J.K. Rowling & The Cost of Speaking Freely - Warren Smith

Go see Chris live in America - https://chriswilliamson.live Warren Smith is a filmmaker, educator, and host of the “Secret Scholar Society” YouTube channel. If freedom of speech can be shouted down, does it really exist? When every debate turns into partisan noise, what does honest discourse even look like? If we can’t talk about our problems without resorting to anger or violence, how can we ever solve them? Expect to learn why J. K. Rowling has become such a lightning rod for cultural backlash and why she’s back in the news, why limiting conversation only makes problems worse, whether free speech can truly exist if it can be shouted down, whether young people’s growing support for political violence stems from conviction or desensitization, the fine line between correct and incorrect behavior, what William thinks about today’s rising tribalism, and much more… - 0:00 Why is JK Rowling Back in the News? 7:57 Hardship Shapes Who You Are 11:53 Do Actions Speak Louder Than Words? 15:48 Should We Be Worried About Violence Escalating? 23:37 Are the Left More Violent Than the Right? 29:51 Free Speech is Under Attack 40:04 Why Are Young People Supporting Political Violence? 46:23 Violent Media is Shaping Violence Tolerance 51:56 When Does Behaviour Cross the Line? 01:01:37 Ego is Driving a Loss of Humanity 01:09:03 Warren’s View on Communication in the Future - Get access to every episode 10 hours before YouTube by subscribing for free on Spotify - https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn or Apple Podcasts - https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Get my free Reading List of 100 life-changing books here - https://chriswillx.com/books/ Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic here - https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Chris Williamson?

  Before we get started, I'm going on tour this winter around the US and Canada, and you can join me. It's an hour and a half long show. There's a half hour Q and A at the end. There's meet and greet. There's music warmed up before I get started by Zach Talander, and tickets are limited, and you can get yours right now. New York, Boston, Chicago, Austin, Salt Lake City, and Denver still have limited tickets left at chriswilliamson.live. That's chriswilliamson.live. All right, let's get into it. JK Rowling is back in the news. How do you feel about her recent debacle?

• 0:36Speaker 01

  I can understand where she's coming from. I think it was effective. I don't see any problems with it. I can understand why she would say that. I would probably feel the same way if I were in her position, honestly.

• 0:50Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, she's become a lightning rod. So for the people that didn't hear, Emma Watson went on Jay Shetty's podcast, said some stuff, and it seems, at least from the outside, like she's starting to sort of row back some of the condemnation that's been there because maybe it's not as sort of trendy as it used to be. And this is kind of the big complaint that everybody has. Do you actually stand on this principle, or are you just blowing with the fucking wind? And I think JK, in this big tweet that's had like 46 million impressions, which is, that's enough. That's enough to get people to take notice. She

• 1:34Chris Williamson?

  literally says it, like, basically, if it wasn't for the fact that she had to say that she loves and treasures me, JK wouldn't have piped up. But she is now beginning to detect this change, maybe in the sort of cultural weather vein. And

• 1:52Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, dude, be careful what you say on the internet.

• 1:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think she's just Emma Watson's being opportunistic. It's interesting, though, that the tide is turning in that way. That's how you can tell that it really is. Or when people start to perform differently like that. And it's all for business interests, I think. Probably. But J K Rowling, I mean, if it wasn't for J K Rowling, I wouldn't be talking to you right now either. So some of those things applied. I was when I was reading through that tweet is J K Rowling messaged me in the wake of my firing and that really meant a lot to me. I think authenticity is something that's really important to her. But yeah, she's a she's a remarkable person to do that, to take the time to do that.

• 2:38Speaker 01

  So I have a soft spot in my in my heart for her, always will.

• 2:42Chris Williamson?

  Hmm. Why do you think she's such a lightning rod? For this stuff, what's uniquely interesting about her position?

• 2:50Speaker 01

  Well, I think it's first and foremost that her work is the best selling book in the world next to the Bible. It's for millennials, it's it's our Star Wars. It's more than that. So she created this, she became richer than the queen off of fiction. So there's that. But I mean, her position, I think, is rather mainstream. Conventional, it's not risque in any way. And I think that's why

• 3:19Speaker 01

  that's one of the reasons I think it's become such a zeitgeist. Just people, when they listen to it, it's like, this is very reasonable. It seems very logical. It's part of the reason why that video of me talking to the student did what it did, because it's just so common sense, it seems like there's nothing crazy about her position.

• 3:38Chris Williamson?

  Could you give a thirty thousand foot view recap? I know it was a little while ago now, but just for the people that don't know the Warren Smith law. Just do do the previously on this season.

