Kind: captions
Language: en
the following is a conversation with
josh barnett
one of the greatest fighters and
submission wrestlers in history
with an epic 25-year career that
includes being the ufc heavyweight
champion
and countless other accolades he also
happens to be one of the most
intelligent
and brutally honest human beings in all
of martial arts
and especially so about his appreciation
of
and fascination with violence
quick mention of our sponsors which
feels ridiculous to say after that
introduction
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as a side note let me say that i've been
a fan of josh barnett for a long time
this conversation was indeed a long time
coming and i'm sure we'll talk many
times again
for what it's worth i'm a student of
combat sports admire when they're done
at the highest level either through
masterful execution of skill
or relentless dominance of pure guts
for context i'm a black belt in
jiu-jitsu and have competed in wrestling
submission grappling jiu-jitsu judo
and even catch wrestling which is a
variant of submission grappling that
josh
is one of the great practitioners
scholars and teachers of
i could probably talk for hours about
what i've learned from my time on the
mat
but if i were to say one thing it is
that the mat
is honest you can't run away from
yourself when you step on the mat
it reveals your fears the lies you might
tell yourself
all the delusions you might have or at
least i had
that there's anything in this world that
can be achieved except through blood
sweat and tears that honesty taken to
the highest levels
as is the case with josh creates the
most special of human beings
and definitely someone who is
fascinating to talk to if you enjoy this
thing subscribe on youtube
review it on apple podcast follow on
spotify
support on patreon or connect with me on
twitter at lex friedman
and now here's my conversation with josh
barnett
who were the philosophers and
philosophical ideas that influenced you
the most
are we just jumping right in that's
we're right and we're not interested
no foreplay on camera all right i had an
interesting philosophical journey
at least i think it's interesting and
that was
i think as far as organized philosophy
or maybe uh
i think authentic's not the right word
but like uh
yeah we'll stay organized um
i would say that nietzsche is probably
one of the people with the most
influence on on me
uh but i also feel like to a degree
your personality and will oftentimes
dictate what philosophers that you can
you can vibe with yeah so what what what
ideas from nietzsche was it the
the ubermaj definitely the ubermensches
is huge to me because i see it as an
extension
of basically the religious concepts of
god and higher
ideals but just put into a different a
secular context
and the idea also that the ubermensch
is a striving and overcoming you know
something that you're always working
towards
that very few will ever it's not like
the the concept that you can just
make them it doesn't happen that way and
it's not based simply upon
if you were say put through a genetic
program
and and and turned into a super soldier
like i wouldn't that wouldn't make it
you know that's like the the very
surface level and incorrect
understanding what ubermensch is
the ubermensch is the idea of this this
kind of uh
human that that transcends all the
the weaker lower aspects of humans which
we're full of
but i also think that there's an element
in nietzsche's writing that suggests
that it's not something
you can't even be in all the time like
it's
even a temporary state because it's not
something that we're capable of
maintaining
it's something to strive for like a
morality
uh an image ideal a set of principles
that we can
connect to that doesn't rely on
otherworldly
kind of uh outdoor things
with nietzsche i feel like the concept
of the ubermensch
is something built on authenticity as
well
as heidegger was like dozen right so
when you are authentic
and heidegger being a follower of
nietzsche's
and highly influenced by him uh with i
think that the ubermensch is an example
of authenticity in that it isn't
about trying to be anything that you
cannot be or to go against who you
are but to actually understand that
accept that and then work with what you
can work with and and and
create from your lump of clay that is
you
because i can't become
certain there's certain things that are
just not going to happen for me because
it's not in my proclivity i mean i'm
never going gonna be you know five foot
tall and 120 pounds
i mean that again i guess but uh
um but i know
but as you get more in tune with who you
are as you start
learning more about what unique things
or at least what that
that combination that makes you that
gestalt part of yourself
what those things are and how you can
use them then you know you can work
towards being that
taking what that is and seeing if you
can
get to that point now the likelihood is
no maybe probably never i mean but we
can never achieve godhood yet
you know religion is is a constant you
know striving
and a look at a higher ideal concept
even if it's multiple gods or one god
it's still
essentially all built around this
concept like i i like the idea of
catholics original sin if you think of
sin not as evil but as
you know missing the mark the archer's
term where it derives or even like in
spanish you know without so as being
if you accept that you are imperfect if
you accept that you you need to
constantly strive even against yourself
because you you will figure out the best
ways at which to
submarine your own capabilities
submarine your own
dreams and wishes and whatever you will
ruin them more than anything else
and you will tell yourself that you
ruined them on purpose for a good reason
or you'll say that
you'll figure out a way to put it on
everything else but yourself
and so the idea of thinking of
well as i'm starting off on this whole
thing i got a lot of work to do
and that's just the way it is and i got
to figure out what areas those are going
to be
and so you know i thought oh yeah if i
think of original sin
actually can be that can be kind of a
clever idea but it's also
just accepting that we're all
uniquely strange and unequal in our own
