spent some time in Berlin do you think that's cuz you know or do you think it's in the air I don't know because I'm not expecting to feel that way but but I don't know I mean who knows I mean there certainly it's striking when you walk around building you still see all the sort of shrapnel marks in the sides of buildings are still there it's kind of that's quite confronting that's why I was thinking I don't necessarily know if I want that building yeah cuz that building was built by people who got juked by a con man yeah [ __ ] just he's [ __ ] shenanigan them into building him a theater even if there's 0.01% chance you just yeah a lot of [ __ ] happened I mean there one one of the guys left he sent this mass email this guy's been abusing me for [ __ ] years that the whole thing is nuts like they flew the guy to Hawaii and he started a new cult out there wow it's in the documentary they go visit him in Hawaii but it's just so fascinating how people just fall into these patterns it's just a natural thing that we have to be aware of yeah I think that's why it's so important that the way you say it and the way you talk about these things the way you lay it out it makes it so much more palatable to a lot of people they look at go oh these are all just patterns that people play yeah we believe what we have to believe in order to yeah you know what I think one one of the things that that one of the things in history that's that the status research is really made me
understand is the rise of the Nazis that like growing up in the UK there's always this question how how could it have happened how could this um technologically advanced sophisticated country descend into nism and once you understand the role the status plays it becomes completely for me it's Crystal Clear like before the first world war Germany was just absolutely killing it they were the most successful country in Continental Europe they were like had you know massive like the Apple and Google of the days BASF Seamans you know huge companies they were producing a third of the world's potatoes you know like like of Life had rocketed in the early part of the 19th century and then the first world war happened and they just assumed we're going to kill it because we're amazing and of course they didn't kill it they they lost and so that's humiliating in itself um and you know humiliation being the loss the loss of status and then there was the Treaty of verai which which was Savage you know they had to give up load of land they had to give up their military they had to pay the equivalent of hundreds of billions of dollars in um reparations uh when all that triggered hyperinflation their economy collapsed um we took their industrial heartlands off them so it was humiliation upon humiliation then Hitler comes along and so this is the thing that we were never taught about Hitler in schools which is probably still a bit I don't know it's going to trigger people but but but but it's the truth Hitler was an incredibly successful leader of Germany for the time when he was uh in charge um the first thing which was a surprise to me was that when you see those black and white films of Hitler spitting and shouting and ranting you assume that he's talking about the Jews all the time have you seen how they've translated into English now with AI they're going through it yeah in Hitler's voice yeah I haven't seen that that I saw that going on Twitter yeah it's fascinating because of AI one of the things that they can do now like that they can do even with podcasts so this podcast when uh Spotify runs its AI through it they'll be able to translate you into perfect Spanish in your voice wow and they have this technology now I know they could do it in German Spanish and I think French and of course English
and back and forth so they could do that with Hitler for correctness whether you believe that I have been d That's amazing walked that I have advocated for you in these years that I have been decent I have spent my time in service of my people Now cast your vote if yes then stand up for me as I have stood up for see he's talking about that sounds so much scarier yeah it does the I voice hasn't really got the attitude that [ __ ] ACC that boy there's something about German when you hear him yelling you're like instinctively I think it's burned into US yeah but but he's not he like during the 30s he wasn't ranting about the Jews because the everybody was anti-semitic in that in that period in history um but the middle classes they didn't want to see the Jews being attacked and killed it didn't play well so they he he suppressed all of that stuff and all that ranting most of it he's talking about I'm going to restore Germany's status I'm going to I'm going to create this third right this thousand year Kingdom and that's what convinced people um to support him and he he did he did like like some of the statistics are quite extraord when they when the Nazi party came in a third of the population were unemployed and by 1939 they had full employment between 1932 and 1939 GDP went up 81% so he was doing the thing of restoring um Germany's status and when um when you see that footage of people going completely mad that's when he's reversing the humiliations of Versailles so he so he he took back the industrial Heartland by force and nobody stood in his way they went mad uh he took Austria nobody stood in his way so so it was all about the restoration of status that's that's that explains the rise of Hitler and they did like there was there was some mad stuff in the research like women would get um swastika tattoos they would do the Hitler salute at point of orgasm who yeah yeah who that's kind of hot yeah there was a butcher that was making swasti sausages um people would even name their female children after Hitler people with tuberculos would stare for hours at pictures of Hitler cuz they thought they would make them better so again that's another example of that
status that's how mad people go for status it was taken away from them and he didn't just promise to restore it for a while he did restore it so that's why they loved him it wasn't to do with the you know with with really anything else when do you think meth came into the picture yeah cuz somewhere along the line the Hitler story is not complete unless you realize Hitler was a methhead yeah and the wasn't his Wen his army on amphetamines everybody was on amphetamines that's how they talked to comicazi into doing that yeah yeah that's not a natural pattern of behavior for grown men no no flying planes in the boats you got to be [ __ ] jacked go [ __ ] you just want to take everybody out but Hitler was a full-on methhead and there's video of him at the Olympics in 1936 just straight up tweaking have you ever seen that video yeah I have yeah it's nuts and if you see that video that is that's a guy like it's not he's not just doing that once I'm G to go to the Olympics my first time trying meth that [ __ ] guy was a methan you know that's it Blitz that was the while other drugs are banned or discouraged methamphetamine was touted as a miracle product when it first appeared on the market in the late 1930s I bet it was a miracle indeed the little pill was the perfect Nazi drug Germany awake the Nazis had commanded energized uh energizing and confidence boosting methamphetamine played into the third reich's obsession with physical and mental superiority see superiority go in sharp contrast to drugs such as heroin or alcohol methamphetamines were not about Escapist pleasure rather they were taken for hyper alertness and vigilance arens were the embodiment of human Perfection and N Nazi ideology could now even aspire to be superhuman and such super humans can be turned into super soldiers that's it superhuman so it's the same as same as the um you know the cult that was promising we're going to take you to a level above always the promise of these mad people that we're going to get you we're going to give you so much status that we're going to essentially become superum it's what the Communist thought as well that the average human their intelligence would become so much that everybody would be a genius that's what they
really believed that communism would lead to like the promise of these lunatics is always insane amounts of status and religions too that's what heaven is isn't it Heaven is and it's also hope to people who have none yeah that if you go along with this and there's much more people that have none than have some and have a lot you know those people are the problem let's go get them there the reason why I'm so sad yeah but you don't understand that's just a trap it's just a giant trap that massive trap but it's so it's so wild that most people don't address it that way they just get even really brilliant people I know just get locked into these ideologically captured Echo Chambers yeah and when there's a story that um our status has been unfairly um squashed and it's these people's fault that's when it's dangerous and of course you had that with the Nazis they blame the Jews for everything um but you also get that certainly in this day and age I mean you know like men get blamed for for a lot in this day and age white people get blamed for a lot in this day and age and that's why it gets a bit I'm not not saying it's anywhere near as dangerous as that of course but but but it's the same psychological kind of patterns repeating again and again and again we we've been unfairly deprived of status and it's their fault and that's really dangerous those kinds of stories it is but I I feel like it's just an overcorrection and I feel like it's the wind the you know the wave washes this way and the wave washes that way and if you look at the wave of what black people had to fac in this country it's by every definition it's far worse absolutely of course far far far far far worse than anything that white privileged people are experiencing today obviously yeah it's also a clear indication that an imbalance which was always there still exists so many of these places where people have the most to spare and people have done nothing to fix it and those places that a lot of them that have the most to spare it's directly connected to slavery like you could follow it to that poverty that's where it came from like you it's Generations later but they never recovered and you don't do anything
