Kind: captions
Language: en
the following is a conversation between
me and michael malus
michael is an author anarchist and
simpleton and i'm proud to call him my
friend
he makes me smile he makes me think and
he makes me wonder
why i sound so
sleepy all the time
and now enjoy this conversation with
michael malus
in the dupagolova language
that i'm increasingly certain i'll never
quite able to get the hang of
hello comrade
let's miss it
so animal farm by george orwell is one
of my favorite books it's an allegory
about
at least i think about the soviet union
and the russian revolution of 1917
so for people who haven't read it it's
uh animals overthrow the humans and then
slowly become as bad or worse than the
humans
so
comrade if we lived on this farm in the
book animal farm which animal would you
most rather be
would it be the pigs
the horses
the donkey benjamin the raven moses the
humans mr mrs jones the dogs or the
sheep
um i'm gonna go with the milton answer
which is better to rule in hell
than serve in heaven right it's better
to rule in health and serve in heaven
yeah so i would have to go with the pigs
so i guess i'd be a cop
um at the very top so the leader the
main pig napoleon versus like the wallet
or the other yeah i i would say it's not
it's sure it's an allegory of the
russian revolution but i think
um orwell's point was this is broader
towards most totalitarian dictatorships
i mean it could very easily be read as
an indictment of mussolini or hitler or
many of these others uh i'm a huge um
george orwell fan one of the things that
i think people on the right need to
appreciate
is the courage
of many of these
in undisputably left-wing voices who
were the strongest ones to take on
totalitarianism totalitarian communism
and the three i think off top my head
who are all
in my top 10 heroes of all time are emma
goldman
albert camus
and orwell being the third you know
something that uh leftists like to throw
in the face of people on the right who
constantly invoke orwell is that orwell
said and i don't have the exact quote on
top of my head but some to the effect of
every word i have written is
in should be taken as a defense of
democratic socialism against
totalitarianism so
uh people like truman you know was
obviously very hardcore in many ways
anti-communist
we like to
parse things out
you're going to laugh
into binary fashions that you know left
good right bad or right good left bad
but historically speaking it does not
fall away into these camps as easily as
people would like
and i think it is important for those of
us it takes a lot more courage
to fight the right from the right or to
fight the left from the left because in
a sense a lot of your countrymen or your
fellow travelers are going to regard you
as a traitor to the cause so i
every chance i get i will sing the
praises of these three figures among
others who not only even if they hadn't
done what they had done
just lived just amazing lives that all
of us can uh
learn from and
admire and regard as somewhat a role
model so
what was the nature of their opposition
to
totalitarianism is it basically
freedom
well the value of freedom let's go to
the three of them so emma goldman she
was an early anarchist figure you know
we'll talk about her later i'm sure she
got deported from the united states with
her partner in crime alexander berkman
literal crime he tried to assassinate uh
frick who was andrew carnegie's main man
in the pittsburgh steel mill strike um
she got deported to the soviet union and
they're like they're like oh you want
socialism because at the time the
anarchists were regarded as socialist
you know go choke on it and she's there
and she was watching in great horror uh
what was going on and she actually went
to lenin's office and she goes this
isn't what we're about the revolution is
about the individual and free speech and
everyone working together to further a
society and he told her that you know
you know free speech is a bourgeois
contrivance and regardless you can't
have these circumstances in the midst of
a revolution and when she left the
soviet union and you know she went to
britain and at the time before the 1917
there was a lot of discussion among
socialist circles about what would the
revolution look like right would there
be the bakunin anarchist model would
there be the marxist model obviously the
bolsheviks ended up winning but even
then it wasn't obvious because there was
the bolsheviks and the mensheviks and
what people you know you and i know what
those words mean but bolsheviks were
kind of funny because borscha means
bigger and mancha means smaller the
mensheviks had the numbers it was
sarcastic that they were called
mensheviks and the bolsheviks were
called bolshah and lenin you know
destroyed all his foes in a very
merciless way obviously beforehand you
know there was the idea like okay with
all these cockamamie ideas we have to
work together you know we don't know
what's going to look like for the cause
then as soon as he sees power he's like
yeah yeah we're not doing that kind of
pluralism anymore this is going to be
the right approach so she left the
soviet union as did berkman
she wrote a book that they titled my
disillusionment with russia and i
remember this is one anecdote which i'm
going to discuss in the forthcoming book
where she goes to britain and the
british were very red at the time they
really uh had something called the
fabian society which was the predecessor
to the british labour party which were
like all right we're going to get rid of
liberalism and have a socialist uh kind
of nation
and she gave talks and there was this
one's time where she gave a talk and she
started and there was a standing ovation
by the time she was done you could hear
a pin drop because she dared to look at
these people in the face something
they'd be fighting for all their lives
and saying you know we've been to the
future and it works and she's like guys
this is worse than the czar uh you know
people are under house arrest you're not
allowed to have you know newspapers are
being shut down if they have heretical
views so on and so forth and you know
she was just even more of a pariah than
she had been previously so she is you