ways
but we have to figure out how that fits
in the word authenticity kind of
connects to all of that so
striving to be your authentic self means
figuring out exactly the shape of the
flaws
the the character of your like little
demons you get to play with and
around them finding a path to whatever
the hell uh
ideal versions of yourself you can carve
and pretending like that's
such a thing is even possible the other
idea about nietzsche is
on his idea of morality he presents the
argument that uh
morality is a human illusion and that uh
you know there's not such a thing as
good and evil and these are all kind of
constructs do you think there's such a
thing as a
good and evil that's connected to some
objective reality
i think that there are some i
actually do believe that there are some
universals i'm not kantian in any way
but i do think that there are some
universals and
the thing that actually brought me to
even the concept of that was jung
so you know jung's concept of the
collective unconsciousness
and then taking that thought and then
applying it to
looking through his history and uh
the most varied history you can find so
i would say probably religion is your
earliest one
that you can get for for written history
or uh
written examples of human behavior and
psychology
at its at the the furthest that we can
look into it
uh with you know from man's hand to
whatever the medium is cuneiform or
whatever but as you do that and then
let's say going from
mesopotamia to india to
you know up to and just going from all
these places as disparate as they may
seem
as many different cultures and
ethnicities and religions and how the
religions will
will vary quite a bit from monotheists
to
uh polytheists and so on and so forth
but then just seeing how there's all the
through lines and of course campbell
he did this uh much earlier than
me thinking about it but uh i think that
by
looking at things that way and starting
to find the threads instead of always
just looking at everything as being its
own compartmentalized
concept as if it only applies to this
time this people like
getting overly pomo about it is just a
really idiotic
post-modern so you think that there is
uh
just like joseph campbell there's a
thread that connects
all of these stories narratives that we
constructed for ourselves as we evolve
and that thread is grounded in some kind
of absolute ideas of maybe on the
morality side which is the trickiest one
of good and evil
somewhat yeah i think that a lot of this
stuff is just derived from a biological
perspective i feel like these things are
innate within us
do you think our innately humans are
good like we
no i don't i feel like
i also feel like there's an issue of
scale too like
um like nasim taleb likes to talk about
how he
views his the way he interacts with with
groups
in terms of scale you know what is this
thing about like at a
at the familia level i'm a i'm a
communist and then at the
civic level i'm a i'm a republican or
something
at this other level then it goes on at
the widest level he's a libertarian
or something of that nature you know
like fundamentally human interaction
changes
on scale on scale and scale and also uh
from
uh you know subjective to the
environment around them so and i don't
even mean
environment just in the sake of physical
environment uh nature right like
nature's constantly trying to murder you
well it's not really trying it's just
nature's being nature the universe is
the universe and
uh at times it takes you out it's just
not with any particular uh compunction
or prejudice it's just
oops you know sorry there's no more
dodos my bad
but don't you think the particular
flavor of the complexity that is the
human mind
was created like let me make an argument
for that
all people are fundamentally good okay
is uh
there's an evolutionary advantage to
being
to striving to uh cooperate
to add more love to the world of like
compassion empathy all that kind of
stuff
and that the very thing that created
the human mind was
this evolutionary advantage whatever the
forces behind this evolutionary
advantage
and scale yes so when we're dealing with
a small tribe
sure yeah when you meet another tribe
maybe there are other factors that are
going into that
let's say you scale up and so
your 150 has exceeded their 150 and
like you start to get to a certain point
where
um you can't really be
close enough to someone down the line of
some of of that next like that 150s 150
and they just now all of a sudden become
some
some guy whatever and when it comes to
some guy
at once it starts hitting scale i don't
know that it's
capable people can be
as as magnanimous to a stranger as
to the known if they orient themselves
to be
secure enough because it does come to
security insecurity
in one way or the other either brought
on by the unknown brought on by
an actual threat brought on by even
their own as we would use the word
insecurity in that their own insecurity
within their own capabilities their own
belief in themselves
all these things can change things from
being compassionate and what have you to
at least at the very least
maybe not evil but self-interest driven
to the point of
negative results for those that aren't
you know what i mean right
but another way to frame that is uh
maybe
it's less about scale and more about the
amount of resources available so
if we're overflowing with resources in
terms of
security and safety all the things
you've mentioned
if we have more than enough resources
then the way we treat a stranger
the way we position ourselves towards
that stranger might be
in a way that uh allows us to be our
real human selves as opposed to sort of
our animal self
and therefore it's mostly about how
clever can we
descendants of abes be in coming up with
all cool kinds of technologies and ways
to uh
efficiently use the resources we have
such that we're not constrained
and my hope is that we can
that human innovation will outpace
the growth of our the number of people
that are starving for resources
yes uh i think that there's a lot of uh
rationality behind uh this argument and
you know in in some ways i agree and and
in a lot of ways i see it as
missing the point of of how this
experiment