about it yeah like that's that when in the in the face of they just last night in the middle of the night passed some new Ukraine Bill like in the middle of the night I know they passed some Bill it's like how much is is it Jamie 95 billion 95 billion wow plenty of money wow that's a lot of money yeah imagine what they could have done with the money that they've already pumped in Ukraine just in the inner cities of this country imagine imagine if there was we said there's a war on crime and poverty and despair this is our new war instead of a War on Drugs instead of a war on foreign countries you know questionable origins of how this conflict started what about a war on the things that suck about America yeah that's that's what I mean that's what happened in in America in the 1920s there was the New Deal the Social Security C the GI bill they pump loads of money into fixing America after the the Great Depression and it worked like there was the whole era in America they called it the great compression because it was a compression between the gap between the rich and the poor and that was the era in which a an ordinary American person with without a college degree could could have a house and a car and a vacation every year and a wife at home raising their children yeah that's how it can work without socialism like everybody rise up not not [ __ ] take all the money away from the successful people you could rise up too but we have to figure out a way to fix these problems that have existed forever in this country that get no attention yeah yeah this at a certain point like one of my favorite stories of this this year was when G Jing ping came to San Francisco because when uh San Francisco has this horrible homeless problem it's really bad where they have tents everywhere but when he came they cleaned everything they took everybody away they don't know whether nobody said nothing they put up fences where they so they couldn't put the tents there anymore they put a fences in front of these buildings where the they would camp out they just took them all away and then when Gigi ping came through it was all beautiful it's amazing isn't it it's literally sounds like what we would say China would do yeah when we would make if we were GNA we were going to make fun
of a foreign country that we were in dispute with we would say yeah when we sent our leaders there you know what they did they [ __ ] got rid of all the protesters they everybody was protest they killed the protesters they they took all the homeless people away all the bums in the street urchins this what totalitarianism looks that's what totalitarianism looks like that's what he did in San Francisco yeah yeah that's hilarious it's just but the people that live there are so in that cult they're so in that leftist cult that they're never going to go hey this is not working doesn't matter how many [ __ ] needles you have to jump over how much human shit's in the street they'll keep voting the same way yeah because they have to believe what they have to believe in order for their peers to give them the your thoughts on this the way you describe it is the only way that makes sense it must be a status game that you can't get out of otherwise they would have gotten out of it yeah it's it's counterintuitive to success and and the evolution of the the the community it's counterintuitive to it I mean one of my favorite ones is the the satanic Panic was an insane status game and thing and and and so that that began in the early ' 80s and essentially what you're doing is you're saying to a bunch of therapists and family counselors um that that that that you can be like a like a incredible hero because America is full of these satanists running kindergartens and they're secretly abusing your children and we need to go and hunt them out and so so because that belief gives them status they they all decide to believe it and and and so and and same with the police the police think they think they were like on the hunt for the you know this all loal nebor put memories into children's heads and had those children come back and and change their stories that's right I mean and some of the some of the um stories that were that came out that were believed it was like children were saying they had their eyelid stapled shot there was one kid that said that she got flushed down a toilet into a a secret underbound abuse chamber some somebody said big is this kid that it it began with this book P
Michelle remembers Michelle remembers the discredited 1980s book written by Canadian psychiatrist Lawrence P one that began it all like she she said that she she um was she had um devil horns in a tail surgically attached to her body married her did he yeah said an eventual wife I bet she was hot The Crazy Ones like that I bet she was fun that's what happened he bought into it he's like yeah baby he said at first I thought she was making out but then I thought it was true and and her story there was an 81 day Satanic ritual where where where Jesus and the Archangel Gabriel turned up and conveniently removed all the scars of her abuse there was there was nothing left oh that's convenient yeah I bet she was hot but but the amazing thing about the satanic Panic was that um I think it was like there was 190 arrests 83 people went to prison one person went to prison on the solely on the basis of the testony of a three-year-old child oh my God so this one couple that owned a daycare spent 22 years in prison and there was never obviously never physical any physical evidence there was no tigers or sharks or you know scars in the eyelids where the with them shot but people people were offered status to for believing this [ __ ] so they believed it and therapists police officers lawyers judges Oprah was big on it har Rivera was big on it journalists were big on it everybody believed even though there was no evidence like one of the one of the great guiding slogans of the satanic planet people was believe children which has amazing Echoes doesn't it Stu on today that's what it say so you had to believe the children and and they had this they had this statistic that only two in every thousand children make this stuff up so you have to believe them so they' even have badges believe children they had the believe children um organization um bothered about Dungeons and what I never can you show me a photo of the woman yeah yeah I want to see if she was hot I bet she was and I bet it goes back to what you're talking about too though because I think status in his relationship with his woman allowed him to believe some nonsense and also the $300,000 Advance he got for his well so much for my theory damn it I hate when I'm wrong but
she might have just fun you know but he was ugly too though for him that's probably as good as he gets right you got to judge it on a curve then this is this her that's older bro no one looks great when they get old that's not fair that's not fair you son of a [ __ ] who is but this these are older pictures she she's a young woman here these pictures what is it one when she's a young woman the one up there in the corner is that when they first arrested her yeah these are from the let me put on screen these are from like the 80s or whatever this started but whatever I was just looking at like this NPR brought up says Q andon revives the satanic panic but who is this woman maybe that's her now I don't know the problem is some people are crazy and they will make up stories and then there's people that are just trapped in these witch hunts like the like the mcarthism of the the 50s everyone was a communist yeah I mean Oppenheimer got roped into that [ __ ] yeah there's there's so many people that were being accused to being communist you went to one meeting like what's this all about well that's it and people call this moral panics but I don't think they are moral panics they're status Gold Rush you know so the state is on offer for finding Satanist was massive they like the government pumped tens of millions of dollars into these organizations they became famous there was one person who interviewed children who who who got paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for inter and and they're kids so when they're saying I got flushed down a toilet I got forced to kill baby tigers it's clearly stuff that four-year-olds are inventing right but it was taken to be serious and people went to prison for years on the basis of this testimony and and so so that's that that that another thing that changed my thinking it's idea of moral panics I think often moral panics are actually just these status frenzies status kind Rush movements where there's so much status and offer for believing this nonsense that people helplessly because that's how we're wired start to start to believe it boy social media doesn't do us any favors with that does it the ability to just tweet out something the moment something hits the news or whatever and your hot
take on it how many [ __ ] people have lost their careers yeah because of a hot take yeah yeah exactly I mean that's the thing you know I was talking about there's different kinds of status virtue status success status virtue status is the easiest status get success is hard you've got to become competent you've got to become good at something virtue is easy especially on social media so so so that's why it sort of becomes addictive people just make themselves feel good get these little hits of Feelgood but it's also indicative of who you are because no one who's like really competent at something is engaging in that all day long like that that thing is usually by people that don't feel like they're getting the attention they deserve and then they'll go after whatever the [ __ ] it is whatever it is whatever cause there isour have you get to either yell at people or yell with people yeah and I think for me it's interesting I don't know whether this is true or not but one of my sort of pet theories is that the rise of all this social justice activism online happens um after the financial crisis so in in 2008 begins with the Occupy Movement and you can sort of draw a straight line for occupy to what's going on today and I think there's a sense amongst Millennials and gen Zeds a real true sense that the success games that we were playing in the 80s '90s and 2000s are over now the game is fixed um for Millennials and J gen Zed's life is harder in lots of real ways they can't go on the property ladder they've got massive student debt they're underemployed um so so so what do you do if you can't play the success games that W Gen X has played in the 90s well you play virtue games instead so you know we have to get our status from somewhere so if success is hard we we're going to do more virtue so so I think that's at least part of the explanation for what's happened since you know that's the financial crisis was is you know the story that we were left with was that these people were were unpunished uh that that that the game is fixed it's dangerous it's um it's not working anymore so there's a lot of anger you know comes out of that yeah it's um it's just so unfortunate how easy it is to engage in this behavior and how few guidelines there are to like other than