know deserves huge accolades in that
regard i brought her up and we were
talking about with our conversation with
iran or well i think you don't need me
to explain what he has done and
continues to do to use fiction to
demonstrate uh the horrors of a
totalitarian state and camus who might
be my all-time you know great
lighthouse so to speak in terms of being
a man of conscience you know he joined
the communist party and for a lot of
people in the states you hear oh you
joined the communist party so i need to
hear so all you need he was a communist
all you need to know he joined the
communist party because they were the
main ones fighting the fascists in
france and other locations and he took
nazism as did many others of course very
very very seriously he wasn't some
committed communist but this was just
his
mechanism to take on uh you know be part
of the underground in vichy france and
so on and so forth so he had the quote
which is ascribed to him which is kind
of a misquote howard zinn is the one who
actually said it that it is a job of
thinking people not to be on the side of
the executioners and he very much felt
if you read his uh speech when he won
the nobel prize i forget in the 50s
where he goes it's basically the job of
writers to keep civilization from
destroying himself i don't think i'm
ever going to be a man on the level of
camus and what he's accomplished but i
think that
vision of it is the job of writers to be
the conscience and to point out uh you
know this is the leftism at its best
when you're giving voice to the
voiceless when you have the machine of
the state crushing and marginalizing
people and they might not be educated
literate or have any power at all
some he's the guy who's like you are
ruining humans these humans matter and
i'm not going to let you look the other
way and act like you don't know what
you're doing so in this time whether we
look at the time of fascism or we look
at the fictional animal farm what's the
heroic action then
so uh camus joined the communist party
there's a bunch of different heroic
actions some more heroic than others not
just for the
you know heroes the wrong word in terms
of like effectiveness what's the
effective action i guess is what i want
to ask as a writer as a thinker somebody
with a mind what's the heroic action
that's a tricky question because a lot
of times in the west heroism is
regardless intertwined with martyrdom
right so it's kind of this idea of like
you have to speak to you know kemu
always talked about just let justice be
done though the heavens fall this is a
common um kind of motto among people
with conscience and that you have to do
the right thing even the consequences
might not be what you like and i think
that is a good loose definition of
heroism so if you me i'll give you one
example of heroism this was on twitter
and i really feel bad that i don't
remember the guy's name
uh this was the line to auschwitz i
believe it was and you know there's the
nazi guards keeping everyone along
and
uh if you were a certain i think if you
were under 12 they killed you or some
there was some age limit where some kids
were killed or some were not there were
some circumstances and he asked the mom
how old this kid was and she's like he's
14 and she's like no he's 12. and she's
like no he's nice 14 she goes he's 12.
and she realized what this nazi was
telling her even in that circumstance
and it ended up saving the kids life so
i think heroism in this context is
defiance
and standing true to values of
liberalism humanism and
venerating the sanctity of human life i
think that
uh and i think it's also important to
pick your battles uh i don't think if
you know he got that nazi over there
gotten a bullhorn and said hey this is
the rules blah blah blah blah that's not
going to help anyone do anything so i do
think you know people a lot of times
attack me from my anarchist views it's
like oh you know would you call the
police would you use the roads would you
pay your income taxes
uh you know i i got an argument with tim
poole because there was that couple i
think it was at missouri or illinois
when they were had their guns and they
were being arrested and they basically
took a plea deal and he said you should
have fought i go it's a lot easier to
say you should fight but we don't know
what circumstance someone is under and
what these totalitarian regimes did very
very well as as you know
is
if you were a target and they can't get
through to you that's fine you have a
family so you can sit there lex and gird
your jaw and you can stand up to all the
torture cool what are we gonna do about
your wife what about your mom one thing
stalin did he made it a law
that kids up to uh 14 and up could get
the death penalty for certain crimes so
after that the rule was from the nkvd
if you were interrogating someone they
would have death warrants for the kid's
child on the desk visible so i'm
interrogating you asking you to
commit to i'm sorry to admit to some
crime that you're not committed and
those piece of paper it's you know
svetlana she's got a death warrant
you're gonna admit to any crime you want
so this is something americans this is
even the case right now in north korea
um which i know you had yami park on
it's something i talk about a lot let's
talk about instead of the hypothetical
but this is happening right now on earth
you can look at the map on google uh the
great leader kim il-sung the founder of
north korea said class enemies must be
exterminated three generations so north
when people talk about individualism
versus collectivism uh rick santorum
former senator says the family is the
basic unit of society unit north korea
takes that seriously the family is
punished as a unit so if someone does
something wrong three generations have
to pay the price and you often don't
know who it is that got you all in
trouble there's not a trial this to
western minds is something almost
incomprehensible it's a lot easier to be
brave
when it's just your skin there's
something when it's when it's yeah when
it's your child your your loved ones
your every man becomes a coward but also
what bravery is there for me to write an
essay for the guardian to say i don't
vote there's no consequences to me
