Joe: There's reality which is loving awareness
Sam: unconcerned by the arising and passing away of phenomena
Ali: And then there are the 10 000 things
Sam: Hello and welcome to the 10,000 things.
My name is Sam Ellis.
Joe: I'm Joe
Ali: Lowe.
And I'm Ally Kriti.
Joe: Today on the show, who is your guru?
Uh, we live in an age of online gurus, public intellectuals, cult leaders,
influencers, and uh, we thought we'd have a chat about it today.
It came about from Sam's frequent references to Slavoj Žižek,
Sam: Slavoj Žižek, I guess,
Joe: just maybe, and I've had a few over the years, Ali, I'm not
sure, have you ever had a guru?
Ali: not one in particular, but there's certainly been people I've resonated
with and aspirationally wanted to sort of, yeah, the things that I've
taken from them, but, but I wouldn't say I've necessarily put all of my.
Eggs in one
Sam: basket, Nigella and Robbie.
Joe: Yeah.
So, so, because what I found thinking about why Sam often wants
to refer back to Zizek is like.
An
Sam: appeal to
Joe: authority.
Why do you want to filter your thoughts through someone else's?
Uh, no.
Or why do you want to refer back to someone who most of us wouldn't
know who he is and whatever.
Sam: No, your complaint is that he's too famous.
Joe: Uh, my complaint is he's incomprehensible, and erratic, and
self contradictory, and basically, what I don't get is you're a much clearer
communicator, and as far as I can tell, thinker than he is, so why do you want
to defer to him, and when I jump online, what I see is him sitting in front of
rapt audiences, making Basically no sense.
And then once every 20 minutes, he says something that basically anyone down
the pub could say like, Oh, it was good.
It was good.
Like it was good when Trump handed out those 2, 000 checks.
And when he does that, he says something vaguely comprehensible
that the crowd goes wild.
They're like, Oh, wow.
Zizek made a point.
And it's like, Okay, so, confusing times we live in, a lot going on, incredibly
confusing man, that you want to refer things in this podcast back to him.
So then it got me thinking, well, he's obviously a bit of a guru for Sam.
And we were going to explore his ex ideas, but you weren't up for that, which makes
sense because they're incomprehensible.
I'll tell you what I wasn't up for.
So, I thought we could explore the broader concept of, of wanting to
have, like I'm having fun already.
Who are the public intellectuals?
Why do we want them in an age of YouTube where you can absorb like literally
hundreds of hours of someone's thoughts?
Yeah, that's right.
They can jump on YouTube and talk to talk about the latest thing in the news.
So you can filter.
Mm hmm.
Sam: Well, my, my, um, I grew up with gurus, like, you know,
like the Hare Krishna religion.
Sure.
Krishna's the, the boss.
He's at the center of a non binary God at the center of creation,
but It's all through the Guru.
The Guru is the, you know, the way to access the truth.
And you cultivate, and it also veers into, as these things often
do, into Guru worship, which then becomes part of the faith itself
and not just an expression of it.
So, like, we can't worship God directly.
Well, we can, we can worship these representations in the form of deities,
you know, like the statues, the idols, as a Catholic might call it, and we can
worship their earthly servant, the guru, and in fact, we should serve each other,
and that's how, we should be humble, and we should, you know, et cetera,
and that's how we'll become enlightened and spiritual and find God and stuff.
So you have to, Like, some people will place Jesus at the heart of their
Christianity and others are kind of more directing their thoughts towards
a slightly more impersonal God.
So in the Hare Krishnas, it's like the guru is, God is the saviour ultimately,
but the guru is The in between saviour and they're gonna, they're
gonna help get you through this mess.
Like you're in a crisis and the, that being born on this earth
is a crisis and the guru is going to help you through that.
So the guru has the answers.
The guru has the answers.
They're, they're,
Joe: they're an authorised representative.
It sounds like something set up for inherently for horrific things to
Sam: happen.
Oh, of course.
It's a recipe for disaster, but it's remarkable how often it doesn't do that.
And You know, it's not an, it's not a complete unmitigated disaster.
In the West, it was.
So when you take this guru thing and then combine it with Western values and like
marketing and, you know, big budgets.
Well, you end up with guru scandal.
And that's But India, they have guru scandals there too, but a lot of the
gurus over there, they're small time, like they've got their little local
band and, you know, you can go see some of the, you know, here's this tiny
little building where this guru met with his followers and it's nothing grand.
It's like a, basically a dirt hut.
And it's a little bit better than that.
You know, it's got cow dung floor and, you know, it's clay rendering.
My brick or something.
It's pretty basic and like they could have fit maybe 20 people
in there and that's that's that Guru is looking after 20 people.
That's it.
That seems sustainable to me When they've got like the Hare Krishna's
had thousands of followers around the world Thousands and you've initiated
every last one of those people in a fire sacrifice full proper Vedic ceremony
and they've said In vows in Sanskrit.
I like will place my spiritual progress In your hands, and
I will take your instruction.
I will do what you tell me.
And that is the most, like, yeah, explicit and condensed form.
So why do we talk about influences or, you know, Douglas Murray or, uh, you
know, the Weinsteins or Jordan Peterson.
Uh, why do we call them gurus?
Well, because people do a similar thing.
They go, that's it.
I'm going to do everything Jordan Peterson tells me to do.
I'm going to think everything this person tells me to think.
Now with Zizek, I'm referring to him a lot like I would a scriptural authority, not
so much to back up my points, but more to say there is something here I can explain.
And as you say, I can explain it more clearly perhaps.
But, if you want to know more about this, go to the source.
Go to the guy who has thought about it more than me and go, I'm really,
I'm hoping people will go and dig in and find something in there
because I've taken bits and pieces.