your work and some other people have talked about it but it's like it the way you're saying it and the way you're saying it in your book and the way you said it on trigonometry it it allows people to have like a look at the wiring under the board like oh this is what the problem is and I would hope that people that are engaged in that realize like what a psychological capture that [ __ ] is it's it's so weird for you because you get I've I've had friends that have had like real problems with like engaging with people on on Twitter like they'll they'll post post a hot take and then someone post back and they'll be like walking down the street and they can't even walk five steps before they're checking they want to check their likes and check their thing and see who's responding and then respond to the person who's responding and [ __ ] you and [ __ ] this and and everybody's trying to zing on everybody and it's it's not good it's not good in any way shape or form it never turns out well there's never one of those you go I feel good about that that was really good I definitely won that one not just that but I feel like we got some good accomplished no that's most of those are not that most of those are h style weird um like unnatural ways of communicating you're just communicating through text with strangers it's like so unnatural and it is it's I mean that's what that's what social media is it's it's they've they've they've to taken the status games of life and put them in in your phone I mean and that's what like like in the 90s there was all this like from wied magazine and people all this digital Utopia and they thought that when we're all online um it was going to create this hierarchy free Utopia but because that's not what happens when you connect billions of people together they play status games that's what they do and those three games of dominance virtue and success that's social media you know we're pushing each other around we're virtue signaling and we're showing off about our success that's what we're doing and that's why you know that's why social media is so addictive because every time you make a contribution to social media you're like pulling the wheel of that slot machine and Status goes up or it goes down and that's why
they're doing this because it's it's compulsive because if we're gambling with a resource that is incredibly important to us yeah and you can do so in a way that never existed before like if you're some guy shredded and you just do [ __ ] curls on on Instagram all day you'll get a lot of people to pay attention to you yeah absolutely have workouts with your shirt off you'll get a lot of followers if you're a woman in your underwear rolling around you know on on sheets and stuff you get a lot of followers for doing not much else and and that's the that that's the sort of the halting thing when I realized that actually you know status is a resource that we need if we don't get enough status we get mentally ill and we get physically ill too so being low status is bad for us physically and a lot of people have more status in their phones than they do in their actual real life you know they're going to their ordinary job and their ordinary town but on this platform they're really someone they've got a bunch of followers so so so it's that's that shows you how what you know why social media is so powerful it's like it's been globally successful in every culture um so soci media is caught on because it's offering something that humans fundamentally value enormously and need to survive which is which is status it's a new way of harvesting this incredibly valuable resource that we value more than gold you know when you say that people get physically ill from it like what happens to people when they don't get status physically it's the same as I think it's quite well known that loneliness is bad for us but loneliness is connection status is the same so there there was a bunch of really interesting experiments done in the UK in the British civil service which is a massive organization hugely stratified and this guy Dr Michael mut and his team went in there to and they they found that um your place in the hierarchy predicted your health outcomes and this wasn't to do with how healthy you were in other respects or wasn't to do with your diet you know where they controled for all of that stuff um um literally the person one down from the very top had slightly worst Health outcomes from the person at the very top and they were really significant so for
middle-aged people uh the people at the bottom of the hierarchy had four times the risk of death than the people at the top of the hierarchy wow and then they and then other academics went into the lab and they did an experiment with with monkeys I think baboons and they gave these monkeys these delicious diets of like pizza and ice cream they basically made them really unhealthy so filled them with AOS scerotic plaque um and fig and tried to work out who got sick and who didn't get sick as a result of their terrible diets and it was it was the PE the monkeys at the bottom of the hierarchy got got sick more you know more reliably than the people than the monkeys at the top and on the same terrible diet yeah and and crucially they then they then somehow change the hierarchy and the health outcomes changed in Long lock step so so the the monkey that was at the how did they change the hierarchy I don't know I don't know how they did that thats don't want to know it's probably really horrific with monkeys like how do you pull that off yeah so so so it is it's the it's the it's the status hierarchy and and it's for the same reason as loneliness when the brain registers that we're that we we're lacking in the resource of stateus it puts us into that stress state of raises inflammation lowers antiviral response and we're not designed to be in that state for a long periods of time um it's that that's a that's a a response that's designed for being you know when being chased or attacked it's supposed to be like this and so chronic inflammation is really bad for us it makes us more vulnerable to you know cancer Alzheimer's all kinds of horrific um issues so so that's why lacking in status is is bad for our physical health for is the same reasons why loneliness is bad for our physical health and that has to play a role in what gets diagnosed as depression then oh status is massive for depression um a sudden drop in status is a is a red flag for for suicid ideation when we suddenly drop in status um so you know anxiety depression self harm is all tied to feeling sort of low in status and in my in my spare time I volunteer back in the UK for a uh uh like a crisis hotline people phone it particularly when they're suicidal oh man what a great thing if someone
suicid to get a hold of you that's a cool conversation you know some people they'd be droning on and on like bro you're not inspiring help me out what I found is the people who are suicidal who call me there's there's generally three reasons why people get suicidal in my experience on the phones the first one is chronic pain people obviously uh second one is people struggle with recent bereavement people become suicidal when somebody they love or a pet they love um has gone but the by by far the most common reason people phone when I've spoken to a suicidal is to do with their call identity failure that they they they're severely lacking in connection or status usually both and not only are they lacking they're stuck they're trapped they feel like there's nothing I can do my life is so [ __ ] there's no way I can ever meet anybody there's no way I can ever feel status full in the world and and so so so yeah this is it's it's a massive red flag for uh you know that's that's that's a huge reason why humans choose to end their lives because they they feel like I'm severely lacking in connection and status this is such an important thing to talk about because this is never discussed when people talk about depression all they ever want to tell you is that it's a chemical problem it's not your fault that's all they ever want to tell you yeah they don't want to tell you that the quality of your life affects the way you feel and if you're doing what you want to do and you have good friends and you're having fun times and you're a good person you're nice to people they're nice back they like being around you cuz you're fun then your life is better but that's connection status is also really you know essential it's it's a big part of that and all of that contributes to this thing that we call depression absolutely and no one wants to say that they want to say get on this come on man we got something for you buddy yeah pop this yeah it's crazy because because it seems so obvious it seems so obvious it does but you can't bring it up it's almost like it's a forboden topic you you can't say well how much of it is like what you're doing with your life yeah does that factor in at all how much of it is like the kind of friends you're around what kind of relationship exactly I mean one of the
things I do because of my knowing about status when I'm on the phone with these people is I always make the point of at the end of the call trying to build them up a bit you know I tell them and I mean it sincerely that that that the fact that they phoned in this what is probably the worst night of their life is heroic that they're courageous that most most people don't suffer like you're suffering and and you know so so what you you know like these and it always it always goes down well they always go oh my god wow you know no one's ever said that stuff to me before like it's like a you know it's magic the effect it has on the phones when you just give people a bit of I think you're an impressive person I think you're kind I think you're smart or whatever it is that I feel they are on the phones there was a there was a case recently in in the UK um a teacher um a head teacher killed herself when her school was inspected by the government inspectors and it went down from outstanding to inadequate you know and she she she killed herself and they fact they found her journals from like the day before she did that and and she said she said in the journal um the words inadequate keep flashing before my eyes I mean so that's yeah that so that's that's horrific it was a big Scandal about oh you know are these judgments can we really reduce a judgment of the quality of school to one word um but but but that was an example exle of somebody you know that her problem was that she was really proud of the school she was running it was an outstanding school and suddenly it went to inadequate and the pain of that sudden loss of status was too much for this poor woman to was it an accurate statement or was was it was the school doing poorly for some reason or was it just a [ __ ] person that that's the question that's the problem with cess right we kind of tolerate that kind of communication with people we we look in we watch from aside like oh you know but there's something to that that is you you really are pumping out negativity it does have an actual effect on human beings on the other end as much as you like to pretend it's some sort of a sterile professional act that you're doing you're that's it yeah you're