there's no possibility of consequences
to me this is the wonderful thing about
living excuse me in a free country uh it
would take a lot of courage to be in the
soviet union and say i'm not going to
vote and what would that courage
accomplish
very little so i think heroism in the
sense of kind of the suicidal stuff and
taking a stance with no consequences is
a bit overrated
there is some aspect like the way i
think about heroism
is something like you said about the
soldier
which is quietly privately in your own
life
live the virtues
that you want the rest of the world to
live by yes
so like without like writing about it is
um it's not as heroic as living it
quietly i'll give you a great example of
this i sometimes give talks on
networking and i tell the kids
if you know someone's in town and it's
their birthday with nothing to do take
them out and i say i do this for selfish
reasons and everyone laughs and i go
think about it this way
the guy who takes people out for their
birthday is awesome that could be you
like you have that capacity to be that
person and you're making that day feel
special they're going to remember for a
long time what's the cost dinner 30
bucks 25 bucks so they're it's it's very
disturbing to me
how often people have opportunities to
slightly move the needle and make things
a bit better at almost no cost and they
just literally don't think in those
terms and one of the things camus talked
about you know he's often described as a
existentialist which he did not like
that term he regard himself as an
absurdist is the idea that we're
basically blank canvases and this isn't
something that is dangerous this is
enormous opportunity and you have the
ability to become the kind of man or
woman that you admire and want to be you
don't have to be you know i don't know
george washington or one of these great
heroes of all time but
everyone out there has the capacity
capacity excuse me to be a hero to their
kids
or to be a hero to maybe some there's
there's nursing homes and there's old
people who are lonely i think that you
take in a dog that's on its last legs uh
these are little things terry shepard
does that a lot out of garden was a hero
um
these are not terry sheppard on
blanken's name these are things that
people do
um that aren't heroic in the sense of
superman but that i find admirable
extremely and i think are very
underrated because these people aren't
championed
is this some kind of weird
passive-aggressive and direct way
for you to tell me that i should take
you off for your birthday on monday
is that why you gave that whole speech
that's that wasn't it at all
that was a joke michael no it was a
failed joke
nevertheless there was no punch line
without failure we would not have
triumph
can we stick on the camus absurdism
versus existentialism sure
what do you think is the difference
in your ideas about
uh anarchism too
it seems like those are
somehow
intricately connected because uh
existentialism is connected to freedom
and freedom is connected to anarchism
sure but i mean sartre was a defender of
the soviet union uh he said explicitly
about things like gulags like even if
it's true we shouldn't talk about it um
so he
it's what people don't appreciate is how
uh human beings can have contradictory
ideas in their minds at the same time so
one would think okay someone's a
democrat they think abc therefore they
think def people that have all sorts of
contradictions and it's not at all clear
and they'll have a clean conscience
because the human mind is very
sophisticated um and is capable of doing
this so
sartre you know was you would think he's
this radical individualist you know this
sense of ultimate freedom but he's
defending the soviet union camus on the
other hand would probably be
was very much like a social democrat he
didn't really talk about what politics
should be so much as it shouldn't be his
essay reflections on the guillotine is
one of the great masterpieces of all
time
an attack on the death penalty not in
terms of no one's evil or it's wrong to
kill murderers but in terms of what does
it do for a society if you have someone
who set takes a person
and locks them in a room and says you
know in two years i'm going to murder
you and you lock them for that this is
not someone we regard as moral
regardless as someone who's a complete
monster but that's what the state does
you know on with the death penalty and
he challenges us to think is this the
kind of people we want to be do and
again he's saying i'm not saying killing
a murderer is wrong i'm not saying evil
is wrong his entire career was dedicated
to fighting the concept of evil but are
we the kind of people who want to be
doing these things that in any other
context we regard as torture or depraved
so
i i'm much more of a camus person than a
star person he was probably against war
in that same way so i don't i have to uh
admit i don't know much about the
political side of kamu well i don't
think his political side is that
interesting or relevant what i find so
interrupted what i find fascinating
about camus and what i think about on a
daily basis from him is his insistence
that you have to live a life based on
conscience that you have to be
accountable to yourself when you put
your pill your head on the pill at the
end of the day and ask yourself did i
live a righteous life with integrity
true to my values did i uh not
needlessly cause harm to innocent people
um you know that kind of mindset did i
if someone is weak am i using that as an
opportunity to exploit them or to harm
them or do i feel a bit of sympathy or
empathy for this person because maybe
they didn't have circumstances that were
you know as
beneficial as other people had well how
does that fit absurdism where everything
is absurd nothing has meaning
uh you know it really borders on
nihilism
so he his he regards not his his
philosophy explicitly said is a response
to nihilism and a
attack on nihilism he you know he
regards cynicism as like the
worst value people can have and i agree
with him one hundred percent a lot of
times people call me cynical online and
i push back very very hard because to be
a si you know i had this quote and then
you write where i said i'd rather be