But I actually just want to pass people along to a higher power.
But
Joe: he is your
Sam: favourite, right?
He's one of my favourites, yeah,
Joe: yeah.
Could you simply outline?
A few of his
Sam: ideas.
He's had a very long career, um, covering a lot of different things, but I think
it's fair to say he's a philosopher, first and foremost, and he's interested in, you
know, I think worthwhile problems, like how do, you know, how do the forces of,
ideology, media, Money, how does all that impact the consciousness of, the masses?
So he's interested in consciousness, he's interested in culture, he's interested
in films and what films say and how they speak to us and how ideology
works through cinema, how it tells us what to desire and tells us what
to value and shapes that powerfully.
But what
Joe: he's interested in making the person to go to, if you want to know what's
the interpretation of what's say going on in the news, which is when I turn
on YouTube, what I see is him talking about Gaza or Ukraine or whatever.
And what I find is he, he, uh, he's talking nonsense
actually a lot of the time.
Yeah.
Sam: Sometimes he speaks in riddles and paradoxes because like all good,
many, many good philosophers do.
Joe: Talking about climate change, he was talking about four or five degrees of.
warming and London being underwater and I'm like, Oh, that was 10 years ago.
That was a possibility, but.
It's not anymore, so the conversation's moved on, so, but he finds it fun, right?
To him, it's fun and it's funny.
Yeah, okay,
Sam: we could, look, we could
Joe: probably, yeah.
So they're the kind of people that I find, they're the people I get really
angry at because a lot of people are actually listening to them and they're
talking, they're spreading fear and lies.
Alright,
Sam: well let's do the, let's, okay, the UK has been experiencing
a rapid And frightening, apocalyptic increase in flooding.
They're getting belted every other year.
No, no,
Joe: no, he's talking about sea level rise.
Sam: Okay, there's two things, yes.
Sea level rise and flooding.
Let's not
Joe: get into it because four or five degrees is nonsense.
He's talking nonsense.
Okay.
Four or five degrees is nonsense now.
Right, so.
We're not looking at that.
What, is it an old clip?
No, no, this is like a couple of weeks ago.
Look, so.
He finds it funny.
There's new books about the world's already ended.
There is no future, so let's just have a play around with the past,
that's basically what he's saying.
It just came out,
Sam: 2023.
Okay, yeah, I haven't read it yet.
I mainly access his work through the people that interpret it.
So I listen to people that read his stuff, and then And if that's not a
Joe: guru What is, like, there's people out there listening to
Sam: his words.
I listen to
Joe: the interpreters of the scripture.
To me, just on a common sense level, his words are basically nonsense.
Yeah, but no, but I've And then people are interpreting them on podcasts,
and then you're listening to the interpretations of the utterings of Zizek.
Sure.
And then you're going, this is a great way to understand the world.
And I'm going back to first principles and looking at him going,
no, no, he's talking nonsense.
Sam: Well, I'll tell you, I'll tell you what he's, what I've
gathered from his principles.
He's interested in justice and freedom, but not in any simple
version of what they are.
He's interested in maximum human dignity and how the difficult,
very, very difficult problem of how we actually do that.
Not always starting with like practical proposals, let's tax this or do that.
He's interested in.
Unpicking the difficult problem of how to even talk about it in the right way.
And I think you and he would entirely agree that these are difficult
conversations to do in the right way.
So he's just trying to get through all the, the baggage and ideology and delusion
and the rest of like, what's actually going on in like our little homo sapiens
brains and like the, how do we respond to the information environment we're in
and he's, and to analyze all of that, he's drawing on Marx, he's drawing on.
Lakhan, who was drawing on Freud, and Hegel, you know, so Hegelian
dialectics, how does history work, how does the human consciousness work,
so he's trying to address those sort of two problems at the same time.
So, and he's putting out books at a huge clip, it's impossible to summarize
his output in any meaningful way.
What I get attracted to is when I hear other people reporting back with a With
a sense of excitement and like I had a breakthrough on this My understanding
of this thing and it was reading this so I keep hearing smart people say
interesting provocative things that get me thinking And have like long
complicated discussions about it, and I don't follow all of it But then their
source material is Zizek so in the end it doesn't matter to me all that much what
he says It's a universe of discourse that he's created, and I'm part of that, and
I'm interested in being part of that.
And what he does, what seems to do for thousands of people, is just provide
pretty much the opposite of what you said.
Those people would say, he really gives me this no nonsense, cuts
through, he attacks wokeism more effectively than anyone on the right.
And he attacks all the sacred cows of the left more effectively
than anyone on the right.
And, for example, one of the famous things that he was misunderstood was
explaining the value of racist jokes.
Right?
And this is one that I'm not going to attempt to do because I don't
necessarily know if I agree with him.
But, it's a powerful argument that he makes.
Or another one, people think, he said once, Oh, people think I disagree with,
you know, the gender movement, right?
And, I've maybe not made my position clear enough.
He said, I'm interested in a common morality.
There's nothing that complicated about what I'm saying.
And I am 100 percent in solidarity with the gender movement.
I just think they don't go far enough.
They say they want freedom and they need to get it.
By others should allow me to define my gender.
Of course they should, but you should be asking for so much more than that.
So you're wrong in the sense that your target is too small.
Gender movement.
Go bigger.
You know, so he's just, he's all about prodding and pushing and
just telling everyone constantly go bigger, go bigger, go bigger.
Joe: I like that.
What I've observed in the culture is that people mod of once.
Filtered their ideas through a news outlet like a New York Times or read
the Age in Melbourne and it's kind of, everyone's kind of generally
reading the same thing and it's been replaced with And our gurus were
Sam: those boring columnists that we would read every
Joe: week.
I think so.
