https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=_8-ueHHE-EA
When you confuse competence with power, then you punish competence and maybe then you become attracted to weakness because it’s not authoritarian. It doesn’t look like tyranny, but it’s it’s that’s only because competence and power are confused in your mind. Competence and power. Yeah, there’s this thing with power. Yeah, that’s for sure. It’s you know, there’s this claim that all of our institutions are based on power. It’s like, no, they’re not. Only when they’re corrupt. Is that true? Has anybody that you’ve studied throughout history? Managed to obtain a significant amount of power and done the right thing with it. Well, I think most of our institutions that function reasonably well do do that reasonably well or had You know, I mean, we’re all flawed, but there’s a huge difference between Joseph Stalin and Franklin Roosevelt Yeah, a little bit. Yeah. So I mean, if you look, look at look at the Democratic West, all things considered. Yeah. The leadership has been OK. OK to good, especially compared to absolutely catastrophically horrible, which is the alternative. Yeah. Yeah. Is it so when we we’ve we’ve we’ve we don’t give our functional institutions the benefit of the doubt. And that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be subject to criticism, but the idea that they’re predicated on arbitrary power, and that’s their essential nature. That’s appalling. I wasn’t being critical of the institutions. No, no, I know. OK. Yeah, I’m just curious about like. I’m just curious about like a human’s relation. Well, you have a car. Yeah. Does it work? Yeah. How often? Currently, every time I use it. So like if you use it a thousand times, how many times doesn’t it work? Zero out of a thousand car. Right. You said car. Yeah, car. OK. OK. Yeah. OK. Well, that institution is doing pretty well. Yeah, because I have a ninety nine point nine percent success rate. I’m not about fly. Have you crashed yet when you flew? I mean, I think you jinxed me, but no, I know. And and they’re so safe. It’s just beyond comprehension. Yeah. No, I agree with you. I’m not I’m not upset like institutions in that I’m talking about like a human being that is compelled to power. Like I understand certain people being compelled to greatness. That’s really cool. You see it in athletes. And what’s the difference? What’s the difference? I think there is a concern. I think there is a difference because I think like once somebody accesses power, they don’t necessarily need to be more great. Right. They’ll just do whatever they can to continue to have that power where there are people. What do they do? This is a good thing to differentiate. You made this case greatness versus power. OK. OK, let’s take it apart. OK. So you just said there’s something arbitrary about power. Yeah, I think I think there’s something. I think there’s something about people who desire power instead of greatness. And I think that power comes with greatness. But if you’re if your desire is power, I think there is something dangerous there because you’re willing to do whatever it is to maintain that power. Where is the mimicry of greatness? It’s the mimicry of greatness. Greatness deserves power because you want the powerful to be. You want the great to be powerful. Why wouldn’t you? Oh, that’s why we exalt these people that we believe are great. We want them to have it. They’ve earned it. Well, who else would you want to lead you? I mean, if they’re good at doing something, why wouldn’t you put them in the front? You want to be led with some by someone who isn’t great? I mean, you think of all the all the times we spent as tribal hunters. Who do you put in charge? The best hunter, so perhaps the best hunter who’s also the most generous. Yeah, exactly. You want the guy that’s going to share that? Yeah, right. That would make him a great hunter, too. Because over time, he would have people in his hunting party. You want great. You want productivity and generosity. So how do we do this? How do we discern between people who are mimicking power? Greatness for power and greatness? That’s a great question. By paying careful attention, by listening and by talking about it. That’s the purpose of free speech. That’s the purpose of political attention, because you want the great. But it can be mimicked by mimicked by psychopaths who use power. But that doesn’t mean that power is the basis of our of our hierarchical human relationships. That’s only the case when they’ve gone badly wrong. What do you mean by that? I mean, you well, when when a society is corrupt and the powerful rule, when a society isn’t corrupt and the great have authority, that’s not the same thing. And confusing those. You asked why why the beta male is now this object of attention. It’s because we’ve confused great and powerful. And now we’re so afraid of power that we’re willing to dispense with greatness entirely, or even to question whether it exists. That’s the attack on the meritocracy. There’s no meritocracy. Oh, there’s no greatness and no one who has a position deserves it. There’s no difference in talent. That doesn’t mean our institutions are pure and that everyone with talent is rewarded. Yes. But but because no institution is pure and no selection method is 100 percent accurate. But you made this distinction between great greatness and power. Yes. So pursue it. OK. How do you know someone’s great as far as you’re concerned? How do I know someone is great? I