naive than a cynic because a cynic is a
hopeless man who projects his
hopelessness to the world at large uh
camus this is the metaphor i use and i
find it very inspirational i thought it
was in his work but i guess i thought if
it described it to him there's two types
of people you imagine you go to a
mountainside and you see a
blank canvas on an easel standing in
front of this mountainside one people be
like why is this
blank canvas here you know what what was
this what's going on here uh and just be
confused whereas the other type of
person will be like this a blank canvas
here in this beautiful countryside what
a great opportunity i can paint this
river i could paint that bird i could
paint my friends or myself in the
background
infinite choices and this is a gift that
i have been given and i think that also
ties very heavily into what i was i went
to yeshiva as a kid which is jewish
school what we were taught in
incessantly uh how to look at life is
this beautiful gift that god has given
you and that god wants you to be happy
he wants you to live to the fullest in a
moral way i remember the first time i
went into a church and they were asking
questions about the jewish concept the
afterlife they weren't familiar with
jewish thought and it took me a second
because i didn't really have answers and
then i remembered what we were taught
which is
let's suppose you're at this banquet
with the best chef on earth and the
table's so heavy because you've got
steaks and you've got chicken and you've
got sushi and the wine's flowing and
you've got your
dr pepper and mr and mr pibb and the
store brand everything you want and
you're looking around at this amazing
bounty right and then you turn to this
best chef on earth and you're like oh so
what's for dessert i mean
the offensiveness of that is just so
you know insane like you have this eat
the meal like i promise you if i could
deliver this meal the dessert's gonna be
okay so this focus on the afterlife when
we've been given this amazing gift uh
you know on this earth is is a very kind
of different mindset from both the
jewish tradition as i'd been taught and
the kamu mindset obviously kamu is an
atheist didn't believe in an afterlife
but this concept that life is is
meaningless
but that means
you
have that opportunity to find value to
seek for truth to seek for happiness and
kamu has this quote it's ascribed to him
it's like a meme i've never found the
source so maybe he doesn't really say it
but he says maybe it's not about happy
endings maybe it's about the journey and
i think when you have that mindset and
as you and i i think you and i both
found this because neither of us when we
were kids thought we'd be doing this
right but now that we are really
fortunate definitely this yeah and
definitely that yeah but now that we're
fortunate enough to do this and that
we're blessed enough that there's people
who find this of value and interest and
we could pay the rent doing this there's
not a day that goes by where i don't
think you and i or think this is pretty
absurd yeah but it's also pretty
wonderful and as a consequence of us
thriving it also shows other people that
happiness is possible on this earth and
i think cynicism is the lie
it's not just the worldview it's a lie
that happiness is not possible in this
earth or it's only happy possible if you
sell your soul and you're like a bad
person you screw other people over i
reject that
in every aspect you know as you said my
birthday's coming up i've been feeling
um
just a lot of really great things have
been happening very very recently so it
affects me very heavily emotionally
especially when i see the response it
gives to
uh like the kids right so it's one thing
to say this is what i'm for but when you
can provide proof of concept that what
you've been advocating does result in
positive responses i got a message from
this kid who had tried to kill himself a
year ago okay and then he was like look
i found your work i found some other
stuff and now i realize i'm going to
make something of myself i was born in a
meth house you know whatever 19 20 years
old i should be in the garbage but i'm
gonna try to be a stand-up because i
have opportunity on this earth even if
he fails as a stand-up you know he's
still such whatever he does
washing dishes there's no shame in that
he is it so bad to have a crappy job and
a girlfriend who you don't really like
but as compared to the alternative of
like i'm going to kill myself this is
heaven well i think there's
beauty to be discovered in all of it and
all of those experiences yes
so
but at the same time
so i often think about i just recently
reread the idiot by destiusky i often
feel like the idiot that's why when i
say i'm an idiot i often think about
prince mishkin
that kind of idiot which the world sees
you as naive i don't think he's naive i
don't think i'm naive but i tend to
see the good in people and the good in
every moment
and
the world often
is cynical and in fact especially in
what we do
often the intellectual is supposed to be
cynical it's i this is very much an
urban uh elite educated mindset where if
you write a book about someone who's
let's suppose a drug addict or a
prostitute that has heft and that's
valid but if you're writing a book about
like a love story you know two people
love and it's they're in roller coasters
or carousels that's less legitimate i
hate that i hate that i hate that so
much because the message it gives to
people is you have to choose between
thriving and happiness and silliness and
seriousness and depravity and i'm not
saying a drug addict approaches to pray
but they're basically their worldviews
if it's unless it's dark and twisted it
doesn't really count as art and i i
despise that mindset that subtext so the
internet and people around me often will
call me naive because i don't think the
word they want is innocent don't you
think it's about it's not that innocent
no but innocent in that you you
genuinely in your heart i know you
fairly well at this point believe that
goodness is possible and that people can
if not be good at least be better than
they were yesterday see even the word
naive or the word innocent presumes that
there's not wisdom in that presumes that
somehow