pumping out shitty things doing it for status right when you take someone's status away like they took her status away you I feel if it is like an act of social violence like our our identity is of massive importance to us and so when someone takes that away that's why acts of or physical violence while they often happen is when someone is disrespectful to somebody else and the act of physical violence doesn't only restore that status back to its sort of set point it turns that humiliation into a sense of Pride you know you know so so that's why violence is so um tempting it's why if you if you have the capacity for violence it's often used because because it can transform that sense of humiliation into sense of Pride it turns a negative status into a positive status and and yes the key is to have enough faith that you don't care yeah you have to have enough where you don't mind some little breach of your status you're like oh really someone disrespects you you don't have to prove to them because you have to understand what game you're playing most people don't like the consequences of violence are grave like you do not want to engage in this this pattern of behavior that people have locked into their brain most of the time we don't use it you know the vast majority of human history they used it a lot yes yeah they did that again is carved into your brain yeah you must resist yeah you know in any way and most most sort of violent acts sort of concentrates in young men MH uh who are lower on the socioeconomic scale so they're people who are more aggressive by Nature physically because they they're built for that but but the socioeconomic stuff they feel slided yeah but their sens of status is more fragile because they they haven't got some great job they haven't got a college education and so they're much more worried about insecure about their sense of status so when you take it away from them it's it's it's kind of much more that's a real danger of the status game of telling those people that someone's done this to you and that those people those people should not be heard from you know those people the the reason why you're in the situation that you're in when you're empowering people to hate someone specifically because of the the way they look no matter what you
think the justifications for that it's the exact same thing in every culture when that happens it's just racism yeah absolutely it's all it is yeah and you can and you're getting trapped into it because of what you're talking about because it's a status game and you could you could dominate someone by calling them out because of their privilege and you can stop a conversation in its tracks and become completely illogical just by deciding I'm not listening to a white man yes yeah that that's absolutely right that's absolutely true it's interesting because it's like it's the oldest trick in the book it's been around for so long and um we would think that we would learn but there's something about us where we don't see the exact same thing if it's not Nazis with swers we don't see coming well I think what again it's that story heading brain we're playing a status game but but but we are conscious experience of life is a story and it's it's is fiction and the story always wants wants to make us heroic so we're virtuous and I think that makes people's hatreds are invisible to them so you you you could say to somebody and I have said to somebody relatively recently um you know I think you hate men you you've got a problem with men you're always saying this about men and that about men like it's it's it's not very nice and then she said to me well you don't understand the problems I've had in my life with men I've been abused I've been dis that the other all of which is true but but so that's her brain telling herself a heroic virtuous story that justifies her her hatred of this class of human beings and that's true for everybody that's true for people who hate women that's also true for misogynists that's true for um you know white people who hate black people that's true everybody's hatred is dressed up in a virtuous story and and I think that's right as soon as you start identifying a class of human being and saying these people are low status these people are the source of my problems that's when when you know that's happening to you and you know at some point it happens to all of us it's human nature we are xenophobic by Design you know our groups our status games we feel we're why to feel they Superior because they're our source of
status so this stuff is incredibly tempting like I like I you know like I you know we we've all fallen for this stuff in our in If we're honest in in our pasts and I think it's just really important us to be on the lookout for it and and and to be conscious of the fact that our brains are really good at turning our hatreds into a ver virt they're really good at telling us no you're right you're right these people are are the problem um and your animous towards them is actually a good thing it's heroic boy what a weird [ __ ] programming that we have yeah well it's pure tribalism is it yeah it's just uh it's it's so bizarre to see how baked in that is you know and and even with really well-intentioned Highly Educated people you know they just get sucked into it well especially you probably know about the studies that show that intelligence is no inoculation to this stuff so so so being more intelligent um doesn't make you any better at finding reasons why your stories about the world of false right but it does make you better at finding reasons why they're true so really smart people can give you 10 reasons why they're justified in their hatred of this that and the other whereas somebody they're smart can only give you like three or four so so so so so intelligence is no inoculation to this stuff if anything it makes it it makes makes it kind of worse I mean one of my stories that I wrote in one of my books um uh called the Heretics was I was hanging out with this guy David Irving do you know David Irving no so David Irving was is a was a really well respected historian of the second world war um and he just decided one day that Hitler was actually in his words a friend of the Jews and yeah that's what he said and he had no idea the Holocaust had happened and it was all done by his subordinates yeah yeah he's been to prison for his for his for his anti-semitic beliefs like like but he was really respected like the reason we know about Dresden the far boing of Dresden was because of his scholarship I think even in stter High 5 he's mentioned positively and so he's completely excommunicated now from his from the historical you know establishment um he he believes this
stuff so passionately that that that he was kind of offered the opportunity to withdraw his opinions in an Austrian Court it's in his 70s this was and he refus and went to went to prison in his 70s and so what I did because in in my book The the Heretics it's called the UN Persuader was in the US it was about why people believe crazy things and the stories that we tell and I wanted to hang out with him because he's an incredibly intelligent man who has these [ __ ] mad you know beliefs about about the world and so what I did was in order to make money at the time he was selling these tours of um Holocaust sites so you you could pay two and a half Grand and go for a week with him on these T and he would give you the real inverted history of what actually happened in these places where was he getting this information from supposedly well I mean he was from the archives I mean it was his own scholarship but he was doing that thing that you know he was finding his own interpretations of this scholarship and what did he say about like the trenches filled with bodies oh well I mean he he went through a period of outright Holocaust denial which which he then kind of repented and and the reason that he he his his flirtation with outright Holocaust denial was based on this study this guy this guy um he took a chip out of the wall of one of the gas Chambers and had it analyzed and he said is this the do death thing I don't I don't think so there was a documentary on this guy Dr Death who a guy who made uh execution equipment in the United States and he got roped up with this Holocaust and our group and they sent him to awit to examined and he and he said that it didn't show any of the signs of gas no the the the one that got Irving was that was that this person said well the amount of toxins in this concrete isn't even enough to um kill a cockroach but what what he didn't understand was that cockroaches are really unbelievably good at surviving and it's much easier to kill a human than a cockroach well not only that that stuff subsides into the we looked at it the other day that stuff subsides into the atmosphere very quickly like if you if you used it in a room and then opened up the doors it would go into the atmosphere very quickly okay yeah yeah so anyway I mean but I mean to be fair
to CU he did he did admit that that he' made a mistake there but he's still deeply deeply anti-semitic man I mean when when I was talking to him so he was from the beginning and then that flavored his Holocaust denial well it was weird what what I got from him was that he actually was somebody that is very Pro British Empire and I think he liked Hitler like his familyes he his history goes back to you know is all very embedded in the British Empire and and he and he he blamed Hitler he liked Hitler because Hitler was modeling the Third Reich on the British Empire and we had to kind of relinquish Empire to pay for the second world war or something so he so that was my sense but but more interesting than Irving were the people that because the people that were on the tour were actual proper Nazis like they had proper Nazi tattoos like full on and I was undercover so I had to pretend uh that I was also like them it was kind of a scary week um but one of the most did you get to talk to any of them all of them I was hanging out was was on holiday with them was on a coach with them and yeah like what do they like it's so weird so they they're all men um they I mean I wrote about this in the book I hesitate to to say it but but but I do write about it they they were quite nice so so so so this you're so British so so so this is this is the weird thing okay so what happened was I interviewed David Irving on day one and and you know at the time I was a guardian journalist I couldn't hide my disdain for him and it and I I kind of [ __ ] up I I let it be known through my line of questioning that I felt he was a racist lunatic so he kind of walked off and I was kind of panicking um because I was thinking I've not going enough material for my book I need to interview him again and I was talking to the Nazis about oh freaking out and then and then um the person organizing the tour I kept hassling saying I need to speak to David again I need to speak to David again and she said to me oh you know you might not know this but all the boys have got together and in your lectures at the end of the day they're all asking questions um asking David questions that they think are going to be useful and helpful for your book because they think you've been really badly treated I just thought