It's been replaced with individuals.
So like at one point Zizek debated Jordan Peterson but they're two
sides of the same coin like You put, yeah, like you and people that you're
listening to put a high value on the utterances of this one individual.
Right?
I look at it and think, wow, this is nonsense.
And then, and then another person comes along and puts a very, a lot of people
put a very high value on Jordan Peterson.
But then he says other things which are nonsense.
Well, he's
Sam: one, he's one great thing Jordan Peterson said.
Really resonated with me, and this was fairly early on, but I was
already aware of the many problems.
I was getting a sense of where it was all gonna go.
But I must admit, I'm like, man, this is a brilliant quote, and I don't
mind sharing it and attributing it.
It's your duty to make your children acceptable to others.
And I'm like, yeah, yeah, you're a fascist, you're a weirdo,
you're a reactionary, but there is some truth in that, you know?
There's no use pretending that if you let your kids be anything and everything
and you don't tell them there's any need to be accountable for anything and
don't let anyone tell you anything, it's like, well, then it's not going to work.
Yeah.
He's right.
They do need to be acceptable to society on some level.
Joe: But I guess what I'm saying is, I think it's worse.
I think it was better when, like, people had similar sources and they were, they
had editorial, they had editors, they had editorial boards, they had Now that it's
individuals, it's like you and your Zizek bros versus Jordan Peterson and his bros.
There do tend to be men, there's groups of all over the internet.
Zizek has way more female followers than Jordan Peterson, but anyway.
I just went and had a look this week at the ones that I've looked
at before, like Yuval Noah Harari, Douglas Murray is another one.
You know, Russell Brand has tried to be that, but because he's always been so
dodgy, there's always, I don't know, like, he's one who tried to go even beyond guru
and become like a, uh, a messiah, right?
Oh, a hundred percent.
So, but it's amazing how far they get.
They get all, they're all, they're all thriving.
And
Sam: the thing that brings them down is either a financial scandal,
a sex scandal, Or people just eventually go, just move on.
Oh, but see,
Joe: yeah,
Ali: yeah.
They lose their relevancy, but it's the thing at the moment with
everybody with access, well, you know, most people with access to a
phone can create their own platform.
That's right.
And so, you know, anyone could start a Tik Tok or YouTube channel off their phone
and start, you know, sharing their ideas.
And so, yeah.
Whereas before, if it was coming from a place of say, someone who's been.
Educated to become a journalist to then write in a column who's, you know, coming
from a really, it's, it's a much more limited sort of, view that you're going
to get if, and then everybody reading the same thing versus now when it's just
anybody, it's a bit of a free for all.
Sam: Yeah, and I don't, and that's what you find
Joe: alarming.
I don't think we're in a, in a healthier intellectual environment
than say our parents were.
But can we, can,
Sam: okay, but.
Can we settle, can we bring reality into it for a second?
So back in the good old days when there were editors and consensus
reality was in better shape and public epistemology, there was no crisis.
I disagree.
There were multiple crises throughout the 20th century, but we're just
forgetting about all of them for now.
We didn't live through them.
We're living through this one.
Now, when do I agree there's a crisis epistemologically?
Yeah.
And I'm absolutely fine with it.
I think there has to be an epistemological crisis because
the previous shit isn't cutting
Joe: it.
Can you define epistemology for the audience?
Sam: How we know.
So, you know, sort of the, some of the two, the two basic sort of
problems in philosophy, you know.
The problem of existence and the problem of knowledge, and you know, so Descartes
deals with both of those in Meditations on First Philosophy, and he decides that
God solves both problems, for example.
Well, I think therefore I am solves the problem of existence, you know,
and philosophies of, different philosophies deal with these problems
in different ways, different religions deal with them in different ways.
And people have expressed the moment we're living in as an epistemological crisis.
A crisis in how we know.
Others have even said it's an ontological crisis.
People are doubting their own existence on some level.
And social media is a way of, we're sort of praying that others
will validate our existence.
And I find all of that does not induce the kind of moral panic in
me that it does in other people.
To be honest, I was experiencing moral panic before consensus reality broke
down, and my panic was based on the fact that consensus reality just was
not keeping up with real reality.
And so, with the New York Times, for example, the paper of record,
never gotten it wrong apparently, or just only with small things, and
they've always issued corrections.
Complete bullshit.
New York Times were all the way on Vietnam.
So, that conflict Basically, their support was instrumental in that
conflict lasting as long as it did.
They defended it and protected it in so many ways, and were constantly on the
record as this is a justified war, it's a viable war, and, you know, we will
prevail and there will be a good result.
I think we can all agree that just isn't so.
So that prompts an uplift.
Every time the public, the penny drops about every 20, 30 years.
Oh, all the big commentators got it wrong.
And everyone looks around and goes, well, who should we listen
to then, if not the New York Times?
And now what about Iraq, 2001, Twin Towers, Pentagon says, perfect.
We had some plans in the top drawer for just this occasion.
Let's invade two countries at once.
Afghanistan, not that hard to get that over the line.
Iraq, much, much harder.
Let's distort.
Uh, let's really put our thumb on the scales here at the UN and with the
mass media and all the rest of it.
Well, guess what?
You didn't need to tell CNN to support it.
They were happy to queue up.
So the so called left wing media, absolute nonsense.
They totally backed it.
They're not left wing media.
They're corporate media.
Fox, CNN, NBC, all the big papers, all queued up to support
it 100 percent of the way.
All the way with Bush, just like in NAMM.
And then all those veterans went, Yeah, we're off to get
the weapons of mass destruction.
We're off to liberate the women of Afghanistan.
Then they all come home, busted and fucked up, and go, well,
all those people lied to us.
Then what do they do?