that's uh oh isn't that beautiful to
live that life of a child who sees the
world with these bright eyes and is
hopeful about the future
but just wait until they grow up and
realize that reality is much harsher
than they think right but that child
might be
wiser than all of the adults in the room
and don't you don't you want to be if
the world is like that don't you want to
be the guy who takes it on and changes
it for the better right so it's like
saying well you know cancer is
everywhere it's inevitable well don't
you want to be the one who says not
anymore i'm here and i'm going to make
that change and i can see it being
better than it is now so i i i think you
and i have the same
analysis of your world view and i don't
think that there is a good word for it
so i guess it's this idea of you know
inherent benevolence might be you know
maybe wordy but i think that's more
accurate because
you know you and i did not have such
easy lives growing up to put it mildly
you constantly talk about um just
horrific aspects of life so to claim
that you kind of don't know that they
exist or you sleep on the rug is
completely not accurate to your work and
your mindset
can we talk about
world war ii in the soviet union sure
so
on sunday
june 22nd 1941
hitler launched operation barbarossa
which was the surprise invasion of the
soviet union that's right
if i could read to you a few lyrics
from a song
that for some reason has stuck
throughout my childhood
it was a famous song during that time
the song talks about um
kiev like that moment
as part of that operation that kiev was
first bombed and it was announced on
june 22nd
the song says at exactly four o'clock
that the war has begun
for some reason this song
haunts me
because
the exactness of that time
and this realization
that at any moment you could have this
thing happen to you in your own personal
life maybe you had something like 9 11
happen where everything changes
and it's just like haunting because
it makes me think that at any moment
something like that could happen that
changes everything
and
i just think about like normal life
going on in kiev at the time
and then all of a sudden
the bombs are dropping and they
announced that the war has begun and you
thought you were going to stay out of
the war
um
this is something that is very intensely
emotional for me because
you and i are both russian jewish so
to know that my grandparents and my
great-grandma were told
that the nazis were coming
and this wasn't a dress rehearsal
and that if they get here which they do
they did lev is very western ukraine
that 100
you and all your relatives are going to
be uh murdered yeah and
uh
there's a monument now in in level where
i'm from about this but
i i don't think either of us can imagine
what it's like
to know to think that we're about
you know minutes or whatever hours or
there's just there's just the russian
army
standing between us and everyone
everyone we are related to are going to
be
murdered for no reason
and um
you know like what's the closure here
right like they evacuated a lot of
people
and but they didn't evacuate enough
and to know that there is this force
coming to 100 murder you this isn't some
kind of
you know uh the tv news being hyperbolic
they are coming to kill you and they if
they get you they will kill you
and you have to
you know we all think about war let go
you know we hope america wins in iraq
right but if america got their ass
kicked kind of in vietnam
it's not really going to affect america
in the sense that you're going to have
the body bags and all the kids being
killed and that's something that's i'm
not sweeping on the rug but no one in
america thought the vietnamese are going
to come here and kill them right they
were secure in their person
so to have that sense of
we really need to win
because if we don't win
we are 100
if we they the russian army doesn't win
we are 100 percent all going to be
slaughtered
and often in not just a bullet to the
head in sadistic ways
is something that um to know that people
who share my blood uh saw and went
through
is very hard for me to kind of um
uh wrap my head around and there's no
possibility to delude yourself yeah yeah
yeah because i mean they they would uh
as the song also talks about but they
would burn the factories
so it's basically saying
we're in the war now this is
like this is your life yeah like this is
our life you know how you yesterday
you're worried about like oh i misplaced
my pen where is it like it's like yeah
this was paradise most of us are gonna
this our life now is that most of us are
going to die
and if we want to prevent all of us from
dying
we uh we have to fight and we also can't
sit down in some kind of weird like um
desert island or you know
plane crash situation and be like let's
decide between us who's going to be the
first to die maybe the like titan the
titanic right they sat down and they
were like women and children in the
lifeboats you know they had this
rational agreement you don't have those
choices in in a war so um it's it's
something that i uh uh
it's it's just very chilling and it's
something i don't really have
um
the emotional space to understand or
grapple with
uh even you know obviously i've been to
north korea you can see it and so on and
so forth
you and i can't or anyone listening to
this except for maybe on me and people
like that
you can't imagine what that's like to
live it
we can't i we can't imagine what it's
like to live in those situations where
it's not like before hitler came
everyone's you know dancing around and
having a great time i mean imagine how
what that life is like where
your preference to hitler is starving
and waiting online for hours for bread
and to have the secret police and your
friends are turning you in and your
phones are all tapped and you're a
prisoner but to you this is infinitely
better than the alternative like these
are the choices that you know our family
had to deal with it's something that no
matter how much you
it's like a let me put in terms people
understand you know what i mean it's
like your first bad breakup right like
that's a much simpler thing to wrap your
head around because it's like if you've
never had it you can't really but when