that's so nice of I know but that's the thing they they and that's what I write about in the book it's like the idea that these are monsters that's storytelling they're just blokes have' made a mistake about the world and what was most interesting about that was that the majority of those men had parents that had fought for the Nazis in the second world war so there was one guy on the last night of the of the of the of the trip they were going to have the showing of The you know the film downfall the super did you know the film downfall no as a German film it's incredible it's a super realistic um uh account of the last seven days of Hitler's life in the Hitler bunker it's an incredible incredible film it's all it's all set in the bunker um and so Irving was going to show downfall and give his alternative take on what was really going on and one of these guys couldn't watch downfall because his dad was in the bunker with Hitler and he found it too upsetting and that was a big light bulb moment for me so my my take away from that was that these David Irving aside these guys had all been brought up by parents who were proper Nazis and obviously Nazis a synonym for evil and they couldn't cope with the fact that their dads probably moms perhaps as well um were evil so they so they they kind of gone on this lifelong mission to convince themselves that the Holocaust was this kind of fabrication and that none of it actually happened W so the stories had in brain kicks in they couldn't allow themselves to believe this horrific thing about their parents who they adored and looked up to and probably their parents had filled their head with some of this stuff too you know knowing what you know about our desire for status and how that's just impossible to remove from the the human mind and the in human society do you think that we could have like a warning guide book for human beings the same way the Constitution is sort of a warning guide book to establish a republic like let's make some real clear checks and balances and let's make sure that the Senators and the Congress people and all this stuff gets in place and judicial branch and they planned it out to make sure that one person couldn't just kind of take over and run
it it feels like we should have guidelines specifically that we teach people at an early age to recognize that and call it out when you see it and go no no no no no yeah this is not you know I know what you're doing like you're you're hijacking this for your own good yeah and we know when people do it we can't say it because if they attach themselves to a virtuous cause what are you criticizing blank you know like what are you a Nazi or racist or transphobe whatever it is yeah it's like we should be able to see those outside of the merits of the ideas that we're discussing whatever we're discussing whatever it is some sort public social issue that everybody's debating we should be able to discuss it outside of this status trap where if you yell this everybody goes yeah or yell that that should be childlike yeah we should like shun people to do that and teach people at a [ __ ] really early age not to do it and it's hard to learn because there's no precedent it's not like there's like you know a hundred years of history on how to use the internet property nobody know they're just doing it because it seems like a thing to do that makes you feel good gives you a little shitty dopamine Spike and so they just dive in but if we could explain to people when they're very young when they're impressionable these are patterns that human beings fall into and this is why they do these things that you think they're they're being mean or they're being bullies this is why these are all the patterns and so the kids could get it in their head and maybe they could stop doing it while they're doing it at a young age and learn better patterns and then as they get older just sort of like have a much more rational way of interfacing with people yeah I think so I think I think I think we should be taught this stuff I mean one one of the things that I took away from this was that you get this idea about fascism and totalitarians how that happens is that these evil people EV come marching in and forcing everybody to believe certain things yeah but when you look at um say the rise of the Nazis fascist totalitarians they don't go in and force you to do anything they tell you stories that you want to hear they flatter you into you know that's what the Nazis did
they they they told the Germans you're right they're wrong we're going to get you what you deserve and we're going to take it out on these people that who whose fault it is so so so so so this you know this this fascist government this this this horrific episode in our history it it it didn't begin with force it began with telling people stories and stories that they wanted to hear simplistic stories about status about you're wrong um it's their fault we're gonna I'm gonna give you what you know we're going to make Germany great again and you know people people love that stuff I mean the other thing that I think is that people that people sort of need to hear at the moment I suppose is about you can't take the status away from a group of people and expect no push back so that you know that that that's why Trump got voted in because since the 60s the left have stopped caring about the white workingclass in poverty and started caring much more about minorities and women for lots of very good reasons obviously but but but when you ignore in a group and they feel disparaged and and and the real working wages for the white working class in America has fallen since the since the 60s their quality of life has has plummeted um they're going to react and it's the same way that I feel that we that we're treating young men at the moment you can't raise a generation of young men in an environment where where you take all their status away and not expect them to react so people worry about oh my God Andrew T how are people flocking to these the these men that I don't know anything about Andrew Tate but you know say he misogynist um what how could it be that the our young men are flocking to this individual it's because you're calling them a you know you're calling them names you're you're removing their status so you can't you know the left need to understand you can't disparage and dismiss and insult these entire categories of people and I speak as a lifelong leering person you can't do that and not expect some push back my friend dunin said that about the pandemic when the the people on the left were attacking all the people on the right he he said dude this is going to lead to a totalitarian right-wing government he goes watch what this
happens Watch What Happens cuz all these people on the left are going crazy was like and when I saw the the riots and shutting down the streets he was like oh this is going to lead to a totalitarian right-wing government because it's going to be the opposite reaction to this yeah yeah yes exactly so yeah the the harder one hits the harder the response and then the harder they hit back and it ratchets up the retor but the rhetoric ratchets up doesn't it I mean that's happens it's um it is potentially dangerous it's potentially very dangerous and it's not dangerous right here yet right now but it is in if you're in Gaza it certainly is if you're in Ukraine it certainly is in other parts of the world where they convince people that these people are the bad people we're the good people go get them and then there's the reality of bad people what do you do about them I mean you can't just ignore the fact that there's terrorists out there like you got to look at all of it you the whole thing is [ __ ] nuts and if we can recognize patterns and how people fall into patterns I think we can have less nuts just like this has to be established like at a young age yeah you got to get it into it's hard for people once they've become set in their ways and especially if they're like politically active or socially active online and they're really kind of addicted to it that's really where they get their J jollies from if you just tell them right now you got to cut that out like what am I going to do for 10 hours a day that's literally what I do you know that's one of my um things that I've always gotone back and forth in my head about is universal basic income one part of me is always like you know what if people just had enough money for food and shelter then they could go do what they want to do they could chase their dreams and pursue their dreams the other part is me is like yeah but then they're not going to have any incentive to do anything they're going to have their food taken care of they're going to have their shelter taken care of and they're just going to [ __ ] there's going to be a certain percentage of people that are never going to get their ass going they're never going to we're going to miss wasted potential of people who could have pulled their life together
and become something really special by overcoming these bizarre obstacles that lead you to success in any given field but if all of a sudden you you have all your food taken care of and your shelter taken care of and you just want to sit there and you're okay but you see like you have no there's a certain amount of people that need a little something to get them going and a lot of like really ambitious people came from poverty yeah and it's because when they were young they didn't have [ __ ] and then they figured out that there's you got to work harder and you got to go after things but I think we all have different personalities and and people are going to respond to poverty in different ways and some people have a particular personality where they're wired more for the procedure status where they're going to go [ __ ] this not you know a certain percentage are going to go for it they're going to use it and they're going to chase their dreams yeah and my so my argument is is a bit as a as a lefty is is that a lot of that is genetic and and can't be helped so really yeah yeah so genetic yeah like so so you know ballpark figure 50% of who we are is is genetic so so we all have different personalities types and um so if you're extrovert um that's a good thing in our neoliberal market economy because you're sociable you're ambitious uh if you're low in agreeableness that's also a good thing in our particular um environment because you're competitive but if but if you're not those things and if you have a low IQ and if you are uh then then you are you you know you are going to struggle massively to compete in in the world today so my argument is that is that those people deserve some help you know those those people deserve a social safety there because there's no such thing as a pure meritocracy because we're not we don't human brains don't roll off the production line at foxcom we're all wired differently with different talents and the fact is some people have low IQ some people have personalities which are antisocial uh which mean that they can't get on in human groups they lose their temper and we can try and help those people but you can't completely rewire those people like it's impossible for example to turn an extrovert into an introvert because of you know because a