• 3:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I was teaching content creation multimedia. We were supposed to do a newscast. Student was feeling kind of nervous. So I said, let's do a warm up. I'll sit here in the chair. You what do you want to talk about? Just ask me. We would do things like this, have little podcasts. And she's like, well, how have your views on J K Rowling changed, given her bigoted opinions? It's like, OK, well, when you say bigoted opinions, what are you basing that on? Well, these, there's all these tweets. She said, I can show them to you if you, if you'd like to see. Sure, let's, let's pull them up. So he pulls them up. We run through them. The whole exchange was like five minutes.

• 4:28Speaker 01

  I didn't think it was that interesting or that crazy, but

• 4:33Speaker 01

  that's, and then I uploaded it to like my little rinky dink YouTube channel where I had clips of me teaching. I called it like my teaching portfolio because we had to submit artifacts for teaching for our portfolio. I would have clips of me teaching and someone grabbed it, pulled it over to Twitter. Where I was not active on Twitter and that's where it went crazy.

• 4:57Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. And then what happened?

• 5:01Speaker 01

  Couple of months went by, everything changed very quickly. Two days after that, Pierce Morgan had me on for like a 15 minute conversation. I was completely out of my depth. And I came in the next day and just acted like nothing happened and that didn't work.

• 5:20Chris Williamson?

  Denial is always a wonderful strategy.

• 5:24Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, no, it didn't work.

• 5:29Speaker 01

  And then that, so then that afternoon, because Pierce Morgan, his producers, they just want the flavor of the day. So they jumped right on it and they're like, will you do this? And I was working with one teacher. We used to record in the space. So after that, we set the space up and started once a week making videos. So I told him, I was like, they want me to come on Pierce Morgan. What should I do? Like, is the school going to get mad? Yeah, they'll, they'll get mad, but it's like, just do it, you know, just because if I ask, they're just gonna give me some long thing that I think they

• 6:02Chris Williamson?

  Better to ask for whatever it is, forgiveness than permission.

• 6:06Speaker 01

  It's, I knew I was in the midst of a once in a lifetime opportunity and I was at a fork in the road. It's like, do you make the most of this? And I didn't know where it would go at that time. All it was, was one little video, you know, but there was the potential to try and make something. So I did it. It went on Pierce Morgan. And then the next day they kind of got pissed, but then I had to meet with all the lawyers and they called me in with the head of the school and.

• 6:32Speaker 01

  Who's never there, but she was there for that. These, well, you didn't break any rules. You didn't, you have the releases and you didn't reveal any information. You, you handled it delicately. You didn't really take a biased position. And so congra, they literally said, congratulations, you know? And then, but several, there were teachers there that were upset with solely on my position, my position around J K Rowling, which yeah, I think it's unfair to call her bigoted, but I didn't really say that in the video, but that's where the student arrived at. So they took it as a position and there were people coming up to be like, how are you not fired?

• 7:14Speaker 01

  And I was like, I didn't, they said, I didn't do anything wrong with it, you know? And, but there were people that were upset and it just kind of, but we kept making in this space, kept making videos once a week and it was getting a little bit of traction. And I think they just were waiting until the storm blew over to be able to pounce it. And I get it from a business perspective. It can be a liability if you have a teacher like making YouTube videos and people are actually watching them to some extent, even though it's very small.

• 7:52Speaker 01

  So, but it was the way they did it. Like I would understand if they'd be like, yeah, it's not quite our cup of tea. It's just a bit of a liability. So we're going to part ways, but that wasn't what happened at all. It was like, well, sign this N D A, we'll pay you to sign this N D A. It felt like they were just trying to destroy me, dude. It was crazy. It was one of the most challenging periods of my life for sure.

• 8:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. So that's, that's the lore.

• 8:23Chris Williamson?

  What have you come to reflect on with regards to that difficult time? I think a lot of people, maybe not quite so publicly, maybe not with quite so many eyeballs, but people go through periods where they get kicked in the nuts a lot and it seems to happen sequentially, uh, in, in bunches.

• 8:46Chris Williamson?

  With the benefit of hindsight now, how do you think about that experience as part of the arc of your life?

• 8:56Speaker 01

  Well, it was the period that shaped me. It's one of the laws of narrative. Like if you're trying to write a screenplay, you have to have obstacles for the hero to overcome or whatnot. And we're all trying to become the heroes in our own story, whether we want to admit it or not.

• 9:12Speaker 01

  And the more adversity, like literally the day, the week before that video went viral, I was watching the David Beckham documentary. And I was like, this is a really good documentary. And this really resonates because he was getting knocked down. He was struggling and that made it compelling. And then his son becomes a soccer player in the documentary. I don't care about this guy at all because he had no adversity. He was just handed this opportunity. So for some reason, that was in my mind just at that time, I wouldn't change anything. I got lucky. I was walking a knife's edge, but I made it through. It was scary. It was really difficult.