you feel it it's just so intense but you
can't tell someone what's like
we could sit down for days and hours and
have people tell us
but until it's the totality totality of
your environment and your life and your
mindset
i remember my grandma
um
she would talk about that's like
when you're when you're that hungry
oh
all you're thinking about is bread
yeah because your brain won't let you
know human beings you're revolved we
have instincts whatever and the mind is
telling you food food food food food
food
and that there's kids
thinking this and that there's there
they're not going to get the food yeah
and imagine being a parent and you're
watching your kids without food and
knowing
they're not gonna get the food
and uh the fact that this happened in
north korea in the 90s
yeah i i met a refugee
and uh he had to watch his dad starve to
death
and uh thank you um
and
we have no
concept
of uh
what it's like i mean we kind of you
know it's just like
last night here in austin all the places
were closed and i couldn't get my
protein powder yeah and this is the
extent of my suffering when it comes to
food you know or if i couldn't there was
a restaurant that i went to in brooklyn
where for some vacation reason they
weren't serving sashimi they only had
sushi so i had to have the rice and the
carbs
to live a life where that is the extent
of your food problems
as opposed to
the choice is either hitler killing you
or being hungry 24 7. you know my
grandma told this story of how
they had a close call it was her and her
brother and her mom my great-grandma who
passed
and i think there was like either
helicopter overhead or something and my
great-grandma jumped on top of my
uh grandma's brother and not my grandma
so she basically did a sophie's choice
my grandma's name is sophia and chose
the brother
and this is something that she felt you
know all her life that her mom had
chosen her brother over her but these
little things that happen these little
kind of a
decisions we have to make in war there's
a book i read called uh
uh five chimneys i think this woman who
was an auschwitz survivor
and what she talked about what people
don't appreciate it's not necessarily
the slaughter
and the torture it's that there's no
rhyme or reason to it like she talked
about how they had a camp just for
people from uh
czechoslovakia
and they were treated better than the
jews and then one day they just killed
them all right and she's like i still
don't understand why they're giving them
food and treating them well and then the
next day they're all killed and we will
never get answers you know and she's and
and things like
she talks about
how they decided to kill all the kids
and they didn't really either for some
reason they didn't have the courage to
or they wanted to be cruel so instead of
shooting them they just kept walking in
the snow until they all died
so it's things like this that uh the
fact that you and i
dodged these bullets and that we can be
here and uh be doing this and you know
running our mouths for a living uh i i
think about it all the time and um uh
it's it's just
very um
uh disturbing to know and i know you
know this as well that there's lots of
places on earth where if people had a
choice they would kill us on site and be
proud of themselves for it
yeah they're
i don't know what to make of the
contrast that you you were talking about
the fact that
you've been truly happy the last few
weeks and months yes there's been a lot
of moments of happiness and joy
and that joy
is built on a history of human suffering
like in your roots in your blood is a
lot of people that were tortured that
suffered so that you could have this joy
you have both the
you have the responsibility to truly be
grateful for that joy but it also shows
that there's the happy ending that it
does end in a good note that it does get
infinitely infinitely better
um and that i think there's a i don't
like you saying the word responsibility
but there is um an opportunity
for those of us who did dodge that
bullet
to uh give testimony to these people and
more importantly to give testimony to
the people who are going through this
now
so you know one of the reasons i you
know talk about north korea so much why
i wrote dear reader is because it's very
easy
and this is human nature i'm not
condemning people i don't i think this
is how people are wired when you see an
asian country with asian people and
things are you know bad over there you
you know i think in the west it's like
oh you know asia they're all crazy there
they're wacky they eat you know they eat
dogs or someone and so forth some weird
stereotype and they think of them as
kind of martians
so it's important for people who aren't
of that kind of ancestry
to kind of speak on behalf of these
people because it's very different how
just people just naturally react when
you have a westerner talking about this
instead of becoming there you know them
over there it becomes you know this
could have been uh us very easily i have
a friend peter they hansky great dude
and i was showing him photos when i was
in pyongyang and he goes this looks like
a russian city with asian people it was
it completely disturbed him so you know
that was one of the reasons i did go to
north korea because that was as close as
i would get to see what your family went
through to see what my family went
through and they're still
living under this uh a regime and one of
the things i fought very hard to do with
dear reader which i was successful in
amazingly and it just i said like i
could die now like i feel like if you
make if just move the needle a little
bit then you've kind of uh
paid your due for your time here on this
earth
to have it change from being a laughing
stock you know and i i think team
america did a good job they made kim
jong il into a clown and they made a
joke of it but you're going from nothing
to joke so at least now people are aware
of it that it exists right and then i st
and many others took it from a joke to
like guys this is really really really
bad and none of us can even appreciate
how bad it is and i think now there is
an understanding other than a few people
who are just looking through a trump
lens and wanting trump to fail because