Trump comes along and says, Fake news.
And they go, yeah, damn right.
It is.
There's no denying it.
It was fake news.
There's no fucking denying it.
Trump didn't cause this problem.
He exploited it.
Yeah, but a broken clock
Ali: is right twice a day.
Sam: Those broken men turned to fascism, Jo, and that's the situation we're in now.
But is that
Ali: sort of in, like in a post sort of fake news world where that is, The
information that, yeah, you cannot be trusted that we, you know, we get whether
even from mainstream news sources.
Yes.
How does that play out though now with like, when you, we've got
another two wars on two fronts in Gaza and Ukraine and like, Yeah.
Sam: And the mainstream media dropping the ball on this one too.
Yeah.
Ali: So, so why did, so we gravitate towards these outliers.
Joe: Go to individuals.
And then what happens it's so it's more flawed than the New York Times.
But the individuals, you know, you can trust Brian, trust Brian.
I can't trust anyone, but I can trust Glenn Greenwald.
Then Glenn Greenwald goes weirdly pro Russia and then at what point do you go?
He's gone full Marga.
Oh, how do I get off him?
Because he was the one person because of what Sam said about the mainstream media.
Well, Glenn was the guy.
All I can trust is this one guy.
Well, you have to have a varied diet.
But, like, I was going
Ali: to say, with all gurus, or like, and you see if, by extension, like
a cult leader, when it becomes like a cult, it's that sunk cost fallacy.
Yeah.
It's like, I have invested so much.
Yes.
And I feel I've invested so much in this person, and they've been right
so long, they will get it right.
It's just, you know, and you have your blinkers on.
Yeah, it's awful.
You lose the ability to think about it critically, even when they fuck up.
And so, And that's what it is.
It's this sunk cost fallacy.
It's the same.
Yeah.
In a, in a cult setting as it is when we deify the, you know, people who, you know,
with these ideas that, you know, You know, it's like, well, how could they be wrong?
Like, they were right about all these other things, or like,
I'm going to keep persisting.
Joe: That's right.
Yeah, and then what often happens is people go outside their area of
expertise, like I say, a Noam Chomsky, or there's plenty of them, and they
go not only beyond their area of expertise, they go way beyond, and
they stop talking about their area of expertise, and all they talk about is
something that they're not an expert in.
Okay.
And that happens, and so I can look up people whose books I've read, say
like Steven Pinker, And get his latest thoughts on the latest things and at
least I've read a couple of his books So I have some idea how his mind works,
which is good, but it doesn't make him infallible No, but I had the experience.
Sam: Oh, he's he's a he's he's a lowly.
It's a bloody He's a chum of old mate in the prison, you know Epstein
and he is a sus cool liberal guy who believes in freedom and progress, but
is actually Pretty much standing by, while fascism takes over his country.
And Steven Pinker is useless, that guy.
He's worse than
Joe: useless.
Is one, is a good example, but there's a lot of them.
See, I had to reckon with the fact that in 2018, 2019 His pointless
Sam: liberalism is what enables fascism to thrive, because it's full of lies and half
Joe: truths.
I read a bunch of different public intellectuals in the last week.
and his latest interview, I read that, it actually still made more
sense than a lot of the other stuff.
Sure.
I, I read Yeah, your
Sam: no opinion thing, or this guy, or that guy, you've
followed these individuals too.
And I guess that's what you're saying.
Joe: I'm saying I've done it, and it's mostly been very bad for me.
You know, the safest place for me if I'm going to trust one person's take
on things, honestly the safest and calmest place is probably Matt Iglesias.
It's just a center left Democrat who wants Biden to get re elected,
doesn't want the end of the world, whatever, but I've stopped paying
him for information as well.
Noah Smith's different.
Noah Smith, like, wants a war with China.
Like once it became obvious how excited he gets about military spending, you're like,
all right, I can't, I can't read this.
And he's a classic example
Sam: where he's
Joe: trained as an economist, but what gets him the most clicks
is when he theorizes about China starting a war with America.
So he starts writing about that all the time.
But he's an economist, like he's not in a foreign policy expert.
So I'm constantly trying to triangulate these people.
So then I go and look at like, John Mersheimer, and him talking about
realist politics and how you can understand rationally what Russia's done.
But what I wanted to talk about was the one positive of looking to individuals
was 2018, 2019, my side of politics, the left, Was lying to me more and more
about climate change, particularly with the, Extinction Rebellion movement saying
humans are going to become extinct.
And then basically you can just pick up the Guardian and
be told it's kind of that,
Sam: right?
I didn't say, I never said humans were going to be extinct.
Joe: You're not in Extinction Rebellion as far as
Sam: I know.
But here's the thing, we're driving everything else to extinction.
But this is the thing.
That's
Joe: what XR is really about.
That's not what humans, that's not what.
Extinction Rebellion are saying, they're saying humans will be extinct.
Anyway, it's the big lie on the left, right?
That climate change will kill us all.
And do you rank
Sam: that lie as equally pernicious as election?
For
Joe: my mental health, for my mental health as an individual,
it was really damaging, right?
So I finally, and I'll never know how I got out of the ideological straitjacket
I was in, but I finally had a look At like a Michael Schellenberger and a Bjorn
Lomberg and what, what are they saying?
I know I'm not allowed to look at them because I'm a lefty, but I had a look.
And suddenly this whole world opened up of people who weren't lying to me.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Right?
Sam: And we can build nuclear
Joe: power plants that rocked my world because my side of politics
was telling me the big lie, the other side of politics was
Sam: Stop calling it the, the big lie is only one use and it's that
we should let Trump run the world.
That's the big lie.
There's more than one big lie.
No, that's the only one worth talking about.