has been playing out across time when
you look at uh what
for one it's like define resources you
know what is a
what is a resource of of as
humans uh would would define it right
or wealth even and so you can say
well you know an iphone's a resource the
internet's a resource
water obviously is a resource but if we
weigh them
what is more important to human beings
water internet or iphones
it's water right so if we look at
resources
if we start with what do human beings
need to live
i mean actually live not live here
in this bullshit fantasy creation
extension of our own
ingenuity and you know a prison of our
own creation and also a paradise of our
own creation
but this is not how human beings
normally live this is all built upon
stuff
on on built on concept on idea
and some and and some of it's built on
just well this is the paradigm so this
is what you do
human beings need food they need water
to survive
they need shelter from the elements and
they need certain skills
to perpetuate these things and be able
to pass them down so that they can
so these things don't become uh
you don't end up in this this gap where
you have to relearn things
because if it's lost then
that time before you can get it back
again is going to be
a dark ages of sorts you know or it's
going to be highly detrimental to
to your group because not knowing how to
fish
not knowing how to hunt not knowing how
to even
clean and cook the game once you have it
could be lethal that's fascinating to
think of that as a basic resource the
knowledge to attain the very
low level things of water right and
we'll figure it out we did it once
before
and we've done it over and over and over
and over again it's just costly
yes it has costs for sure um
but when you think of how
you look at the well we'll just deal
with
the first world of the west you look at
the the
the pathline the pathway of of western
civilization
and its growth and then you look at how
technology injected into it over time
you know how it magnifies uh
things or how pushes things at uh orders
of magnitude faster
and then the internet comes along and
even faster you know so you're watching
industrial evolution to
what is it the uh the capacitor and then
so on it goes further and further and as
the internet and technology
especially on the electronic side of
things start increasing in capability
it massively outpaces even our
necessity for it at times it becomes you
know plan
obsolescence happens quicker and over
and over and over again
and wealth increasing increases increase
increases
in terms of the things that we're able
to acquire right i mean
i've seen homeless people with with
smartphones you know so
we're living in the most wealth-laden
luxury laden age of
all of humanity yet what happens when
we see calamity or people go on hard
time what are
they the things that they value you know
what what is what do people go to an
argument about the cost of things that
are luxury items generally
and not necessity items you know we get
into fights about
um you know things that are
at the end of the day not necessities to
us you know people are so concerned
about
netflix and the internet and personally
i'm very concerned about the internet
because i look at it as
my own little personal library of
alexandria in my pocket
that's what i love about it and the
ability to have a tool as effective as
it is even though i'm in a constant
battle to not let that tool
become a vice or to become something
that
that actually brings me to a lower state
but we will the question is over the are
we willing to murder each other over
netflix
versus murder each other over water
we're willing to murder each other over
water
that's a given right but that's our
animalistic cells of death well it's
also a necessity for
it's animalistic but it's also either
you do it or you don't right like unless
somebody's willing to share that water
or if that water is of such a limited
uh uh capability or such a limited
amount
then you will have to murder to have
that one netflix the argument is the
higher
we get up to this hierarchy of what we
consider
in los angeles resources yes we were
less willing to be
to commit violence we are less willing
to commit violence the oh i would say
over netflix but we are willing to
commit violence over netflix over
everything associated with netflix over
televisions over sneakers
over over um you know i mean
when we look at a good i mean the
majority of
the stuff that came with the riots i
mean it was
use car dealerships uh targets
i mean and then you look it's like whoa
okay what are people
what do they got what are they so hell
bent to get
out of this whole thing i'm even talking
about the ideological elements or
anything like that just like okay
something's going on boom looting
whatever
yeah we you know what what are you going
to loot yeah you know you'll have aoc
say oh people needing bread
like i didn't see a single loaf of bread
you know i saw
television poetry you know but
to me it is poetry in a sense because
you get to see
who we how we actually are operating you
know
what are where what is becoming first
principles to most people but
wait but you could also argue though
those rides were more like the madness
of crowds which is oh it's definitely a
lot
more than just that i'm just saying that
given a chance it's like okay
boom the the lights are off the grid is
down
we've we've hacked into the whole system
turned into an 80s movie and
you have the ability to go get a hold of
whatever it is that you think is most
important and what do we do
and i say we as in you know including
all of us we grab a tv
we we attack it we we break into a
sneaker store on melrose we do
it's just like uh we still giant cause
statues
or the value of that is completely
market driven
like it's just a piece of polypropylene
or whatever butyl
and you know it's cool you know i'm a
big fan of art uh but uh
it's like you know i can't eat that and
at the end of the day man
you're sitting there with your with your
like what'd you do today honey what'd
you get
you know man we were able to you know oh
i got this
i got this designer art statue
are you gonna go well you can't really
sell it on the on like the art markets