lot of that is genetic like we're born with these semifinished brains so so genes aren't fate but they do set us in a certain direction and most of the rest of that kind of creation of self happens when we're young in the first 20 years of life um and it's mostly sort of episodes of Life over which over which we have no control so by the time we in our 20s early 20s we're kind of who we are there's not much that's going to change us in a dramatic sense apart from serious trauma um so so I think that's why we you know that idea of neoliberalism with cushions I think there are categories of people that are always going to need our help through no fault of their own because they're just not equipped biologically to deal with this hyper competitive world that we're all bought into these days what percentage of people that do have the potential to break out of that won't because of a social assistance net that's a little bit too comfortable well I I I think is there a percentage that we're going to lose I don't know but but but I think what we need to have is and I think that's why education is so important because a good school system will find those incredible talented people like my father was from a family of bricklayers going back generations and he had a scholarship to Oxford University you know you you yeah a great school system discovers those people and motivates them and tells them you could have an incredible staff if you just do a bit of work you've got an excellent mind and an excellent personality and and I and I think that's the that's the job of the school system is is to is to is to find those people and give them the very best education they can possibly have and again that's a that's a welfare kind of social safety net tax big sort of slightly bigger tax thing that certainly is but the idea of just straight money and housing oh right yeah that's what I'm talking about yeah straight money and housing is a different kind of social safety net and I think that there's a real good argument for what you're saying that some people are just they just don't have the tools but then there's also a good argument that some people have never been given the
opportunity to excel in a thing that they're interested in because they never really found a thing they're interested in it's just getting there's some people that were like LED very unspectacular lives and then they found this one thing and they got really good at that one thing and became a superstar at it and they'll they'll tell you you know I was 28 years old I was just kind of [ __ ] around one day with my friends and then I really got into it and then I started and then next thing you know like this guy's like a like a famous person in the field or whatever it is that happens that does happen but it probably happens less if you have everything taken care of MH so there's a bunch of things going on there's people that are kind of hopeless unfortunately and maybe that is uh a genetic thing maybe at least some of them it is a genetic thing but then there's also people that are uninterested and maybe uninspired and maybe they just maybe it's not as simple as them going to school it's just maybe like seeing someone around you that lives life in a way that you admire someone who's like I want to be like that guy or I want to be like her like what is that and where how do you get that to people because that's a big factor that's a giant factor in who you become a as a an adult human being it's like who are you exposed to as a child absolutely yeah so there's a really great academic he may even been on this I don't know could Joseph Henrich he's done lots of work in how we operate groups and he he he's done this research that shows um that um those people that we kind of glom on to es you know especially when we're young but but we never stop doing it um there there are various cues in our environment that we subconsciously seek out to mimic people one of them is similarity so so so we identify people who are a bit like us so men are more likely to glom onto men women women that kind of thing um and then there's there's other various cues there's like um uh skill cues so if if we see somebody's really competent at something we'll be you know we'll start to mimic them and copy them um they're success cues so the the the symbols of success so the fast car or in the tribal context the the necklace of teeth um and then and then the other one is um Prestige cues so if we see lots of other
people attending to one person we'll also attend to them and then um the psychologist called this the Paris Hilton effect where the more people look at somebody the more people look at them and it just goes into this runaway thing and get somebody like Paris Hilton who's got no apparently skill for anything who becomes globally famous so so so so the brain's always looking for these people um to um sort of identify and then copy and and the logic is that these people are high status they've worked out how to earn status in the game that we're playing and so by copying them we too will learn and and and rise in status so I guess that's just a long wind winded way of saying that role models are really important and I think that's why we see you know the government always worries about issues of like street gangs in socioeconomic lo you know in poor places jihadist groups in those places and the reason we have street gangs and jihadist groups isn't because boys will be boys and they're naughty they're criminals they're monsters na yeah it's because they need status and so if you're if you're a young man growing up in a horrible estate in South London and you're 14 years old and you want status and you've got a choice I'm going to work in the super Market stuck in shelves or I'm going to become a drug dealer and drive a Ferrari what are you going to choose so so so so that's what Society needs to figure out it's kind of what you were saying is is that is that we need to give young people especially in lower socio academic groups more opportunities to earn status I me that's one of the things about being middle class is you get all loads of opportunities to earn status you get an education you go to college you can choose all these careers but poorer people just don't have those opportunities and so I think you're right I think lives are wasted Val human value is wasted because those opportunities just aren't made for young people you ever listen to Gangstar no Gangstar has a song about it called just to get a rep oh really yeah it's all about people doing things just to get a reputation yeah yeah yeah there there was a um a guy in the 70s who went to this it was Nigerian Africa and there used to be this um Roy
like a like a run by the Royals so arist ratic um rulers and then these jihadists came in and just got rid of them all and he was curious this guy his name was baskam I think that what Jerome baskam why is it that Islam is really popular in this place because it they should it should be hated because they they've Swept Away everybody's um status games the existing status games they were playing so he went in and he and he met two uh former like descendants of the Roy royalty and one of them was a a peanut seller and he was miserable and he was kind of duped and depressed and struggled in his marriage and was bitter because he used to be this big man and now he was nothing and the other guy had gone into you know the Islamic the Muslim the status game of Islam and he would you know he learned the Quran uh by the age of 16 which is very prestigious he and yeah and so so so he was killing it so he um he he was proud he had multiple wives he was happy so he wasn't wealthy but he was happy so so he said you know that's why Islam was popular in in that place is because it was offering a a new and functional status game so when you've got nothing um you you find a game to play if you want to be successful in your own mind and in your own in your own health and and so that that's how Islam became so popular and successful there and that's how you know how religions become popular generally they offer people who have not much else reliable path the status yeah that's why they try to squash them as quick as they can in this country when new ones pop up yeah thus wo you know yeah and thus so many of them well that's what again that's what happens under communism and narcism one of the first things they do is they get rid of all the other rival status games like a big one in the Soviet Union was the the Christians you know they they would torture and kill them yeah yeah because it was because and still in China today yeah it's um they see religion as a rival status game and you can't have that in a big totalitarian state yeah the weaker one's crazy one right because it's hard to get information about what exactly is going on what are they making these people do yeah it's um such a strange subject in that it's so pivotal it's it's so
crucial to understanding how human beings behave and what we do but yet it's so rarely addressed instead they look at all the symptoms yeah everybody looks at all the side effects and all the but they're not looking at the actual pattern that people seem to just naturally fall into yeah I was amazed when I wrote the book that nobody had written it before because because it is just it just seems so fundamental and I think part of the thing is that people are in denial about their own interest in status I think we've evolved to hide it from from ourselves and and so so so people will insist that they're not interested in status but like you are like it's in your wiring everybody's like nobody wants to be called an [ __ ] yeah at all and and that's because it's a removal of your status yeah it's like that thing the I don't care thing of course you care everyone cares it's nonsense and you get get you get like self-help Guru saying you shouldn't care what other people think about you but it's like you're always going to care we we're designed to care very deeply because other people give us our our status so and also why would you not want to care because that's that's a psychopath exactly that's the problem yeah the other thing they say is that how do we get out of the status game and it's like the same thing it's like why would you want to because status is your reward for offering value to other people so why would you not want to offer value to other people that's like the definition of a loser like if you if you stop caring that other people think you're a valuable person then you really are those people that you were talking about that just have no get up and go you're the unber exactly yeah the unibomber really didn't like people no but he he was another one he was another guy that that that did you know the roots of the uni is is fascinating that that he went to was it Harvard University and had those experiments and that was an exercise in humiliation yes it was the L LSD studies and part of the what they did when they dose him up with LSD and they would do humiliating things to him and berate him and they it was they were doing it as an experiment they were trying to see what they could do to him and how he would