trump's an asshole and that's fine to be
like
these poor people and it's really
unfortunate because there's a segment of
western culture who thinks that
correctly often when you're complaining
about uh or
discussing the plight of another country
that's just your preludes to war and an
excuse to invade like the kurds in syria
you know we're talked about if we're not
in syria tomorrow it's going to be
another genocide blah blah
i'm not saying let's invade north korea
or anything like that all i'm saying is
you know thank god
that this isn't your life
i bring this up all the time the woman
who was my guide when i was there
i'm aware of what she's up to now
she's still she's extremely rich by
north korean
standards but she'll never be in a
position to buy medicine she'll never be
in a position to go on a vacation
uh things that you and i just you know
whatever she she can't go on the
internet
she can't get encyclopedia
uh she can't better herself as a person
other than through what the state allows
and meaning better yourself as a person
in service to the state so i i i mean
there's it's also frustrating because
there's only so much that i can do as an
individual what's your takeaway about
human nature from looking at north korea
and looking at how the rest of the world
is looking at north korea uh i i always
this is a great question i think about
it fairly often and i always say human
beings are animals right when you say
someone's an animal it's like a slur
like he's like a beast animals are
capable of enormous kindness
empathy sympathy you know they look out
for one another groom one another
there's a thing with with apes where
they groom each other for parasites and
you're suppose even if there are no
parasites they pretend this parasites
just to have that kind of bonding uh you
see infinite
uh photos online of like cats raising
puppies because the puppies mom died
things like this that's part of being an
animal part of being an animal is also
just the most uh monstrous cruelty
killer whales you know there's this big
pc move did not call them killer whales
and just call them orcas they will
murder
blue whale pups uh cavs excuse me and
play with them and not even eat them so
they just murder for the sake of fun so
there's and cats you know kill birds all
the time things like this so it runs the
whole gamut um and i think it's i i'm
you know when yaron and i were on your
show i don't think lord of the flies is
accurate i don't think hobbes is how
reality works when you're in that kind
of state um but i think
uh we've seen countless examples of
human beings especially when human
beings have power over someone who's
powerless
of allowing themselves to engage in not
just harm
but cruelty
and that is something as soviets you and
i are very painfully aware of it it's
not just about the oppression which as
bad enough as it is it's that mediocre
person with that little bit of power
and now they're standing between you and
your daughter having medicine
and they love it to make you dance to be
like oh you need me to get this medicine
make you go go through hoops because now
they feel like for the first time their
life they're in a position of strength
and power i think that is in many ways
the more common nature of evil what
hannah aaron talks about the banality of
evil than someone who's like an ss guard
you're shooting someone in the head like
that i think we could all wrap our heads
around to some extent like okay i'm a
military it's not easy i have to execute
people pulling a trigger you could kind
of have this mental disconnect between
the finger and the victim but like that
little day-to-day stuff like are you
doing the right thing on a day-to-day
basis that i think is far more common
and far more disturbing aspect in
certain senses of the human psyche
yeah there's something um
especially disturbing about
a weak man
given power yeah and just abusing that
power there's something about not just
weak but like
mediocre and everything it does or less
than mediocre if you a great example of
this which i'm also talking about the
next book is ceausescu who was the
dictator of romania so you know
the cold war is still somewhat poorly
understood in you know popular culture
but the different countries in the
second world the soviet bloc some are
more liberal than others some were more
sane than others and chauchesko at first
was one of the you know more western
friendly more the free ones then he met
the great leader kim sung from north
korea and he had the idea to impose a
personality cult on romania and it's the
kind of things like forcing people to
breed because he wanted to make people
taller he i think he made like the
biggest building in all of europe the
people's palace but it was just for him
while there's no electricity you know
elsewhere but you look at this guy you
know stalin's a badass right he was a
bank robber if you look at photos of him
as a kid he was a hunk lennon was
clearly intellectual these were not
these are powerful trotsky these were
powerful men with huge egos huge force
of personality but you look at this
chaucesko guy
and you could like for example on my
driver's license instead of my address
i'm like in my real dress being like one
two three four fifth avenue by mistake
it says one two three four fifth street
right so you can imagine him being in
the post office and me giving him my id
to get my package and him being baffled
because this says street that says
avenue instead of understand and this
the look on his face this dullard that
you can see how you know how sometimes
i'm gonna can i curse
fuck yes yes so if you know like if
you're in the airport and you see
someone and you look at them an adult
and you think okay this person was born
fucked up just like on site like
something's wrong with them how are they
traveling alone you look at chauchesku
you look at him you're like something's
not right with this guy not in the sense
of like evil but in the sense that he's
a simpleton right and now he's in charge
of this whole country and everyone's
taught to regard him as one of the great
geniuses of all time and it's this
the idea this mediocre nobody this guy
would have in any other culture been
accomplished nothing or or at war would