• 9:53Speaker 01

  But it's, I, I wouldn't change because if you make one adjustment, who knows? How that would. So I wouldn't change anything, but it was. It's been remarkable. It was, I would describe it as like, because I've been a genuine fan of this space. I've been watching your show a long time. The people I've gotten to meet. Imagine watching your favorite football team. And suddenly overnight, you're given this opportunity to be on the field. And Tom Brady's throwing you the, the football and you catch it. Now you just, I'm going to run as far down this field until someone tackles me. See how far I can get. That was my mentality.

• 10:37Speaker 01

  And that's what I'm doing.

• 10:40Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, it's a, I resonate with that.

• 10:44Chris Williamson?

  The.

• 10:47Chris Williamson?

  Turning idols into rivals or friends is like a really weird sensation.

• 10:58Chris Williamson?

  It's a very bizarre thing and it takes a little bit of time for you to sort of come back down to earth. And you know, everybody can play it off as cool and I think a lot of people in this space do. And after a while you habituate, you're like, oh, there's Andrew Huberman or oh, there's fucking Joe Rogan or whatever. Like, oh, there's Matthew McConaughey and Matthew McConaughey on the other week. And you do habituate to it in some ways, but there's a bit of me that doesn't want to. There's a bit of me that doesn't want to habituate to this. There's a bit of me that wants to say, yo, my favorite movie in history is Interstellar and the main guy knows me personally by name and has my phone number.

• 11:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:34Chris Williamson?

  That's fucking sick. Like, I should be fired up about that. Like, I should, I should, every time that happens, I should be really excited and enthusiastic. I shouldn't be like, cooler than cool. Yeah, it's, it's just all, it's all fucking Matt over there, you know? Double M or whatever. Like, no, like, that's fucking sick. Like, let it infuse you.

• 11:54Speaker 01

  That's how I felt when J K Rowling sent me that message and was like, can I do anything? That's the most treasured message I've gotten. It's just a message, but it's surreal. That was so surreal.

• 12:07Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 12:07Speaker 01

  So, and I don't, I didn't know how to respond to it and I still think about it now that she's back in the news with everything we're talking about. I was like, man, I hope I didn't say anything like Emma Watson did.

• 12:17Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 12:17Speaker 01

  I think it was fine.

• 12:20Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, you've got a quote that says, when conversations are not allowed to occur, it only makes the problem worse.

• 12:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, we've seen that for sure. And that's similar to something that's been kind of going viral that Charlie Kirk said. He's like, when conversations, when we stop talking, that's when bad things happen. That's when violence occurs.

• 12:41Speaker 01

  So yeah, I think conversations are absolutely essential.

• 12:44Chris Williamson?

  There's only really two forms of communication.

• 12:49Chris Williamson?

  That has impact. There's words and then there's violence like that. I can't think of what else there is. Like, I guess, music, but you're not really communicating much through music.

• 13:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's words and action. You know, I describe it as like words are the boats floating on the surface. And we really communicate most of what we really think, I think, through nonverbal communication and action. And back to the narrative idea with actors, that's what people like Matthew McConaughey really dig into is the subtext in the scene. They understand that the words are just the tools. And anybody given enough time can memorize that script, but what Matthew McConaughey does so well is everything else beyond the words. Right. It's, it's kind of going off on a tangent there, but that's how I, I think about, but conflict is a form of action for sure.

• 13:39Chris Williamson?

  I, I was thinking about this. I did this retreat recently and it's the most intense thing that I've ever done. And I spent 12 hours a day from nine AM until nine PM, basically working with emotions on a farm in Sonoma County. And I still, to be honest, don't fully know what to make of it. I haven't come back down to planet earth fully yet. But one of the things that I did realize is the amount of information that was conveyed during the exercises and the practices and the processes that we were going through as a, as a group and in pairs and on our own.

• 14:16Chris Williamson?

  So much of it was not about words. So little of it was actually about words. However, if you look at how most people communicate, it is through mediums that exclusively transact in words. There's no body language over message. There's not really even that much body language over what we're doing right now. There's, there's the, the aperture through which you're seeing this is squeezing this communication down. And like, you can sit with somebody and without getting into woo, energy, astral realm, fucking five dimensional territory. You can sit with someone and you can tell if that person that sat opposite you is calm and peaceful

• 15:00Chris Williamson?

  or agitated or sad without saying a fucking word. Right? Okay, but all of that type of communication has been lost. And I wonder whether it has, um, it, it feels to me like it's led everybody, it's encouraged everybody to really lean into hypertrophying the word talking portion of things and completely pushing to one side. The well, okay, well, how do I feel right now? Like, what is the emotional context that's going on here? How is this other person showing up? What are the things that aren't being said? What's the pacing between the, the words that they're saying? What's the tone that they're saying this in? And especially over text message, all of this stuff is lost. And, um, it, it reminded me, working with emotions for an entire week

• 15:44Chris Williamson?

  and basically doing like Navy SEAL boot camp for fucking feeling your feelings, um, really drilled it home to me how low resolution almost all of our communication is now. And okay, what are the implications of that if you keep on spinning it up?