It's actually not even worth talking about in itself, but this idea that climate that
Joe: Extinction Rebellion is engaging in the same the big lie in this,
in the Orwellian sense, if you say something that's outrageous enough,
it's probably not so hard to believe, but why would they say it unless it was
Sam: true, you know?
Look, Ali, you were trying to
Ali: No, I was just saying, like, why does, why can't you Remove
yourself from the situation.
Why does the big light like why does why can't you see that for what it is?
And
Joe: why do you expect I needed these individuals to to write books that I could
read or particularly Schellenberger's book apocalypse Never to read it thoroughly
and look just through the UN's own climate data and projections and stuff
So just thoroughly sit down and debunk 15 years of, of left, the left wing, I
understand what they're doing politically.
They're trying to raise awareness and get people alarmed
so that we act on omissions.
I get it.
But it got to a point psychologically where I was gonna, I was like a teenager
who didn't think there was a future.
Right?
Yeah.
Sure.
Ali: But also, but why is that that everyone else's
responsibility and not yours?
What do you mean?
Like why, like why, why can't you, like, I mean, obviously
the issue then is with you.
Whenever
Joe: I'm disturbed, the problem is always in me.
It's actually not the world's problem.
But what I'm saying is the balm that I found was a guru.
But then Schellenberger, straight away, off the deep end again, he
gets obsessed with like, um, right wing conspiracy theories, and
obsessed with crime in San Francisco.
Runs for governor of California like straight off the deep end, but the
book still stands as a real really good corrective To that particular decade
and a half of climate propaganda, right?
So, but he can't be my guru because he's a nutter.
Yeah, right.
Your long books probably a nutter.
Yeah, like You're really good at
Sam: getting off the train when you should it seems But
Joe: all I'm trying to find is the truth Yeah.
And I can't get it from Reading the Guardian.
So that's where my strongly recommend against it.
But that's where my, my epistemology broke down when I would have thought
like growing up, my dad used to get the Guardian weekly from the actual, it was
Sam: probably okay back then.
Yeah.
From the
Joe: actual like news agent.
Yeah.
Because it was so much better quality than the age.
So I come into this, this age going, well, I can trust it, but I can't because
they're just trying to get clicks.
Right.
Yep.
So, yep.
Capitalism balked it.
But because
Ali: I'm safe.
I mean like even with like, like with the ABC like I've there's been things
recently in particularly like some of the coverage I'm like even that's that's
always been my safe space or at least like you know at least I get something you
Joe: know.
Some of the coverage of what?
Sam: You name it.
I
Ali: was going to say particularly the war in
Joe: Gaza.
What if I said to you there's one guy who knows all about
Sam: the Middle East.
Immigration.
Triple J.
Triple J led a story with We heard first from a Sky News person about
immigration and why we need to lock
Joe: everyone up.
But Ali, what if, like, if I said to you, there's, there's one person that
you can read and watch his YouTube, read his book or her book, they're never
women for me, which is instructive.
And they'll explain the Middle East to you or give you what you
want to hear about Palestine.
Fuck the ABC.
Stop, stop watching the ABC.
Just follow this one person and they'll post every day or every two days.
But Ali, you're
Sam: probably getting updates from like a hundred, 150 sources.
Ali: Yeah, it's not just the one, but like, but yeah, no, I've just.
Yeah, sometimes I would, I mean, I just remember it was Adam and I were sitting
there and watching the news the other day and both of us, both of us were just like,
Sam: it's useless, like yeah,
Joe: we were just quite,
Ali: yeah, it was really
Sam: appalling.
It's an awful program.
Yeah.
It's the worst show on TV.
Ali: And yeah, it just, I don't know, it really, yeah, my, I suppose,
yeah, your trusted gurus when they, they disappoint you or they
Joe: fail you.
So you've never had one though?
Yeah.
Sam: Well, I'd say, I'd say Oh, the ABC was like our guru, Ali.
I see what you're
Ali: saying.
Yeah.
That used to be my For sure.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Like as in the way that the Guardian used to be yours or
Sam: A kind of institutional guru.
It's an institutional
Ali: guru.
Yeah.
But it was
Joe: like, it was at least the one I'll go to my grave saying that
was, is better than one individual.
Oh no, no.
I'm all
Sam: about institutions.
Yeah.
But at the moment Most of them are failing or not fit for purpose in some way, even
if they're surviving really well, they're not serving us correctly, and there's an
awful lot of institutions that need to be reformed, and there's others that will
just naturally collapse and be replaced.
But you have a
Joe: look at the ABC and you go, alright, well that's kind of like
the mainstream, vaguely normie
Sam: I'm not suggesting the ABC should be replaced, but God, it needs some reform.
Joe: Yeah.
But you know that you're getting like some kind of like Yeah, I don't know.
Compared to reading The Economist, reading the ABC News world page is
like, I don't know, a hundredth or something of what you're getting
about world news in The Economist.
You find it
Sam: quite parochial, the ABC world news.
Joe: I read it now because I don't, I want to know a much, much less about the world
after a couple of years of full immersion with The Economist, I just went, I'm
going to live in Melbourne for a while.
Sam: But again, The Economist is not full immersion,
Joe: like full immersion from the center, right?
Pro capitalists.
Sam: Yeah.
Also, I would direct your attention.
Like I said this before, to, I've come across like countless interviews
that have really given me a much, much better feeling of like, I
think I actually have a much.
Better understanding of, not perfect understanding of what's going on, but
it's really shifted me away from what I'm getting in the information space.
So the New Books Network, I've said this before, they've got like, I don't
know, 150 channels, like, you know, genocide studies, South Asian studies,
like every single academic discipline.