have had an honest job where he's like
okay he works at the mail mail service
and he's batted it okay fine he's not
hurting anyone and now as a result of
this he's responsible for mass death
secret police and incarceration
and uh you know the one the greatest
things that i've ever seen which i'm
sure many people have seen as well if
you go on youtube it's his speech
and it's the first time the crowd turns
and his head kind of like because they
start booing him which was unheard of
and you know he was shot with his uh um
dog-faced wife not that long after it
was just a great moment but
it's things like this i agree with you
that that mediocre weak person
is now in a position of power over
somebody else and that sense of
vindictiveness like i'm going to feel
strong for once in my life but it's
going to be at your expense that i think
is you know human nature it's most
primal
and every time i meet a person in this
world you're the first person to get me
to cry on a fucking podcast fucking the
robot gets me to cry what the fuck is
going on every time i meet a weird
person
somebody to me heroism
is also
taking a risk to uh rebel against
mediocrity yeah
like in in the most simplest of ways
like the the license address like taking
a risk to break the little bit of rule
that nobody will know about to take that
little bit of a
leap
of like that little protest against the
bureaucracy well like that nazi remedy
where he just spoke out he's like hey
lady that's a big one oh that's a
restructuring i mean like literally at
the line at starbucks or something like
okay like even in the tiniest of ways
when i see
people just like it's almost like that
little like glimmer in their eye a wink
like we're in this together this there's
there's all this conformity all around
us that's
at a different time could have been nazi
germany could have been uh stalin and
soviet union sure we're in this together
we're going to rebel against that
conformity by just
just taking the risk that little bit of
risk against mediocrity i don't know and
that and then once again
i see this in companies too
when i see the mediocrity i see this you
know i used to work at google i see it
in google
and when the companies grow
that mediocrity is overwhelming the
peter principle right the peter
principle yeah yeah my hope is that all
of us have the possibility
for that glimmer that um
that risk taking the the leap
of faith or whatever the heck that is
the leap out of the ordinary out of the
conformity out of the mediocrity so this
is where you and i disagree
i i think most a lot of people do are
not capable of that
they're accustomed
to it i don't know if they're not
capable i i
i understand your position i'm
disagreeing with it i'm saying i do not
think they're capable i think a lot of
people effectively don't have souls
they do not have a conscience in this
sense where they're going to look at an
issue bring their critical thinking and
say all right
i
am going to do the right thing although
i'm taking a risk i don't think thinking
is involved or is it just taking that
leap there there's something about that
basic human spirit forget the thinking
part it's it's just saying like
i'll take that risk they're taking that
adventure the same thing that got people
to explore
the seas you know that that
uh throughout human civilization explore
land
explore the oceans like that explore
exploration like we've done stuff this
way all this time
i'm going to take a leap
and that comes out of nowhere seemingly
but those people are the heroes but i
don't think that's universal
remember there's i'm going to use a very
gauche example there was a show called
scare tactics which was basically a
candid camera but they would scare
people like they'd have vampires
whatever hidden camera and people's
reactions
and
so a lot of but sometimes it the prank
didn't work out like they expected so
there was one where they were hiring
some of the the people who were the
marks you know the contestants so to
speak was it was hard to be a security
guard okay and you have to watch this
this factory overnight and you get paid
and what the setup was
some people were breaking out of the
factory in the middle of the night like
in rags and they were saying they were
keeping us prisoner here
like blah blah and just watch the person
reaction to this and there was one
security guard
where there he basically forced them
back into the building and they're like
they're working us 24 7 we're getting
beaten he's like i'm here to do a job
get back in there and you watch this and
it never even enters his head to be like
something's wrong here he was given his
orders he's following his orders
and
to me
that is not uncommon and that person
although they look like you and i uh
there's something essentially human
missing with them now
very quickly the reaction is well it's
one step from there to nazism i don't
think it's something that i'm not saying
this person should be killed but i'm
just saying to expect
that every human being has the capacity
to have that defiance especially to cost
their own life that i think is not
realistic uh and i but at the same time
i feel like an octopus on the eighth
hand
it is those few of us
or
if you want to include me in this who do
make these tiny little
protests who look the other way when
someone is hungry who's stealing food
from the supermarket right it's like all
right like i i'm gonna pretend i didn't
see anything
that
those little elements of heroism are
what move
humanity forward
and demonstrate the validity of the
human experience whereas everyone else
is kind of like scenery
i think
almost everybody in the world can derive
deep meaning and pleasure from having
done those courageous acts and i also
think they have the capacity to do them
to discover that meaning and happiness
so you're the cynic then why aren't they
doing it they haven't gotten a chance to
like i've never
tried lsd or dmt
you haven't gotten the chance to try
this amazing journey which is taking the
risk that's something yes because as you
just said two minutes ago
everyone has that chance every day
to do the right thing and we have the
chance to do a lot of things and we
don't realize there's a lot of stuff
right in front of