where people are really gonna pay for it
so
are you gonna become an underground art
dealer with your one piece of cause
art one interesting thing you just said
before i forget it you mentioned the
library of alexandria and your phone
well your phone but also just thinking
of your little world
that you're creating for yourself on the
internet that's a really powerful way to
actually phrase it one of the things
that uh
you've been on joe rogan several times
although everybody always comes to me oh
that was so great i didn't know
you you're on you've on joe rogan i go
this is like my fifth time dude
i've been a fan of yours for a long time
from
uh from other avenues this is a long
time coming actually everybody you have
no idea like how many times through
uh messaging and missing each other
over the years this is ridiculous this
is a long time coming you don't
realize how special this is for us this
is a well i'm also star struck we'll
talk about this but you symbolize
something
very important to me through my journey
through wrestling through jiu jitsu
through judo through
to street fighting through just combat
there's uh
you're the in some sense the devil on my
shoulder
of like of violence in a good in the in
in uh the devil gets a bad rap
does he does get a bad rap i i realize
you know sitting encased in in ice down
at that low-ass level you know
yeah but you know the angel side is more
like the athletic the sport the science
the tech
the the technical the chess side of
things so uh
but on the library alexander let me ask
uh
because you're on joe rogan it does make
me really sad
and i realize that i'm just probably
being romantic that
his most of his library of
interviews that were on youtube have not
been taken down
because he went to spotify and that was
the first i'm probably an idiot but it
was the first time i realized
that this knowledge that we've been
building up on the internet
doesn't necessarily last forever no it
doesn't unless you preserve it i mean
it's like all things if
if you do not preserve them if you do
not make uh
efforts um you know so many of my it
just really brings the minor off the
top of my head all my so many friends of
of mine that are jewish
uh you know they're they're basically
secular
but yet through even the secular
aspect of just keeping the traditions
alive it's like well you could always
pick a book and read out about read
about it clearly
it's called the torah but um
if you don't put these things into
action if you don't make them a part of
your consciousness maybe even on the
subconsciousness just by
through through repetition they will die
they will become
simply something that exists somewhere
until you
find it again and carl gotch used to say
something um
he would say that i don't invent moves i
just rediscover them
but yet gotch and billy robinson also
would understand that you
if someone's not carrying the torch
it'll go out
now that doesn't mean fire can't be
rekindled it just means that it that
torch no longer
is lighting the way on on this knowledge
and so it's
it's important to be
an individual even on on an individual
level to be a repository for
for aspects of knowledge you mentioned
gotch
you uh consider yourself
a catch uh wrestler
so i've mentioned to you offline that i
competed in a couple of catch wrestling
tournaments
uh can we go wikipedia level at the very
basic you're the exactly right person to
ask
what is catch wrestling and what are its
defining principles
i would say the easiest way for us to
talk about
and give uh
an overview of what catch is in the
simplest terms is
think of collegiate wrestling with
submissions
that is essentially what catch is and
it's not surprising because collegiate
wrestling is actually derived from
catch's catch can it's just that over
time
certain aspects were were
removed from the competition structure
so that they became
null elements things that were discarded
but
it's funny that you can take high level
amateur collegiate types and you can
show them
a move and then add a little bit to it
and go oh well hey that was just like
what we already do here but except oh i
didn't know you could take it all the
way to this point or
you know things of that nature
especially when it comes to professional
wrestling like uh teaching people like
no that that
i know you're just using this for in a
show but this is actually a real move
and here's how it really feels
and so collegiate wrestling and
wrestling in general for people who are
not aware is basically
two people started on their feet and
that's a score
that they're trying to take each other
down and they have to um
they score points along the way you can
end matches by
pinning them for example on their back
i think one way to describe wrestling
is uh it's very much about figuring out
ways to establish
control and leverage in these kind of uh
tie ups or there's different styles
where you can do more from a distance to
where it's more about the timing and all
that kind of stuff
ultimately it's an art of like both
upper body and lower body and you could
choose the different puzzles that you
solved there
you could be attacking the head the arms
you could be attacking the legs
there's also part of collegiate
wrestling that's on the ground
that has more uh what's called like a
referee's position
right the referee's position where
you're on uh your hands and knees
basically and so uh do you do you
understand what that's supposed to
simulate why is that one of the standard
positions
it's one of the standard positions
because one it's one of the easiest ways
to actually get up
um but two it's because you cannot be on
your back
if you're on your back you're getting
pinned and
the back exposure or being pinned is
pretty much the universal wrestling
thing one taking the guy from their feet
to the floor and two
pinning them as you go from like was it
uh cornish wrestling
turkish oil wrestling mongolian sumo
uh indian um well they'll call it
pelhani
it's also called kushti um
jujitsu judo so many of them is
like there's a usambo even if it doesn't
end the match it's still like one of the
most important
aspects of the competition itself across
oh so every style and this is where
submission