• 16:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, it's nothing replaced in person for sure.

• 16:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't really know what to say about that. That's well flipped up.

• 16:15Chris Williamson?

  Um, political violence attitudes, some new data that's just come out. The percentage of students who support using violence to stop a campus speech is up 10 points from 2021. So that's 34% against 24%. 47% of Gen Z agree that violence can be justified to advance a political goal. That's against 22% of boomers, 47, 22. In 2025, 38% of US college students said violence is acceptable to prevent hate speech on campus, and 71% of students are at least accepting of shouting down speakers, and 54% of physically blocking other students from attending a campus speech.

• 16:57Speaker 01

  I recently did a video on an independent journalist, the guy with the camera, on Emerson campus, which is my college, where I still teach like one class online, but I went there for grad school and taught there. And he asked the students about that 34% survey. And their response was, I'm surprised it's not higher. At Harvard as well, he went to Emerson and then Harvard. And at Harvard, he asked that specific question. He goes, well, why? What do you mean? Well, Harvard's very liberal. I was just thinking, think about what you're saying. Like, think about the logic there. Liberals believe that violence is a legitimate form of response to speech. It's just crazy.

• 17:42Speaker 01

  It's been a crazy time, man, after Charlie Kirk.

• 17:45Chris Williamson?

  What's your, what's your post-mortem culturally on this?

• 17:52Speaker 01

  It's, I think it's getting worse because there's that period right after it, where people are walking on eggshells, the people that disagree with them, people are being very careful and

• 18:07Speaker 01

  kind of sympathetic with those that disagree with them, many. There's a lot of crazy people that this doesn't apply to. It's kind of this period of mourning and then that passes and the news cycle picks back up. Events continue.

• 18:24Speaker 01

  And it, and people kind of revert back to their, their older ways. We're seeing what's happening in Portland.

• 18:34Speaker 01

  I just think it's, it's not looking good is my overall take. I think it was very illuminating, though, seeing those responses, which has been some of, a big wake-up call for me. And I've been trying to shine a light on that as much as I can through these videos. But that hit me hard, seeing that at Emerson. But it didn't surprise me, but I'm hoping that people I know, like my family that disagrees with me, will see, will kind of understand more about where I'm coming from. Because it's like, look, this is like literally where I was, I was sitting next to these kind of people for years. This kind of, maybe this can explain a little bit of why I am the way I am now or whatnot.

• 19:18Speaker 01

  Because I know they're struggling with understanding that around me.

• 19:23Speaker 01

  So that's been, I think a lot, it's been a wake up call for some people. But I'm generally, my responsibility, I'm deeply concerned about it, where this could go.

• 19:33Chris Williamson?

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• 20:18Chris Williamson?

  What does that mean? What are you deeply concerned about and where could it go?

• 20:23Speaker 01

  Well, so just yesterday, we had Nick Shirley in Portland, the last video I did covering him. And a guy comes up to him, Antifa, and he threatens to shoot him. And because he was putting a camera in his face. And then two snipers on top of the roof, this is what it looks like from the video, paint with their lasers on him. And Nick, he's like, dude, there's a sniper pointing at you right now. And there's a dot on his chest. And it gets him to de-escalate and back off. I think it's only a matter of time until it's not just painting a target and someone pulls the trigger on either side.

• 21:05Speaker 01

  And that's where I'm worried that something is going to happen that's going to escalate things.

• 21:15Chris Williamson?

  More so than Charlie Kirk being shot?

• 21:20Speaker 01

  Well, what do you mean by more so?

• 21:22Chris Williamson?

  Because what is it that doesn't make that the escalation? We've had this event which has occurred. You're presumably one of the things, let's say that that event hadn't occurred and you were noticing these rumblings below the surface. Charlie Kirk being shot would be the precise sort of thing that would be the sort of thing that would be an escalation. So we've seen this one. So does it, do you feel a little bit like there was a bunch of kerosene on the ground and someone lit a match and flicked it, but it happened to land just like a little bit off. It didn't quite catch fire to everything else, but that might not be the case if another inflammatory sort of event occurs?

• 21:59Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, the kerosene was definitely there. It is interesting to note that there was not,

• 22:08Speaker 01

  there was not a massive response from Charlie Kirk fans. We'll just say people on the right or whatnot. There was not rioting and yeah, that's been pointed out.

• 22:19Speaker 01

  But I think my concern would be, but that same event with the opposite side of the political spectrum, I mean, we've seen

• 22:31Speaker 01

  BLM, we've seen the riots, the tendency, there seems to be a tendency for certain ideologies tend to be more inclined to demonstrate frustration in different ways. So in a way, it's, it's like that's, that's bad. They threw something really bad at the world and a small sliver of hope perhaps comes out of the fact that we were able to handle it or this side was able of the spectrum.

• 22:59Speaker 01

  It didn't go bonkers.