And it's a fire hose of new books, and you can just, and they're all academic books
on a single topic by a single author, sometimes they're edited volumes, but the
point is, every last person there is an expert, and they've focused on this one
area for at least a few years, and they're coming from a disciplinary background,
and you can evaluate the disciplinary background, you can evaluate what they
say, but here's the thing, you don't have to take any one person for it, because
in the next week, you could listen to Uh, 50 interviews with experts on any
given topic from the New Books Network and your sophistication of understanding
will have gone up a thousand,
Joe: two thousand percent.
Is your favorite stuff the Zizek stuff?
In terms of pleasurable, like, ah, that information's enjoyable.
Oh, Zizek, you've done it again.
That kind of stuff you only get from your guru, right?
Uh, sometimes.
You don't get that from some bland academic you've
Sam: never heard of.
Look, to be honest, yeah, I think he is operating in the
mode of entertainment at times.
Yeah.
You want some information
Ali: from your guru, you want to, yeah.
Sam: Yeah.
And I think a lot of information, a lot of informational content is
actually mainly entertainment at all, is consumed as entertainment.
So like some of my favorite pods are very informative, but I'm actually
there to hang out with those people.
And they can talk about whatever they want.
And like, that's the other thing.
We get the burden of individual choice is like, A, unsustainable,
B, non existent in a real sense.
Like, I keep saying this on the show, like, we have to live as individuals,
but we can't live as individuals.
Like, we, we can only survive collectively, and we have
responsibilities to others and vice versa.
And that's actually the good news, not the bad news.
And I can't Shoulder alone this responsibility of deciding what To trust.
It's not a job for one person to do by
Joe: themselves.
Yeah.
I mean, I do, the best I can come up with is read whole books.
So I've read a couple of Douglas Murray's whole books.
So then when he, whatever he talks about the most recent thing, I can go, at least
I know at, at length what this guy thinks.
Yeah.
But he talked about, Well, yeah.
He talked about going to talk to groups of people, which he's always done.
Sure.
And in an auditorium, 10 years ago, he used to know, He used to be able
to assume that everyone had read vaguely similar stuff like whether
it was the New York Times or you know He's in he's a right winger.
So he's working moving in right wing circles.
Maybe that all read the spectator, whatever.
Yep, right He used to be able to assume that and he said now I stand in front of
a crowd of 500 people Like there's almost no commonality like everyone's coming
from completely different perspectives You have no idea what they've been
reading what they've been watching.
So he's just
Sam: saying
Joe: He says, he goes, I don't, I can't assume a set of common facts
Sam: anymore.
Can't someone, can't someone make my job easier?
Well, no, no.
I just want to trot out a speech and assume it'll land the same everywhere.
Joe: No, no.
What a lazy, lazy man.
He wasn't saying it, he wasn't even complaining, he was just sort of saying
Sam: You've got to respond to every situation, you've got to be in the moment,
Joe: dude.
Yeah, but it's Engaging
Ali: dialogue.
Your guru can't keep up with the plurif
Joe: Yeah.
I think, I think as a bi I know, I I think for me as a Pluriferation.
Ali: Yeah, yeah.
Of information and gurus.
Joe: No, but, but what he's pointing to Yeah, one guy trying to figure it all out.
Yeah, good of agreed upon facts is very unstable and dangerous, right?
Like very, very No, but
Sam: who said Who said agreed upon facts have to stay agreed upon?
It's not static.
Well, I think from my perspective We have to continually disagree on established
facts that turn out to be wrong.
I think from my perspective Slavery is fine.
As, uh, Christianity is the only true religion, etc.
I mean, come on, man.
I
Joe: think from my perspective as a bipolar person, because my brain can
organically leave consensual reality Yeah.
And then no one has a clue what I'm talking about.
Nah,
Sam: I've understood everything.
Joe: Yeah, because I'm on my meds.
But like, because, because I can do that organically, I find it terrifying
the idea that no one has a fucking clue what's going on in the world.
And, and honestly, I don't think right now, there is a guru that has a clue
that that can encapsulate it all.
You know, I'm looking for the simplest.
Sam Harris
Sam: actually gets close in some ways.
The simplest, clearest.
Your boy, Sam, go back
Joe: to him.
No, I've never liked him as a public intellectual at
Sam: all.
I've shit canned him so hard to you.
I
Joe: like him on the meditation stuff, but I
Sam: don't, yeah.
Out of all the gurus out there, he is the least self appointed in a weird way.
It's so strange of me to say that.
His ego's
Joe: too big.
I don't want his opinions on everything.
Sam: I've heard him backtrack.
And I'm like, man, that's all I need from a public intellectual, in any case.
I don't
Joe: want to be a Sam Harris, bro.
I actually don't want to be a guru, but what I want is the simplest, clearest,
most honest explanation of things.
Sure.
Ali: But not one person is going to be able to fulfill that tip for you in the
same way that not one person is the answer to anybody's problems in any capacity.
That's right.
And not one guru is going to have.
The answers to every situation that you could possibly pose to it.
But
Joe: is that what a dialectic is, Sam?
Yes.
Because I don't understand a dialectic, but let me give you this.
Go, go.
Like, since the Ukraine war started, I didn't read any John Mersheimer.
Yeah.
And lefties loved John Mersheimer because he basically blamed America, right?
So, then eventually, I Chomsky is a stick to linguistics.
Eventually, I'll watch a John Mersheimer speech and I'm like, wow.
This really appeals to me, because he's explaining something clearly,
he sees Putin as a rational actor, which is very reassuring on that is
the world going to blow up, because a rational actor is much less likely
to do that than an irrational madman.
And we don't
Sam: need no clash of civilizations nonsense, no thank you.
Joe: So, the clarity of Mershama's thought is It's very reassuring to me, even though
it's all bad news, of course, because of course everything in geopolitics
is bad news from an American hegemony.