like catch wrestling or uh submission
wrestling
or jiu jitsu feels different which
it seems like for most wrestling for a
lot of wrestling
the dominance is the is the goal
as opposed to submission which
i guess those are two are related but
dominating the position so that's what
pinning is it's almost like
breaking your opponent
like breaking uh through all of their
defenses to where they're completely
defenseless and you could do anything
with them that you want maybe
that's a wikipedia definition of
dominance i don't know
and then yeah i mean it sounds very much
like a chain to a radiator yeah
yeah yeah this uh there's a threat that
connects all right
but submission feels different i mean
it is actually different when you think
about it across the landscape
i don't think radically different but
distill slightly different and that
um if you think of wrestling as being
derived from
from from combat right so well it is
combat sports but
more more lethal combat getting somebody
off their feet and onto their back
is about as lethal a place for the
person on bottom to be
in general i mean i i don't
don't come at me with your talks about
your fucking worm guards
and blah blah blah and whatever spider
bear
okay get out of here with that this is
we're not talking about you
in this highly uh regimented sporting
environment
we're talking about general you know all
the body hair
none of the waxing human beings so um
getting someone on their back okay
they're how
you as you're trying to get up you're
getting hit with a rock or stabbed or
what have you
set on fire who knows
generally these conflicts are not just
isolated to
one on one you it's if it's four on two
your your your your buddy that was with
you back to back now he's on his back
what do you think now it's going to be
one-on-one well three go on one
so and then you go you elevate this to
to armored combat right
and it's boom put them on the ground oh
crap it's hard to get up well while
you're struggling to get up stab
you know that's where jiu jitsu's uh
concepts come from with all their
leveraging and off balancing is
oh man if i end up in this situation in
tight close quarters combat
yes we could fight it out with swords
and knives and what have you but
it's way easier if the first thing i can
do is foot sweep you on your back
and then pull my knife and just go and
stick is there a thread
that connects all of these different
arts from
not just arts but from the very base
violence of war just like you said that
there's no rules
to the very regimented uh
ibajf i do jiu jitsu tournaments and
just you kind of laid out some of it but
can you go all the way to the
so when you you start off with absolute
skills
in the sense of absolute offense and
defense
in the taking or preserving of life
right
full-on at its at its purest
form of self defense and
self-preservation
okay and then you extrapolate part of
that in that
all animals train in violence
all play usually degenerates into some
sort of soft violence
so be it cats when they're kittens and
puppies and
all that everything learns how to kill
how to fight
um not that you know just that that dumb
alpha
meme stuff where the idea is that oh by
being alpha that means you run around
like basically just being a bully in a
shithead
no actually alpha wolves spend
very little time fighting because if you
were actually
alpha you don't get into fights there's
no need to
um and if you are probably getting into
any
large amount of fights it's probably
because you're being shitty at being an
alpha and now people are tired of you
being in charge um and yet
in the animal world and it would be the
same for human beings at that
that that base beginning level of
violence
there's a big risk so i know that we
live in this
place with health care and where or you
might be
in a place with nationalized health
whatever right there's there's there's
band-aids
there's there's uh uh uh penicillin
there's all that kind of stuff but
that's not the normal way of things
you know yeah there's a channel that
just
hurts me every time i i used to follow
and i had to unfollow it because it was
too painful for me as a human being
called nature is metal
oh yes on instagram it was uh sobering
and then it was like this is too sober
that's very sobering so in there the
risk
is at its highest level there the damage
you take
the winner walks away hurt getting lame
when you need every aspect of your
physical and athletic faculties to
survive because
it isn't going to be the the this isn't
the first and it's definitely not going
to be the last
especially if you're the slowest one you
know it's a is it was it uh
is a lyric from a clutch song
uh don't go for the fat ones just go for
the slow ones
[Laughter]
oh man but that the universal truth of
the way nature works it's not cruel it's
just the way it is
yeah i mean watch uh animals get into
fights on
on any of these sort of documentary
stuff you'll see
an intense short and then dispersal like
you'll see as soon as one feels like uh
things have switched just enough
boom the bear or whatever it is takes
off it's like i'm not i'm done with this
because if you can get out of there with
just some scars and what have you
okay you lose an eye no it's not as good
uh you really get hurt bad and get
infected you're done
yeah you know so it there's a serious
risk to be
um that can come with these sort of
things yet
i believe that we are inherently
born for at least aspects of and use of
violence
and so at the end of the day we need
these things not just to
not just survive each other but they're
they're a part of being able to
hunt and other things but uh so violence
is a part of human nature violence is
a is like it's an absolute it is in
every person it is a part of every
interaction it isn't part of every
every law everything and i'm not by the
way i'm not an ancap
so don't even don't don't hit your wagon
to me on that one
and cap is an arcade captain capitalist
yes
not a not an end cap they have nice book
book shops
yeah they do i mean i'm not i'm not
gonna you know sit here and and shit
talk and caps
uh although i also used to get into the
conversations with uh
with uh an ancom uh anarcho communist
uh a good friend of mine and he would he