• 23:03Speaker 01

  I don't have a, I mean, don't, don't you feel in a way like this could go south? Am I, am I off for feeling like this, there's potential here for this to, because you're right, that was an escalation. I'm glad it didn't spark off into violence. Not, there's no rioting. Yes, there's protests going off in Portland around other topics, but.

• 23:32Speaker 01

  I mean, what are your thoughts on it?

• 23:34Chris Williamson?

  I think you're right to be concerned. It it does say a lot that we've kind of become desensitized. We were talking about the habituation earlier on, like, oh, there's J K Rowling in my DMs. It's like, oh, there's a huge, like, another assassination attempt on a real public figure in the space of 12 months. And I don't. It's strange, especially given that I'm still in my my feely feels after after my week working on emotions. It's strange that we are able to continue moving forward, that you can get up and go to work, that like, that's just a thing that happens.

• 24:16Chris Williamson?

  And I guess, you know, humans need to fucking put bread on the table and go to the bathroom and walk the dog and stuff. But it it it doesn't exactly fill me with hope that

• 24:30Chris Williamson?

  this is, although horrific and an atrocity,

• 24:36Chris Williamson?

  just another news story that, you know, the world continues spinning. And yeah, we've got Charlie Kirk Remembrance Day, I think, which was passed, which which is a very nice tribute. But, yeah, I one one question that I do have that I realized while you were talking there. How do you square the circle of what you brought up, which is hinting at a tendency for the left, at least parts of the left in its current iteration, to be more kinetic, BLM riots, et cetera, et cetera? How do you square that circle with some of the reports that I've seen coming out from maybe domestic threats?

• 25:20Chris Williamson?

  Maybe FBI statistics saying that most of the domestic terror concern comes from right of center groups as opposed to left of center groups? Have you seen this? Do you know what I'm talking about?

• 25:35Speaker 01

  No, is this the study that people were saying, oh, they removed it or something? No, I'm not familiar with that study.

• 25:41Chris Williamson?

  Basically, it seems like.

• 25:44Chris Williamson?

  A lot of the, uh, some of the studies suggest that it is groups right of center that are the biggest threat. Um, I just wonder, taking my big broad perspective of the news stories that have really come across me over the last half decade, I would say the same thing. You know, we saw, um, what was that place where everybody Charlottesville? You remember Charlottesville?

• 26:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:10Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, when was the last time that we saw something like a Charlottesville? I, I can't remember.

• 26:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't, I, I can't remember either. Well, January 6th, they would probably.

• 26:24Chris Williamson?

  There we go. Yes, that is true. That was quite a big one. Uh, says it all that I've managed to forget that. Um, so yeah, fair enough. Maybe, maybe you're right. Maybe it's, maybe it's equal on both sides. Um.

• 26:34Speaker 01

  I don't, I'm not saying it's equal, but it's, uh, I've been trying to look at this not through the lens of, because it becomes a reductive game. It's.

• 26:42Chris Williamson?

  To try and equivocate.

• 26:43Speaker 01

  Your side, yeah, your side did January 6th and this, and you did this on this date and our side did, it's like, we're not, that's not.

• 26:50Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 26:51Speaker 01

  I just think it's.

• 26:51Chris Williamson?

  How many January 6th, there's one BLM? How many? Yeah.

• 26:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. Because my, my initial response, and this is the, I think for many people, it was like, this is not right versus left. This is good versus evil. But then it's like, wait a minute, but that's exactly what can, that's a dangerous game to play because that's what can drive people to kill someone like Charlie Kirk because they think they're facing genuine evil. I have friends that have kind of tossed me away because it states, what's a friendship when you're genuinely up against fascism and genuine evil in their minds, which is in their minds what I stand for. So you've got to be very careful how you diagnose that. So I've been reducing that down to its correct behavior versus incorrect behavior, really.

• 27:37Speaker 01

  Cause there's also plenty of Democrats or liberals that aren't celebrating Charlie Kirk's death and that would say you're ridiculous for saying these things. So it's not just Democrat, Republican, but.

• 27:52Speaker 01

  So there's gonna be people with incorrect behavior on the right side and the left side. But I think there's something about the ideology of, or this way of thinking that has flourished from postmodernism, victim mentality, it resonates with a certain personality that seems to me to resonate more with mass protesting, more inclination towards what we saw around the riots, Summer of Love, BLM riots. So I do, there is something within the ideas reflected largely on this side echo with certain types of action versus the ideas reflected on, we'll just say, the traditional

• 28:37Speaker 01

  conservative family, more religious values, the personal responsibility, have a family, these that conserve the great traditions of the past. There's not as much inclination, what I just said, towards burn it down as opposed to we're all being oppressed by this, by the West, burn it down, which is literally baked into the ideology.