Of course.
From his perspective, he wants America to win, right?
So it's all bad news, but it's clear and states are acting rationally still.
So I want to believe that, but then because I'm curious, I read more
and I read critiques saying, John Mersheimer gets everything wrong
about everything all the time.
And so the guru part kicks in where I'm like, no, I don't want it.
Is it a dialectic to triangulate those things?
Yes.
As opposed to my instinct is just like, all right, how about if I only read
John Mershheimer for the next year?
And I keep thinking that states act rationally, you know, for a year, imagine
that, read his book, just watch his, whatever pops up on YouTube, become
a foreign policy realist, become, and what I'm really good at is observing
John Mersheimer thought till eventually I could come on here and I'll give
you like great Mersheimer, right?
But at the moment, I've only known who he is for two weeks.
You could be Mersha on the
Sam: GPT for sure.
Joe: Triangulating it and it makes me more and more confused.
But again, I do it because I'm curious and I do it because I
don't trust them getting closer to reality by just trusting one person.
Ali: I mean, you can't trust just one person and we have more and
more people than ever before.
What is your favourite.
We all have different stories.
But I
Joe: think what you naturally did as a saner, healthier person than me,
is you were able to read The Guardian for 10 years, but with a grain
of salt, say yeah but not really.
Over
Ali: and over again.
Yeah.
The Guardian's actually never really, I mean, yeah, I mean, occasionally
I'll read something and be like, jeez, but, but for the most part it doesn't
bother me, I don't take it personally.
I mean, like I said.
Occasionally I do get let down, like I got let down by the ABC,
but like, but it's not the But it
Joe: never, does it ever make your stomach flip?
Does it ever make you grip the chair in terror?
Ali: Truthfully, the only time I'm ever gripped with fear and terror is when it's
a completely irrational, bonkers sort of thing that is not based in reality,
and it's usually when I'm not well.
So,
Joe: so like volcanoes?
Ali: Yeah, or something like some sort of like Baba Vanga kind of like doomsday
Nostradamus sort of some Absolutely not based in any reality whatsoever,
Joe: like the main calendar.
Ali: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Like something like that.
And I'll yeah.
And I'll have a moment of absolute despair and paranoia.
Joe: Yeah.
So I'm like that with a bit about things that other people are, and
Ali: then that's not based in any sort of reality.
And it's, it's whereas, and that's just like.
me letting my brain play in that space for a little while until
I'm like, okay, you, you Yeah,
Joe: I do it because I'm bored too.
I scare the shit out of myself because I'm bored too.
It's a form of entertainment.
Sam: Yeah.
Yeah.
Look, that's the thing.
So beware of the feelings, I think, and we can't always be guided by
the feelings we have in reaction to things that we've read or looked at.
And I actually think The guru instinct is not entirely misplaced.
Like we want to trust people and I'm fine.
I think we can't operate without it.
So, I think what's helping is what we're doing right here.
And I think that's the best way to triangulate.
So you can, you bring along your Mersheimer, I'll bring
along, uh, whatever else.
I don't have anything on hand really.
And Ali's.
Just brought in some good stuff and I think, you know, useful perspective and
the triangulation occurs in dialogue.
I think when we try and triangulate, we try to get the dialectic going between
like ourselves and then this and this multiplicity of media that doesn't work.
It's sort of like, all I mean by the dialectic is thing A, that's true.
Thing B, oh wait, maybe that's true.
Thing C.
You know, historical force meets other historical force.
What happens?
It's just, it really, it's just one plus one
Joe: equals I don't think, yeah, unfortunately I, I think I'll go to my
grave not knowing what a dialectic is.
It's as simple
Ali: as But having like, yeah, just like a friend check in.
Do you know what a dialectic is?
We'll just have, yeah, like I think like Sam's saying, just have someone
just check in like For the rational.
I don't know.
Yes.
Yeah.
Like you need, you need like, so
Sam: yeah, I'm holding this thesis.
Yes.
Do you have an anti antithesis for this?
Yeah.
And then they say,
Ali: yeah, like, am I being, it's like when you go to a friend and you're
like, am I being rational about this?
Am I being exactly like, am I?
But yeah, and that's the thing,
Joe: like I'm, it's just having
Sam: someone just, but you help me evaluate this situation at work.
Ali: I'm buffing and someone's opinion that you value the gurus.
Then is your friend in that moment always there?
But
Joe: I'm buffing it around and I'm looking for chances to act too.
Like I almost went to an Extinction Rebellion meeting and then all they
were going to serve there was daal and I'm like, no, I'm not going.
That's how close I got to joining Extinction Rebellion.
XR, if
Sam: only you'd serve cheeseburgers made from proper
Joe: climate change beef.
Three years millenarian, you know, death cult.
But three years before, I was willing to maybe join it.
So I'm constantly being buffeted by this stuff that I look around
and I'm like, well, everyone else just kind of stays where they are
and it doesn't bug them that much.
And then they just go make a cup of tea.
I nearly go and join a death cult and then I turn on them and become a right winger.
And it's like, I just watch it happen to myself.
It's like watching a fucking leaf be blown around in the wind.
You can generate electricity
Sam: from this.
Ali: I think there's so much of that is to do with our state of
mind and all mental health and.
G Tech
Sam: would be nodding to all of this.
My mum would
Ali: have said to me that her biggest fear for me would have been that I would
have joined a cult or something like that.
That she thought I was so susceptible to joining a cult or
running off and joining a cult.
What, you've just
Sam: got that credulous instinct?
Ali: There's something about, like she just thought that I, that was
Joe: she I've been told not that, like not that long ago
that I could be a cult leader.
Sam: Well there you go.