would bring up this stuff and i'm like
yeah cool man i'm down with anarchy you
ain't gonna like it
what do you mean i go because i'm gonna
take on i'm gonna gather all kinds of
people think i'm gonna make this i'm
gonna get the strongest together
going to take your shit okay okay on
that
topic i have um a friend of mine now
uh a fellow russian uh ukrainian
uh michael malus oh yeah i'm familiar
with michael melons
i watched a little bit of your guys's uh
conversation
so this is really good to ask you
because
uh i like how he's in the white suit and
and you're in the white and black but he
he lives in new york city
he is uh espouses ideas of monarchism
and his idea and this is different than
um
sort of the iron rand set of ideas
that there's a line between sort of
capitalism that's backed by the state
and just pure anarchism and
his idea that violence won't take over
in an anarchism is one that feels to me
not grounded in reality i may be agree i
may be wrong so is there some
so uh the idea with pure capitalism
is that you mean laissez-faire
completely deregulated yeah yeah well
what it will agree it'll end up in one
it'll end up in
if if you're anti-globalist it's gonna
be that
it's gonna be globalist 100 because
it has no con pure capitalism has no
consideration
for uh has no consideration for your
your native users
or of any sort like it does it doesn't
matter and but the idea of governments
is that the land
little piece of land geographically
you're born on
means you're going to stick to whatever
founding documents
created that little land so anarchism is
against that
and the argument is you should be able
to choose which ideas you live with
and the concern there is nobody
uh this geographical land the
governments
that organize on that land will not
do not need to protect you from the
violence and my sense is there does need
to be an army there does need to be
police
that help what however the form that
police takes but
there needs to be a more centralized not
completely centralized but more
centralized
safety net of to protect you from the
violence scale again right so
if you want to have your anarchist
utopia
well we'll call it utah your anarchist
creation here at certain scale i'm sure
it's
doable you know um
but as it scales as the scale increases
it's completely untenable and a state
will emerge
a state will always you because even
people always think of states as as like
people rubbing their hands and smoking
cigars and back rooms
and just out of nowhere coming around
just like oh we're going to create this
big centralized thing and just so we can
tell everybody what to do and we can be
in charge
i mean i know that there are people like
that that exist
that they would like to do things of
that nature and that they see
the use of power as
something to be used more for their
their personal gains
over first which again self-interest in
human beings
but um uh but eventually a state people
want us they want something to go like
okay
who's taking care of this and who's
taking care of that and who and how do
we create
some sort of uh some sort of uh
protocol for this like okay well when
it's not bob when is it susie when is it
whatever i mean like how do we
you know it's got to get done if we want
this thing to become bigger if we want
our
all of our plumbing to work right if we
want it's just i'm sorry
a state's going to happen a state is
also when you think about it
it's supposed to have consideration to
tribe right so if people think that
we're not tribes
well you're not you're not really
thinking very deeply
we're all tribes of a sort and uh
everybody likes to use the word
tribalism in this idea of of this uh
antagonistic concept but and while sure
tribalism can be antagonistic tribalism
can also be
uh a positive thing or i could just say
it just seems to be a natural thing
people you know they create their their
groups of one sort or another
and so when you have
well when you think about where when
nation states really started to become a
thing
uh and i don't mean even the more modern
looking variants that we could think
back of and say the 19th century or
something like that right
even older than that i mean you think
the assyrians didn't have a state of
some sort of course they did
um they how do you increase your your
your your empire if you don't actually
have a place to start from
a ruler so you're saying like naturally
when you start talking thinking about
scale of humans
naturally states emerge
and so can we try to make an argument
for
anarchism which is okay
okay so uh
anarchy in a sense is in opposition to
the
unhelpful unproductive inefficient
bureaucracies that eventually
the states lead to yes and that's what
we can see
i mean i would say less anarchy let more
study james burnham you know
uh or well
any anybody that wants to talk about the
the managerial problem and the matter
so you you have a sense i hope
maybe let's think like what is the path
forward with the
inefficient state is it revolution or
is it to work within the system to
constantly improve it
man i don't know that one i mean my
general sense
uh and maybe this is the nietzschean
part of me is that
yeah it'll it would take maybe not even
just maybe not even defining uh it
specifically as revolution maybe it
would just take
just total calamity to to get people to
stop
being shitty to not stop being a lesser
version of themselves to stop
thinking more about uh things from
you know the paradigm that we exist in
now where we're giving so much value to
stuff that isn't really all that
valuable
you know where we're so concerned about
likes
and i don't just mean like whether we
get them or not but that
oh man maybe we should take this off of
our platform because this is too
destabilizing to people and it's like
because once you exceed dunbar's number
i think it's actually without having the
right
faculties which would need to be
developed
because this is dealing with this is
dealing with tech that brings
things ways of approaching being
that we are not naturally
programmed to be able uh to handle
appropriately so and i think it's even
even
even more it's even more detrimental to
women than men
because i think uh women have a more