react and the fact they were using LSD while they were doing this is so nuts yeah they they they got him to they said it was a g to experiment and the first thing to do was he had to write down in great detail all of his Secrets all of his hopes and dreams like his most personal important things and then he was sat in a desk like this with lights shining in his face and all these people were just mocking him mocking him mocking him tearing him to bits so absolutely humiliated him and then what happened you know you know the story of his childhood too I don't know the story of his childhood when he was a baby he was very ill and so they brought him to an infirmary and he wasn't allowed to have any contact with his parents for like months so for like several months while he was a child I don't remember exactly how long but it was horrifically long he didn't get human touch which you know they didn't understand back then I guess that that's crucial to the development of a human being without it you literally a baby will go mad and so then when he was older one of the things his brother talked about because his brother was the one who read the manifesto and recognized his brother's handwriting because it wasn't just a Manifesto It's the way the specific way that he was talking about about things and the way his understanding of technology and it was his brother his brother had this like crazy anti-technology philosophy a [ __ ] time ago but he was saying that like if he made an advance on a girl and the girl rejected him he would be horrific and angry and write letters and just berid her like it was crazy where he had to go what the [ __ ] are you doing so he knew his brother was just broken he was always broken so to take that guy and dose him up with LSD and humiliate made aing Monster and and who did he attack like the the UN in unibor his universities he he he took his you know with revenge on the intellectual class who were kind of creating this world he he hated it's like um he alot about Elliott Rogers the the Spree killer you know he he felt rejected again and again and again by the by the pretty girls of the world so his brain told in this horrifically misogynous story that girls women were responsible for all the evils in the world and decided to to go out
and you know kill a bunch of them that's what the brain does it tells us these stories that the people who are responsible for my lack of status are evil and they must be destroyed it's a horrible pattern it's a horrible pattern that people get into and again not not really that commonly discussed no it's only we only discuss the actions themselves not the root cause of it but how do you get a guy like that Elliot Rogers guy how do you how do you fix that how do you stop that from happening well he he left behind a like a I think it's 80,000 word autobiography called my Twisted life did somebody publish it he put it on the internet before he did his killing he killed six people and it's an incredible read like I'm not joking I like yeah it's it's it's horrific but he's brutally honest about himself like like he you know he his life was absolutely miserable and so what I found was really interesting was that he he he always starting in adolescence he felt where he was bullied relentlessly at school um and he he was desperate for a girlfriend he was just weird around people in general but he was kind of holding it together because he was obsessed with World of Warcraft so he would play World of Warcraft obsessively he he got he got a lot of status in he got to the highest level which apparently is a very rare thing to do and then what happens is that he he's just got these two or three friends that he plays World of Warcraft with at the internet cafe and then he finds out one day that they actually playing without him in secret because they don't want to play with him anymore and that breaks him that's the thing that breaks him so he goes from just being a casual you know very unpleasant misogynist to somebody who is mentally ill he starts talking about how that definitive though CU what did they say the reason why they stopped hanging out with him for he might have been insane already well he was certainly he certain wasn't normal but in in his in his Memoir he goes from being a yeah definitely a weirdo like without without a doubt but but then he starts then he starts telling a story where actually um he's this kind of Godlike character that that that um has a special Insight in in in the world and the special Insight is that um all the evil in the world is
because women choose jcks to procreate with and not not and not Superior people like him so what he's going to do is take over the world and abolish sex uh because sex is at the root of all evil and and he's going to allow certain women to procreate under certain conditions but only for the continuation of the species and so so this he he goes from just being a misogynist and an outcast to somebody who's mentally ill well call me cynical but I don't think people not playing World of Warcraft with you can do that I have a feeling yeah he might have already been out of his [ __ ] mind yeah he was that's just me well yes he was definitely getting that way but for me it was interesting that his his only remaining source of status of war was taken away from him and and it was that day when when he has this Revelation so maybe it's a coincidence I bet already out of his [ __ ] mind there's no way that just does it to you no no I'm not saying he went from black to white it just went he went from he went from being a horrible awkward misogynist to somebody who was having these fantasies of abolishing sex and that he was a God Like that's that's a that's a kind of difference yeah it was the it pushed him over the edge yeah that that that's what I think and there's a lot of people out there that are just on the edge yeah yeah yeah so that's why I think it's so that's why I think it's healthy to have you know lots of different status games you know I think I think the healthiest people have multiple sources of status yeah you were talking about that in the trigonometry podcast like have more than one thing that you're interested in that way all of your emotional selfworth is not invested in one particular thing that you do yeah it's like a really good advice yeah I'd try to follow that advice good yeah I like to keep I tell comedians too you should have things you're interested in other than comedy have something you really love that's fun to do something you engage not just something you watch but something you do that's why I joined this volun for this Crisis Line because it's like the only thing I do is right if this is taken away from me right right right it's it's that's interesting yeah but also there's like something really powerful about helping
somebody you know it's almost selfish but you know what I mean it is though it is like it like definitely it's um um I mean that in the best possible way I'm really think it's selfish I think it's wonderful but I think it's kind of selfish in that when I do really nice things it feels good too but that's but but that's again that's the it's the status game it's like we we are wired to when we offer earn that kind of virtue based status we're wired to feel good about ourselves that's that's healthy that's normal it's good the fact that humans automatically reward each other and ourselves when we give to others is probably the most wonderful thing about our species it's like an incredible thing that we do yeah so it's it's nothing to be I don't think there's anything to be ashamed of that people feel good about doing good things that's how it's ought to be that's that's part of the reason why we do good things we're wired to give to the back to the tribe yeah and the only thing that stops more of it is people that are in severe Despair and then they get real selfish because they have to they're looking out for themselves that's one of the major problems with not addressing all the horrible spots in a in a country it's like you're just going to have more people in despair less people that engage in this status game in a in an enjoyable way in a beneficial way yeah that's right yeah yeah and that's uh that's one of those things that like crosses both ideological boundaries it kind of and this is where I think we have a real problem is that so many people just subscribe to whatever one side believes because of this status game and they don't take into consider like why am I attached to this idea what does it have to do with the other ones that I like yeah like why are they all in together how come if I believe this I also have to believe in that CU that's what what it is like if I if you tell me that you don't believe in climate change I can guarantee you how you're going to vote yeah that's right I mean that's say like like in the UK like somebody that um thinks that there should be more public money spent on buses I can guarantee but also would also be more likely to be on the Palestinian side of the Middle Eastern conflict 100% buses Middle East