have great admiration for the skill. OK. You admire them for the skill. Yeah. Well, that’s weird that see, that’s an interesting thing because we have this instinct of admiration. It’s like you see someone and you admire them. Yeah. It’s like, well, why you want to be like them? Yeah. That’s imitation, right? That’s the instinct of imitation. Yeah. And because we can identify what’s great, because it would be better to be great than the way we are. So when we see it, we think, oh, man, yeah, I really admire that. And maybe you’re mad about that because you’re so unlike that and it’s judgmental and makes you annoyed. Right. But fundamentally, you think I’d like to be like that. So there’s one admiration. You admire what’s great if you have any sense. Yeah. OK. And that happens spontaneously, especially in a domain that you value. Yes, exactly. The more I value the domain, the more I can speak, the more yeah, the more admiration. Absolutely. I do not admire power. I don’t even care about people who are powerful if they don’t have something that I admire, some sort of skill set that I care about. The only thing that’s nice is like the ease of power. You can open up doors easier, you know, but I’m way more impressed by like a powerful person that actually has a skill I didn’t even know about. Like that to me makes me go, oh, cool. Maybe that’s why he got there. But just holding the position isn’t admirable to me in any way at all. Does that make sense? Yes. So I guess I’m trying to think like, why? Why is that? Is that a common belief? I imagine we all I don’t think I’m unique in that. Well, so here’s something about religious belief. Yeah. Think about this. So there’s an idea, a Christian idea that Christ is the king of kings. OK, so here’s what this means. You can think about this psychologically for whatever it’s worth. OK, so imagine that you had a set of people that you admired. Yeah. OK, now imagine that there’s something about each of them that’s admirable, that’s the same, because why else would it be admirable? You said, well, they have a particular skill in a particular domain. So there’s something, let’s say there’s something about skill as such that’s admirable. OK, now you average across all those admirable people and you come out with one hyper admirable person. OK, that’s who you want to be. Well, that’s what Christ is in the Western canon. That’s what technically that’s the idea. He’s the most admirable person. The most by definition is what I’m saying is by definition. So imagine, imagine this. Imagine that the collective imagination of of Western civilization has been working on formulating a picture of the ultimate ideal for thousands and thousands of years. And partly in stories, yeah, yeah. But also partly in music, partly in literature, partly in architecture. Everywhere. It’s like, what’s the ideal? Yeah. What’s the ideal across ideals? Because we need to know, because that’s what we’re aiming at. Well, should you worship that? Well, obviously, because what else would you worship? Yeah. Yeah. Why would I worship anything less than the best? Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Exactly. Exactly. And you see, so the the the the it’s very difficult to puzzle these things out because you run into rational problems. It’s like, well, did, for example, did Christ really exist? OK, well, your brain hits that problem. And it brings the whole thing to a halt to some degree. Yeah. But that’s beside this other point. Sure. It’s like, well, look, we’re we’re we’re very good at abstracting out the essence of something. That’s why we can tell stories. That’s why we can mimic. Yeah. OK, well, wouldn’t we extract out the essence of greatness? Now, that’s hard, right? Because what’s the greatest human being? Jesus, there’s a hard question, man. That’s a tough question. You know, generosity, mercy, productivity, truth. Yeah. So magic. What’s that magic magic? Yes, exactly. Yes, exactly. And so, I mean, one of the one of the two two hallmarks that I’ve seen across images of this sort in my studies are two. One is the ability to pay attention. So someone that’s admirable pays attention. Yeah. OK, they open their eyes and they watch and they see what’s in front of them. It’s not the same as thinking. Yeah. Yeah. They’ll see what’s in front of them. Yeah. Pay attention. And, you know, there’s something about attention that’s riveting, right? If you watch someone attend to something, you’ll watch what they’re watching. Yeah. Yeah. And so attention is attention is the ultimate resource. And to pay attention is to pay the highest compliment. OK, the next is the ability to speak magic words. Well, that’s what you do as a comedian. If you’re on. Huh? You entranced the audience. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How is that not magical? They pay you to do that. Yeah, yeah. Obviously, it’s magical. OK, and how do you come up with your jokes while you pay attention and then you speak magic words? Well, that’s the essence. Like, if you look at representations, I’m going to stick to Christianity for the time being. But Christ is tightly associated with the word, with the spoken word, especially the spoken word of truth. Yeah. And that’s partly why it’s because underneath this is the idea that, well, there isn’t anything more admirable than the capacity to pay attention and to speak magic words. It builds the world. It retains renews the world, creates the world. All of that. It’s true. It’s true. We need to know these things.