natural proclivity towards
um uh group association
and and and more group
oriented thinking and patterning and
now and with also coupled with
seemingly more sensitivity towards
towards human uh states
so i feel like women like the classic
idea is like oh you know women are
psychic you know i have a sixth sense
and what have you and i think that's
just a
uh a way of
uh simplifying what i think is that
women may be more in tune with
picking up on the unsaid like they might
be better at seeing
physical cues uh inflection and tone
like different like they may
be far more sensitive to these things
which to me would make sense because
dealing with
children that can't uh communicate
uh so so generally more understanding
and all the full form right now okay
now whether it be a woman or a man but
especially
with even the social uh push on this
concept of empathy
which of course it gets to the point
where it loses any meaning anymore like
people use the word
empathy absolutely incorrectly all the
time and they don't even understand
what you're really asking of people but
let's just take it as
as we're using empathy in the correct
sense and you're taking on
the emotional content of the thing
itself
now you open that up to thousands of
people maybe hundreds of thousands of
people
all across the world that you will never
meet that you will never know that
you're not even getting an
actual true representation most of the
time of who these people
are you're you're meeting persona and
some of these personas
are even deliberately created
to elicit a response inauthentically
are you referring to bots or uh could be
bots or actual people
bots are one thing but i mean there are
literal people out there that will
create something create uh gofundmes for
for
tragedies that never didn't really or
events that didn't happen or
any number of things okay i mean burn
their own house down and then say you
know we were attacked
and then it comes down you did it to
yourself because you wanted money and
empathy and this that and
you wanted all this this emotional
wealth let's say this emotional uh
coin as well as actual if possible you
wanted to leverage it in some way
that's not the majority of people but i
would say
a good amount of folks are thinking well
if i post this photo um
and i put this little blurb in there i
bet i can get this much cachet out of it
in this sense
and i'm not even and this isn't just a
reference to like butt picks and stuff
like that
because clearly obviously people
understand that that
uh our inborn uh sexual nature
is easy to manipulate i mean that's
pretty
pretty obvious but you're you're saying
this kind of new medium of communication
on social media is
uh is is unnatural and it preys on us
and so as
you you want this you know you look at
you look at an anarchist kind of mindset
right and so you're just like
there's no there there is no overarching
state
to to create any kind of
uh structure right and so if you have
that unfettered capitalism aspect with
it
and before i say anything particularly
damning
about unfettered capitalism uh i'm a
massive capitalist
because i view capitalism essentially as
what it boils down to
i get these arguments people too they
they start giving me all these extra
definitions about capitalism like no
no this is obviously some sort of theory
you're taking from other shit but that
doesn't describe capitalism capitalism
is
the ability for us to create
whatever we want you know create our
thoughts ideas
physical things and trade them freely
amongst each other uh
in ways that we find um
acceptable right you know i'm not even
using the word fair
because i might think it's fair to me
you might think
huh well i mean that was actually i
think he what he thought was unfair to
him and it's more fair to me
and someone a third observer goes oh man
you should
you should not have paid that for that
you should have paid this and it's like
well you know what it works for me
without sufficiently acceptable you you
both agreed to the transaction
correct and uh you know but but
also at the at the root of that is
freedom right and
as far as i can tell i've been banging
this around in my head
it's like for every one unit of freedom
you need two units of
accountability and if you don't have
that
what you end up with is
human self-interest we're not even going
to get into evil human self-interest
sabotaging other things even not in a
sense to be malicious
okay so in terms of uh let's let's put
this as mathematically speaking
i love this so anarchism is more like
two units of freedom and one unit of
accountability or maybe zero units of
accountability possibly i mean the
anarchists tend to think like no
everyone will be accountable
fuck they will when have you seen this
happen in real life
you know i mean people aren't even
accountable in their revolutions after
that time so
uh you aren't looking at
the way people really are it's like marx
is like
yeah the people are like this they're
like that look at how capitalism does it
i mean
he of course assigns a lot of really
ridiculous economic principles and
practice
uh but and also assumes that everybody
you know who
makes any profit from anything is
somehow stealing it and you know
really assigns a negative moral aspect
to them and then it's like oh yeah but
then eventually communism will happen
ever no one will act that way anymore
and you're like whoa
hold on you just said that people are
all are you saying it's
all due to capitalism or it's is it
innate it's just
it's a fundamental misunderstanding of
and it's like
hey look at you
you're like a notorious like
anti-semitic
angry like uh just
absolute curmudgeon of a human being who
seems to be really not all that fun to
be around
marx yeah and then it's just like so you
have to think like if if there was
one billion marxists in the world how
would they behave
it would be absolute they would hate
each other
so bad and you know this isn't for me to
even poison the well on marx is like oh
his personality sucks like there's lots
of people whose personality sucks
that doesn't mean they can't make i
don't know that his name
what you know what somebody argues he's
just a he's a loner
i mean i don't know his personality