• 29:00Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? Because the burn it down thing, I don't know, it feels a little bit like if you were to, if you were to tell somebody from 10 years ago that it would be people on the right that weren't responding to this sort of stuff in a kinetic way, I think that might be a little bit surprising. You know, you, one of the big concerns that lots of people have who are in the center is that if the left keeps on poking the bear, then the right is going to respond eventually, which it sounds like is one of the concerns you have, or you just get escalating violence on all sides. But the right is really fucking well armed and there's probably a lot of people in there that are ex-military and et cetera, et cetera.

• 29:42Chris Williamson?

  So like, if you were to just take the attributes of both sides, you should assume, I think, that right is like, oh, fucking hell, like, those guys are gonna be pretty quick on the, on the trigger, like defending myself, defending my beliefs, defending my tribe in that way as opposed to a group that on the surface is like more compassionate, more open, and it doesn't seem to be necessarily playing out that way.

• 30:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it's unlikely that we'll see a civil war in the way we think of civil war, where it's literally an organized, like, they have declared themselves independent and they're rebelling against, it would be the federal government with all the military and police. I think that's, unless it was some bizarre, like, certain states, when, I just can't imagine it.

• 30:37Speaker 01

  So when I'm talking about escalating conflict, it's, I don't necessarily mean the, as a civil war, it's something, something like much more invisible, less, more difficult to see that.

• 30:58Speaker 01

  I don't, I don't know. I don't think it's, yeah.

• 31:02Chris Williamson?

  All right. So going back to the, uh, the stats about, um, campus being shouted down.

• 31:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:08Chris Williamson?

  If free speech can be shouted down, does it even exist at all?

• 31:17Chris Williamson?

  Like, what does it mean when it comes into contact with a human arm-in-arm blockade?

• 31:28Speaker 01

  Well, that's a good question. I would say philosophically, it still does exist. Because, yes, rights are always, I got into a pickle around this, but Andrew Wilson was talking about this, rights are bound by force, and rights,

• 31:42Speaker 01

  he's someone who claims that rights all come down, at the end of the day, to what can be enforced. So your, your right to freedom of speech,

• 31:52Speaker 01

  it's only if, uh, it's still is going to be bound by force. It's only if you can protect it. But, yes, I can be, people can shout me down, but that doesn't negate, within the context of the legal system, like, it doesn't negate my.

• 32:05Chris Williamson?

  But functionally.

• 32:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, in the moment, functionally, you're shouting me down. Yeah.

• 32:12Chris Williamson?

  I understand, you, uh, spoken like a, a true academic, um, that, the, the theory, the principle, the philosophy of free speech is still there, but if it can't be actioned in the real world.

• 32:27Chris Williamson?

  Is that, am I being, am I being stupid here? Or is this like a big problem?

• 32:31Speaker 01

  No, it would just have to be at such a large scale for it. Because, okay, they shout me down on the college campus. I go make a YouTube video about it and I reach way more people. So, but in that moment on the college campus, yes, but I have this kind of, my personal philosophy, and I can't, is that there's objective truth, the fabric of reality, which is reflected by this, what I call the audience. Kind of, when you make a YouTube video, it's this thing that, it's not just a mass of people, but, and you can't, you can't ignore, there's no escaping them. So if they shout me down on the campus, you, they can't escape the audience, which reflects the fabric of reality. So then I do make a video about it.

• 33:15Speaker 01

  It's almost like their actions compound and it draws more attention to it. Because they're taking an action against something that I think is very much real. These are not just social constructs. The idea of freedom of speech, yes, we have these conceptualizations of them. That's how we use the words floating on the surface to articulate it. But I think these are, the same idea our founding fathers put forth, with these truths are self-evident from God, objective truth, whatever you want to substitute there. But that's the fabric of reality. And so there's no, the audience, people can make noise, but nothing can change what is, that objective truth that we're striving for. And I think that's what knowledge is, is trying to map onto what is truth,

• 34:00Speaker 01

  which is the exact opposite of post-modernism though. And that's where it gets interesting.

• 34:05Chris Williamson?

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• 35:17Chris Williamson?

  below or heading to drinkag1.com/modernwisdom. That's drinkag1.com/modernwisdom. Do you think government funding should hinge on whether a university actually protects dissenting voices?

• 35:34Speaker 01

  Protect dissenting voices? I do. There's a big conversation to have around tax. Why taxpayers are financing places like Emerson.

• 35:48Speaker 01

  They get so sneaky in those parameters. So for example, Emerson just changed what used to be the Social Justice Centre because of this very issue, what you're describing. They just changed the name to the Office of Equal Opportunity. Because equality is equal opportunity, equity is equal outcome. So they learned, and that's what colleges are doing. But then you see the video content or you talk to students and they're, I'm surprised it's only 34% celebrating Charlie Kirk's murder. So, but yeah, my answer to you would be yes. I don't think, I'm very sceptical about the government providing tax

• 36:32Speaker 01

  money to these universities.