nothing to do with each other but but they and I've got how do you feel about guns sir yeah do you believe in the Second Amendment cuz I [ __ ] do and then I know how you're voting that's it I mean I've got this kind of idea that that once you're past the age of 45 or even 40 if all of your beliefs line up with left or right then that something's gone wrong with your life like by the time you're 45 you should be smart enough to have figured out that they've got some stuff right and they've got some stuff right and you should have decided for yourself which is which yes that that's and so when I meet somebody that's my age and they're just giving this sort of list of talking points from left or right I just think oh God you're you're 16 you're a 16y old you know that's what's weird right it's weird how some people will argue about something and then when you just calmly and rationally ask him like why do you believe this like what's what do you know about the studies that were involved in this like what do you know about the origin of this like what you like you can say it in the most peaceful way and just talk just like that and they'll get hle cuz they don't have that information they just know that you must be some sort of a bad person if you're not following the narrative like come on we all know what's going on we all know what do you want Trump to win everybody knows everybody knows it's well known that and they get angry with you are you stupid are you stupid you really believe this like I just want to know why you believe it I didn't say what I believe but people can't engage like that just very few people can like stand outside their ideas and one of the things that I always try to tell is many people that listen listen one of the things that's benefited me tremendously is when I sto being attached to my ideas I don't believe in my ideas I do in the sense that these are some ideas that I have and uh I wonder if this is right but if if it's not right I'm not I'm not attached to it like I can go oh I used to think that but now I know this and that doesn't diminish your worth and but what does diminish your worth is if you [ __ ] cling to that other stupid thing even after you know it's not real yeah that's just dumb yeah like you're not your ideas you're just a human being
that's interfacing with a [ __ ] shitload of information and most of it you're only going to have a peripheral understanding of you know how ask most people how's the sewage system work you don't know it's so important you use it every day how does it function without electricity I flush it comes back what the [ __ ] going on most people have zero idea but it's like a critical part of their day that's it and about active belief it's the beliefs that become part of our identity they're The Dangerous Ones because those are the ones that are our status generators for us our status is our status depends on this idea that about biological women or about who about white versus black men versus women and then once once you're in that space you you can't trust your own thoughts because your brain isn't thinking what's true your brain is thinking how can I defend this belief how can I defend this belief because this belief is me I am this belief this is my my status game is based on this belief yeah and it's a really Danger trap that everyone can fall into all of us that's why Cults are so terrifying to me they're not terrifying to me because uh I look at these people like oh they're so stupid you know these these [ __ ] dummies are going to ruin the world no I I'm terrified because that could have been me yeah that 100% could I think it could be anybody and I think we are naive to think that we're not subject to the same kind of capture that many many people have gotten into whether it's communism or whether it's Socialism or whether it's Nazism or one of these crazy [ __ ] Cults where people cut their balls off wear the purple sneakers you could get sucked into it maybe not you maybe you are at a certain level of your life where you have enough sophistication and understanding and you're good at reading people and you can recognize [ __ ] but maybe you maybe you have enough for that but maybe the next one will get you maybe there's one that's a little bit better and you know it's kind of a church but it's a rock and roll kind of thing and you know one of the so a thought experiment that I like is is this idea that that um the kind of shows that your irrational beliefs are invisible to you so when you think about the people that are close to
you like you can you know each one of those people what they're wrong about like this person don't get don't get them talking about that no this person's mad about that and then the further you go out from your Social Circles the more wrong and mad and crazy people get to you get to the bull cut and cold and the Communists so that just leaves you in the middle the island of perfect island of absolute rationality so so you go hang on a me that can't be right so I'm Not Jesus like I must be wrong about some stuff how can when you go looking for what you're wrong about and you can't cheat by going stuff that you don't care about like what what ideas are really important to you well I'm not wrong about that I'm not wrong about that I'm not wrong about that so you can't see it you feel like Jesus you feel like I'm the most correct person literally in the world you know logically you can't be but you can't see you can't find what you're wrong about especially if you're rationalizing everything that you do and every idea that you have as being the correct idea which is why it's so dangerous your your value your worth should not be entirely your ideas that's crazy terrible strategy because you could have you could be hanging on to a bad idea and then you have to cling on to it and defend it you can't say oh that idea was bad yeah because that's you you're bad that's what's stupid about it it doesn't have to be that way you can just think of them as ideas it doesn't mean you but if you irrationally defend an idea then it is you yeah well as soon as soon as that becomes an active belief a belief that you're acting out in the world that's causing your behavior that you're trying to spread to other people and convince other people is true then you're already on a slippery slope because you're already feel think feeling irrationally about that I've seen it happen to brilliant people yeah I really have and it's so weird to watch it's like you lost them they got bit by a vampire yeah I did lot of writing about that remember the the athe the Skeptics remember when they were big yeah those guys were great but but it always struck me that they they were also irrational about certain and when I was doing my reporting um their big kind of moral Panic kind of
status frenzy was Homeopathy they're obsessed with Homeopathy like and they were like because Homeopathy is just empty pills and it's ridiculous and D D um so but I just thought this is weird because we know the placebo effects works it's a real thing so surely Homeopathy is just very elaborate Placebo theater it works as a placebo so it still works so I put this to um a guy who was a big famous atheist he presented a sort of very famous podcast at the time and I said what about the the it's a like it's a placebo effect so it's it's surely it's a valuable thing Homeopathy and he said no no no no that's not right the data is in on this we know about this he said um what we know is um the placebo is only psychological not physiological so people think they're getting better but they're not getting better but it's like hang on a minute if the perception of pain has decreased then the pain decreased like if the perception of your depression has decreased then the depression has decreased me like Advil doesn't work yeah exactly so so it's like this guy who was incredibly smart and Incredibly well known in the skeptic Community had managed to convince himself that the the the bbo effect was this fake thing that didn't really work because it was only psychological just so to to give him permission to sort of [ __ ] on Homeopathy effect work in terms of curing diseases no things like pain Z I don't think so yeah things like pain and depression things that are yeah so so it doesn't cure cancer can't shrink a tumor but it does work with pain and depression that's fascinating yeah that's fascinating yeah I mean there were wellknown studies that show that that that that when you buy a brand I always buy brand name painkillers because it has greater Placebo than the cheap Supermarket owned brand and even when you know it's the placebo it still works more so that extra few bucks that you're spending on the the brand named P isn't there just a problem with calling yourself a skeptic because why don't just be a thinker yeah it's like why why are you specifically looking at things and it's I'm cynical you know that seems silly there's a lot of things that are real like what do you do when you stumble across something that's real
well I used to be skeptical but this turns out to be legit no it's like you're just looking at everything hoping it's not legit because that's where you get your value in your status exactly I mean status from calling [ __ ] in in that um book I ended up meeting you know J you must James Randy he was their big he their big God you know and he was um he he was a a very strange um individual and as part of the interview I challenged him a lot on a lot of the things that he' claimed in his life and he ended up admitting to me that he was he' lied and been dishonest about his achievements in the past oh no yeah what achievements well achievements and also um lied a lot about the things he'd said about you know he had this million dooll challenge yes yeah so so his whole thing was like it's an easy thing to do if you prove anything uh that's um Supernatural or woo woo he used to call it you get a million dollars and the fact that nobody had ever got this a million dollars was his proof that right that that none of this could exist but there is story after story after story after Story of people applying for this million dollar challenge him backing out at the last minute for spurious reasons and then attacking that person in public um so so that happened again and again and again I think I think the worst instance of that was this Greek again Homeopathy person who who'd spent something like half a million euros setting up a study in a hospital to to test properly test whether this Homeopathy worked and just on the eve of it happening he he he insisted that has it will had to start again and a pilot study had to be made and and then and and then blamed the other guy for pulling out so I came to him with a basically a binder full of this stuff and he eventually admitted you you know I I have been dishonest I have been true but one of the amazing things about that was that was that I asked him at the end of the interview after he' admitted yes I've lied about this stuff um I said if you ever changed your mind about anything and he was in his 80s at the time I think he couldn't tell me a single thing that he had ever changed his mind about that seems crazy that is not a critical thinker that's a stubborn [ __ ] if you me and on that note hey man thank you
very much for being here it was a lot of fun I really really enjoyed it and like I said I enjoyed your interview on trigonometry and I recommend everybody go it's a great podcast anyway uh so thank you very much and thank you for the book and thank you for being able to like lay this out in such a like I said digestible way thank you Joe I really appreciate you having me on it's been amazing I I enjoyed it thank you all right bye [Applause] [Music] everybody