sucked at all let me walk that back and
that he was human
saying his personality sucked he was
sometimes
contradictory irrational sometimes
he was uh quite sexist
despite the emails i've gotten that uh
that that's that told me that
uh that there's this people was written
to me that uh nietzsche has been
unfairly labeled as sexist
in his discussion about women i'm pretty
sure there's a bunch of documents where
he's just
like he's just a bitter guy
i i will agree with you and marx is as
bitter as they come
to but um you know what bitterness
in and of itself doesn't make like
wha why i hate marxism comes from you
know
the the whole the entirety of the thing
and but the dismissal of humanity but
i'm not going to
say that marxism or practical man
you can find any forbidden book and
it could have something good in it it's
colonel's a good idea yeah and like
at the end of the day you know marx is a
human being he's got a nice beard
he does he had a hell of a beard yeah a
decent portrait i mean he looks like the
kind of guy like
i wouldn't want to meet him in a dark
alley but thankfully i don't think he
was much of a fighter
but in any case i mean not the
anarchists are are
they're more hot for like uh max sterner
people like to think that uh nietzsche
borrowed a lot from sterner and
my argument is one you don't have any
real evidence for that and two
bullshit you know i mean
anybody could i i the fact that they
have some overlapping thoughts
doesn't make it uh lifted not to mention
go read a lot more philosophy and see
how there's so many different things
oh this guy said it in uh 1722
well and then this guy says that again
in 1922. does that mean he read the
other guy's stuff not necessarily i mean
he's working from the same type of human
physiological construct as anybody else
like
of course it's possible this guy could
think the same thing we we think a lot
of the same things
to be perfectly honest i mean reading
the hagakure going back to philosophy
books
this was really impactful on me as a
younger adult because
here's a book written in the 19th
century about someone who lived through
the 19th and 18th century at times as a
samurai now a monk
and his objections to society at the
time
the same objections one was having to
society
as i was reading it like the same human
behaviors the same
uh impetus for action
that he found a problem
like well that's the same that's the
same shit now
like we're not and this is the thing and
then i'm reading more religion i go oh
we're no different than anyone who wrote
the torah
or older we are the same thing with the
same problems with the same
uh psychological issues the same human
behaviors like these things are not
different yeah and we haven't changed
growing set of tools though to
to kill each other with or to
communicate together and all that kind
of stuff but underlying it
there's a human nature well we're also
trying to understand that human nature i
think we've
just like you said learning how to fish
acquired more and more knowledge about
that human nature
uh but it's been a very slow journey
it's slower than people realize
yes in terms of understanding uh human
nature
let me ask in terms of egoism to be
curious
uh to get your sons about ayn rand
and um her whole idea of virtue of like
selfishness sure
and her because you mentioned that
everybody has
a kernel of truth there there's
potential for a colonel truth to be
discovered in
anything for example i've been recently
reading mineconf
you know what that's the thing even
there's something
in there's probably things in mineconf
that are
not the surface level read if you get
all hung up on on all probably all his
crap about
uh you know his anger anger at jews and
this and that all this crap it's like
okay yeah that that's right on the
surface
try to get below that try to see you
know how is he how is he creating the
jews as a cope somehow like how is he
using why
why are they his his scapegoat and i
mean scapegoat in the
so randy gerard's uh concept of the
scapegoat i mean
in that sense whereas uh you know hitler
uses
it wants to make the the jews the
scapegoat
for world war one yeah i mean for me the
starting point
similar with ann rand is uh like
mineconf is not a good
place to search not just because
hitler's evil
but it's just not full of ideas no it is
not
it has its significance due to a lot of
historically speaking
but the starting point for me with
hitler is like
to acknowledge that he's human and
to at least consider the possibility
that any one of us could have been
hitler
so like that not that peterson kind of
concept also
um jonathan height has a thing about uh
the difference between
hate and disgust mechanisms and things
like that and so he used he
goes into the looking at uh hitler and
his
through his his diary entries and
journals and stuff like that to look
uh and see it more as the the discuss
mechanism then also try and see like if
there's any
evolutionary biological uh attachment to
this whatever
i mean you're right he is a human being
any of us
are we're all human beings it's not that
probably jarring for people to think but
we're
we're all i guess supposed potentially
capable of just being in
and all these evil people in the world
think they're doing it for the sake
of good yeah which makes them the most
dangerous
and there's some there's differences in
levels of insane
i think hitler was way more insane than
stalin i think stalin legitimately
thought he was
being doing good i would say that's
probably true stalin it was just
outright brutal like yeah he had he had
his five-year plan he had all those
other things uh
he's just had a much lower value for
human life yes
and so he was willing to take make
decisions about what he actually
as a as a good executive of
which he was of managing different uh
bureaucracies and so on
he was willing to make decisions that
resulted in
mass human suffering where hitler was
it seems like to me what much moodier so
allowed emotions and moves to make his
decisions we also have to consider
the different trajectories and how where
and when they were making their
decisions and i mean
not by time specifically but you know
hitler engaged into this
this conflict across multiple continents
a