• 36:35Chris Williamson?

  It doesn't seem to me like children and young people, students, are being taught to resolve problems constructively. This feels like a skill issue.

• 36:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think it's because so few of the professors, the people that would be having the conversations have differing opinions. It's just overwhelming. It's impossible to even articulate unless you see it for yourself. Which is what I'm trying to do with the videos. It's the closest I can do is when I see footage like that, that's when I get most excited. Like, my favorite video I ever made was Joe Rogan talking to a postmodern professor on his show. Because to me, that was like, finally, I can shine a light where this is a real professor who's saying these things with his own words.

• 37:33Speaker 01

  Because I could talk till I'm blue in the face about postmodernism. Jordan Peterson's done it. And people just don't believe you, or they just roll their eyes. And they're, it's too philosophical, like, they don't... But then you hear him get up there and say, no, there's no such thing as knowledge, objective truth. Everything is a social construct. He's effectively, he's making it crystal clear that there's no such thing as the fabric of reality to strive for. Because knowledge is evolving, therefore, his logic is we don't really know anything. And we've, you could see where that, that goes.

• 38:12Speaker 01

  I guess my point is like, it's just, you have to hear it straight from the horse's mouth. And that was one example where I was able to do that. Or I was like, he's literally saying it to you. So if this doesn't show you, I don't know what will.

• 38:24Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. It, it feels a little bit to me like inverse exposure therapy. So the fact that so few alternate voices are going out to campus that whatever, some absurd percentage of students self-censor for fear of being judged and shamed by their fellow classmates. That you have a changing, shifting demographic when it comes to who is teaching at universities as well.

• 38:59Chris Williamson?

  You even have a shifting demographic of who's attending universities, right? A significant increase in, in women going versus men. And it's very difficult to be a university professor that didn't go to university. So like, that is, your stock of future professors are the ones that are going.

• 39:19Chris Williamson?

  All of these things together is a great, great study by Corey Clark. You should have a look at it. It's stinks of you. It stinks of your channel. Brilliant. And she sent a survey to every psychology professor in the US. Didn't get a response from all of them. Got a big fucking response. Talking about what topics should not be allowed. And there's a huge sex difference. There's a massive sex difference between men and women. And there's a huge difference. It was really, really interesting. My point is, when you take this milieu altogether, what you end up with is students basically never hearing top down,

• 39:59Chris Williamson?

  like side to side, or random inclusions of other people from speakers and guests and stuff like that.

• 40:10Chris Williamson?

  There is this, actually, and inside out, right? With their own self censorship. There is just this

• 40:19Chris Williamson?

  a increasing fragility or an increasing sort of uni-dimensionality to the type of topics that they're being exposed to. Does that all make sense?

• 40:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, that's absolutely true. It's just worse than, you're absolutely right.

• 40:40Chris Williamson?

  I'm right, but it's worse than I'm right.

• 40:42Speaker 01

  Words, there's no words. This is the limitation of words. Like, there's no words to capture what is actually happening.

• 40:50Chris Williamson?

  How so?

• 40:54Speaker 01

  So.

• 40:58Speaker 01

  All right. So when I'm making these YouTube videos, it's like, or just this whole thing. We've been talking about the desensitization of this medium. How you, oh, it's so and so. It all becomes, it all starts to feel, it's just online. It's just about making content for sponsors so I can put food on the table. You lose sight of it. Then something happens, bang, Charlie Kirk gets killed. And it's, and other things have happened. I returned home in the wake last year, last Christmas. I returned home. It's like re-entering the real world, sitting there with my childhood friends who.

• 41:39Speaker 01

  Literally, so I had just been fired before saying, they said,

• 41:44Speaker 01

  similar to how people responded to the Charlie Kirk thing, in many cases, I'm sorry you lost your job, Warren, but you did say this about J K Rowling. So what do you expect? And walking through, literally step by step, logically, like, the flaws that she's pointing out are completely fair to have those concerns. It's a reminder that this is real, that there's something at stake here. And when Charlie Kirk died, it suddenly, it was a wake up call. It's not just, it was,

• 42:21Speaker 01

  it's not just about sponsors, money and stuff. I forgot where, but I forgot where we were going with that. It's more than just words. It's, it's hard to capture the reality of how crazy this stuff really is.

• 42:36Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. What, what do you think's going on with young people's support of political violence? Is it because of conviction? Uh, desensitization? What do you think's going on?

• 42:47Speaker 01

  Because going back to that fear I had about good and evil and that being very careful about that because they genuinely believe that they're facing true evil. So to the point where those child, like, I'm talking my best friends, like, grew up together since yaito. In their minds,

• 43:08Speaker 01

  even if they don't hate me, I'm giving voice to, they can excuse me in their minds, but my videos perhaps, or talking to Joe Rogan, or whoever, that is, is, is contributing to something, even if I'm not evil, I'm playing a role in something that is so genuinely, truly evil to them. So we need to, and then all bets are off. And that's when you see people lose friends, people do things they would never otherwise do. And the only solution to this is rational conversations.

