https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=y71wWYevxO8
I think that some of the guilt that the woke types are capitalizing on and also genuinely experiencing is a consequence of the felt need for some true atonement. So you talked about Western privilege. And so, you know, if you live in the West, you’re in the top 1% by global and historical standards. So you are privileged and then you have to contend with the fact that, well, you didn’t really earn that, not to some degree, because your pathway forward is going to be proportionate in its success to your work. But, you know, you’re born and there are highways and there are automobiles and there’s an electrical grid and you have this wealth that’s offered to you. And then you might say, well, that’s unearned privilege. And to some degree it is. And then the question emerges. Well, what should you do about that? And one answer is to flagellate yourself and to feel guilty because there are people out there who weren’t arbitrarily rewarded to the same degree you were. And that is an existential problem. And the other solution is to do whatever you can to earn your earn the gifts you’ve been given, the talents you’ve been provided with. Right. And to say, well, my goal is to justify by my actions the privileges and opportunities I have been granted and then to work hard to extend those to the degree that’s possible to the people around me and to others. And I would say that’s genuine atonement. And I think everyone has to do that. And so, you know, if you’re not living a life that’s as moral as you are privileged, you’re going to lay yourself open on the guilt front. And then the woke ideologues are going to tear a strip off you. And certainly these kids that you observe flagellating themselves for their privilege, they don’t know how to atone for the fact that there is an unequal distribution of talents. And that seems to be built into the cosmic structure. Well, that’s why I felt it was so important that someone told them that. And everything you said, particularly about how to how to respond to privilege resonates with me so much because I’ve been you know, my family has been destitute. My family has been very wealthy. I’ve been the son of a very rich family. I’ve also been someone who slept on the street for weeks. Like I’ve seen both of those. And what I learned from all of those experiences is that, like you said, you have to make the most of it and then extend that opportunity to other people. And that’s the only way of dealing with it. And there’s no other way if you want to be constructive. But let’s come back to your point about a positive vision for the future and why conservatives will struggle with it. I think one of the reasons is that inevitably young people do need to rebel against something and conservative instinctively want to suppress all rebellion because they want to avoid change. And that’s why as someone who’s kind of some guy, I call myself politically non-binary. That’s why I’m excited about talking about this political vision and positive, not political, a positive vision of the future, because I think that’s what’s needed. And I don’t think the anti woke position, which a lot of us have had to engage in for some time, is going to be the answer because you have to have something that people buy into. And it can’t be normative in the way that conservatives often want it to be. You must do this. That’s not going to work with young people. They don’t want that. What they want is something that allows them to channel their rebellion into something heroic and productive, as you said, which is why I think showing young people the way out of wokeness through what I talked about in the speech and what you and I just talked about, which is work hard, build and create. That is going to be the way. And I think you probably know my friend Melissa Chen. She tweeted something about this years ago that I thought it was so spot on. She said, you cannot remain, remain woke if you build anything, whether that’s a business, whether that’s muscle, whether that’s a family. And that’s why I challenge these kids at Oxford Union and the audience who were watching, of course, to build and create things, because the moment you start, you suddenly find out that, hey, just whining about stuff doesn’t work. And when you get down to the business of doing things, turns out there’s a reason that things are the way they are. There’s a reason things don’t work quite the way you’d like them to because reality suddenly comes into conflict with ideology. And so that’s why I think it’s so important to give kids and young people a path to doing things, because it’s only when you’re doing things that you start to realize the limitations. And, you know, I’m a huge fan of Thomas Sowell. And this is one of his things that he always says that there are no solutions, only tradeoffs. And you only learn this as a young person by the experience of doing stuff, because when you’re young, you come at the world and you go, well, the world isn’t perfect. I must perfect the world. And no one’s explained to you and you probably didn’t listen if they tried to explain to you. The fact is the world is not perfectable. The world will always be imperfect. And all you can do is tinker at the edges to try and improve it. Here’s the deal. The government keeps raising rates because it’s the only tool they have to keep inflation under control. And it’s not working. You can’t spend your way out of inflation. You’ve seen the impact on the stock market and you’ve seen the impact on your savings. Hedge inflation by owning gold, whether physical gold and silver in your safe or through an IRA in precious metals where you can hold real gold and silver in a tax sheltered retirement account. Buy gold and get a free safe to store it in. That’s right. 