Well yeah, indeed.
Maybe I've joined the 10, no, you would rock at that.
I think Ali would You'd almost be immune,
Joe: wouldn't you?
Ali: No, no, no, but I think there is some sort of, there is something
lacking or something or some sort of, that she's been able to sense.
I can totally see it too, that where I would completely just abandon reality
and just throw myself into something because it just seemed like a fun
thing to do because of the boredom.
I think that's something that would have, and I think that's, you and
I, we get bored and like, it's like, you know, I'm just going to play
with it, whether it, when we were younger, it's like, I'm just going to.
You know, when it was drugs, alcohol,
Joe: even as a kid, just imagining horrible things.
Yeah.
Dangerous
Sam: ideas, I think it's like I play video games.
Well,
Ali: I remember as a kid, I'm going to scare the shit
out of myself, just for fun.
Sam: Yeah, exactly.
Let's spin around until I feel sick.
Joe: I remember as a kid being mortified, thinking about spontaneous.
Spontaneous combustion.
Sam: Oh yeah.
That one got me.
Joe: What happened in the eighties?
Why were we all being
Ali: told about spontaneous combustion?
That seemed like a much more scary thing that was actually a
viable way to die than it actually
Sam: When I heard satanic child sacrifice, I was like, what a load of shit.
Spontaneous combustion.
Oh my God.
That could totally happen.
Totally happen.
Joe: Yeah.
Which actually gets to the root.
Yes.
Root cause of the fear is actually the fear of death.
Oh, a hundred percent.
But
Sam: yeah, like, yeah.
Joe: Or the neurosis.
Yeah.
The only thing that saved me really from, from being dragged off to some extreme is
my sense of irony and my sense of humor.
So, you know, like, but yeah, I'm at a point now at the
end of 2023 where I can't.
Thank God, but I can't find a guru who can actually explain the world to me.
It's too chaotic.
no one, no one can predict it.
No one can explain it.
Uh, that's fine.
That's actually a healthy place to be.
I think it's healthy.
Ali: And like, and to place the, go back to sort of like, yeah, as.
And I think that's and having like the area of expertise and putting our
trust into somebody who's got the area of expertise and we've talked about
this before on the show where people have jumped out of their lane to
talk on other things and they, that's where they get derailed, but they're
sort of playing to the algorithm and you know, that's what's selling
Joe: the, Mearsheimer talking on foreign policy is his area of expertise.
It's just that he happens to have got a lot of big things wrong over the years.
Ali: And so I think, yeah, we
Joe: need to sort of.
But if I believed him, I would sleep better at night because he basically
said a month ago he doesn't think China will attack Taiwan anytime soon, which
is something that keeps me up at night.
Yeah.
Because that's the one where unfortunately, you know,
our lives are at stake.
Sam: Also, beware of the people that are attacking Mearsheimer in a one eyed way.
What's their agenda?
Why are they so invested in tearing him down?
I mean, think about it.
Joe: And it gets confusing very quickly.
Sam: Yeah.
I'm not saying he's a perfect guy, but I really feel like he has said
useful things from time to time.
And I think that's all we can really ask?
Like, I mean,
Joe: I don't He's more than a clock getting it right twice a day.
I don't think he's
Sam: deliberately being, trying to be evil, I don't think.
Joe: No, no, and look, in defence of your mate Zizek, he seems like a person
I think he's a very genuine person.
Yeah, he seems like a nice enough guy.
He just, he's The stuff, when he goes off, off piste about stuff,
it's, it's, it's stuff that's basically just reading the news.
Sam: I mean, the problem is defining piste, I guess, but
Joe: he's just reading the news and then theorizing.
It's not, he's not doing whatever rigor he puts into his books when
he goes out and does these public.
Sam: Yeah, no, that's interesting.
I think like throwing
Joe: stuff out there,
Sam: but academics operate on different levels.
There's the serious, quiet, lonely work.
of footnoting and referencing.
And then there's the giving lectures, which is, everyone agrees a little
bit more of a popular medium.
It's okay to make a joke.
It's okay to be a little bit more loose depending on the lecture context.
Then there's the dialogue with, there's a formal dialogue context, the informal
dialogue context, popular outreach.
You have to do all of that.
Joe: As you've said, your therapist said to you about your whole life from
childhood onwards, is you've always been Perfuddled people and confused people.
That's true.
Right.
You found the adult world befuddling and you decided to befuddle people.
To me, that's Cizek.
He's like, I sent it to one of the most recent clips.
It's 15 minutes.
He is the
Sam: avatar
Joe: minutes where he doesn't finish a single, he doesn't finish a single point
and nothing he says makes any sense.
Sam: I don't know, clearly he has ADD or something.
Yeah, yeah, so
Joe: he doesn't Maybe that's why I like him.
It's 15 minutes of this.
It's incomprehensible.
It's posted on YouTube a week ago as The Life and Work of Zuzek.
That's what it says, and then you watch it.
It's just 15 minutes from a debate of, or whatever, from a public lecture.
Sam: I love you two.
I'm going to get you two to wrap it up.
I've got to go and grab a couple of kids.
Joe: What I'm saying is that's the reason you're drawn to Zuzek.
Because he's, he, unlike, he's not bringing clarity, he's bringing confusion.
That's what I'm up for.
And you want more confusion, I want more clarity, let's finish it up.
Sam: Yes, simple answers to hard questions, not boring.
Joe: There is unlimited confusion out there, there's very limited
clarity, that's what I would say.
Sam: Yeah, yeah.
In the confusion lies the clarity somewhere.
Clarity's false.
Go get the cube, Sam.
Okay, love you guys.
What was that great intro you did?
Joe: Outro.
That's been another one of the 10, 000 things.
Whoa slick.