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But you can also understand why young people would chafe against that because, well, why should they be certain that doing their duty in that in exactly the same manner that duplicates the past is the best pathway forward? Because sometimes it clearly isn’t. And there are inadequacies of the past that need to be rectified. So the conservatives stumble in relationship to establishing a bridge to young people by being moralizing. And the more evangelical types of say fundamental Christians fall into the same problem. Now, one of the things I’ve noticed, and this has been very, very cool, and I’ve really tested this in hundreds of venues, is I usually sometime in one of my lectures in my lectures talk about the relationship. The necessity of finding meaning as the antithesis of suffering, let’s say, because the quest for meaning becomes most compelling when you’re simultaneously suffering or someone you love is suffering. That’s when the arrow finds its mark, let’s say. And I walk people through a thought exercise, I suppose, is, well, what do you have when you’re suffering that’s going to sustain you? And you might say, well, you have the work that you’re still capable of doing and the fruits of your labor that might offer you some security. You have whatever creative enterprises you might be able to engage in that still contain the shadow of meaning, at least. Then you have your intimate relationship and the person who might be caring for you while you’re in dreadful condition, and you have your family and your friends. And that’s really what you have. And then on the abstract end, you know, maybe you have beauty and truth and justice and, you know, the noble ideals. But then you might ask yourself, well, how do you have the armament of work and creative endeavor and friends and family? And the answer to that is that’s in precise proportion to the amount of responsibility you’ve taken for developing those relationships and those abilities. That’s right. And so there’s a clear pathway between the voluntary adoption of responsibility and the meaning that will sustain you through suffering. And that’s a much better enticement to participation for young people than a kind of finger wagging top down morality, which is you must behave this way, you know, or you’re no good. And even though, as I said, there’s some truth in that. It’s not an invitational vision. No. And I think that there’s a way to summarize that very neatly, Jordan, which is what I know would work for me, which is to say there are things that you want. What are they? And if you want those things, this is what you need to do. You don’t have to do it. I’m not saying you must do it. I’m not your dad. But if you want to achieve these outcomes that you care about, then you are going to have to put in the work. And I’m not telling you which outcomes you should pursue necessarily. But the way to get there isn’t going to be to glue yourself to a road to stop an ambulance getting to a hospital, which is what these Extinction Rebellion people do here in the UK. And I think that once people, young people, are on that path, we don’t get to control the art and the culture that they’re going to create. That is their path and that is their duty and that is their job to do. But if they are doing it from a place of constructive taking on responsibility, as you say, putting in the effort, building and creating things for the future, then I think that is part of the vision for them. Because, as you say, I think we live in a society, particularly now, you know, I’m not a religious person, but it’s clear to me that with the death of God, you end up in a position where a lot of people lack meaning. And of course, you’ve got all sorts of other economic disincentives for people to have meaning. It’s harder to start a family. People are deferring it until a later point. I myself, you know, I just turned 40 and we had our first child only a year ago, less than a year ago. So a lot of young people are in that position now. And it’s having that experience that changes you and makes you more responsible. It forces you to take on responsibility. It also forces you to look at the world in a different way. So that, I think, is part of the vision. And, you know, talking about family is difficult because, again, you get to the normative position where it’s like you must have children, which is not what I’m saying at all. But again, I think if you start from the incentive point of view, my experience of life is that people respond first and foremost to the incentives that are in front of them. And if you want, if you like meaning, if you don’t know what to do with your life, then finding an intimate partner and having a family is going to be a big part of that. In addition to meaningful work, et cetera.