• 43:43Speaker 01

  And that's, that's why this thing has made such a wake because that's exactly what Charlie was doing. He was killed doing just that. He was killed doing the solution. And it didn't work. And it, he was, he was killed, he was killed for doing the thing that is the only thing you could do to prevent this. So that's even a double whammy. It makes it even scarier. You know? So.

• 44:08Speaker 01

  But the problem is, is that when I try and have those, going back to most childhood friends, and when I try and have those conversations step by step, if I can sit down with them, I can genuinely, I guarantee you by the end of it, they won't think the way they thought coming into it. They still are going to disagree with Trump. It's not what it's about. It's about something deeper than that. And I can get there if you get, it might take me an hour. I've done it. I've done it over and over with people in my personal life. The problem is, is that they'll shut down the conversation.

• 44:41Speaker 01

  Why?

• 44:48Speaker 01

  Because it's, it's almost. Because the logic is not there. Because it's almost as though they.

• 44:59Speaker 01

  Because they can't, so the J K Rowling example. I get fired. I'm sitting on the porch at Christmas, my mom's house. Yeah, guys, I get, all right. So you. Yes, I did say that about J K Rowling. I said that with the student, but you do understand, right? Like, so tomorrow. Just hear me out. It's like tomorrow. Is there anything stopping me from deciding I'm a woman? Well, no, Warren, you, you logically, you could. It's true. Okay. So I still have male genitalia. If I can then tomorrow walk into a women's changing room.

• 45:34Speaker 01

  Can you understand why a, a mother, a woman would be uncomfortable by that? They have a problem with that. Okay. But what if she's? Yeah, but she's an adult. She should be able to get over it. Okay. But what if she has a six year old?

• 45:49Speaker 01

  Can you understand why she would be uncomfortable with that?

• 45:55Speaker 01

  I, there's no way to, how do you contend with, with that argument though? If you can see a flaw in that, like, challenge me on it. That would be really, if you can provide any pushback on anything, please do. Cause that's where this, these things get interesting. It would make it way more interesting too. Cause conflict drives stories, the central law of narrative. But that's my answer to you is why it's just the law. It comes down to the logic.

• 46:21Chris Williamson?

  It seems like you are getting, it, it seems like this is sort of really hitting at, at something deep for you. Like this mission and the challenges that you're facing by sort of trying to come head to head with this, whether it's virtually or in your personal life.

• 46:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's been infuriating. It's, it's, and that would be my response to them. A family member, when they say that's like, look, if everyone, when I come home or if, and this is before viral videos or doing YouTube or anything, this is years ago, I'd say, look, if I'm, every one of you hates me because of this. Right? If all people, your friends, they all hate me now, but if I'm still willing to have these conversations and want to rationally, step by step, walk you through it, maybe that would indicate that if I'm still doing this and I'm still standing firm on it, maybe that would be an indicator that I've thought this through and I have a reason why.

• 47:22Speaker 01

  And I think that goes back to your previous question. That's one of the reasons I think that they shut down the conversations because there's something, there's, that kind of goes back to the logic of it. It's, it's, you've, I have thought this through, like I have a reason. I've, I've, and that's why that video at Emerson was so important to me because that was my opportunity to kind of to shine a window on what I've been go, like what I've, the people I have sat with. For years and it's there's no words for it, but I can with a camera I can show it. I don't need words.

• 47:55Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, it's weird. I guess we're not too far off from Thanksgiving now. And every year there's the same sort of memes come up.

• 48:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:05Chris Williamson?

  Online, how to speak to your bigoted uncle this year over the or the sort of based reverse version of that, which is three sentences to say to totally torpedo this Thanksgiving dinner. And people are going to be thinking about this, man. I would love, you know, it would be great and ridiculously difficult to do as a survey would be some sort of analysis of the average volume, like sentiment analysis and volume and speaking cadence and like antagonism around the Thanksgiving table. Like it's just a one once per year little test, like a core sample right out of the ground. I will take this one and take this one and take this one.

• 48:46Chris Williamson?

  And I have to assume that that curve is just getting really fucking steep and like really, really getting up there now. And I think another question that I've got, we always hear, we heard this around Trump. You know, people made a bunch of jokes about thoughts and prayers to quote literally Hitler. That it's very difficult to with one sentence, say that this guy is fascist, beginning of the end, reincarnation of the Third Reich. And with the other show compassion and that those two things seem a little bit tough because

• 49:28Chris Williamson?

  I guess the subtext, the implication is the language that you used in the first case is the reason for the event which caused the need for the apology. Right. That when you use inflammatory language and you use sort of violent media. My question is basically how much of that is shaping young people's tolerance for real world violence? Like, is it just reflecting what's happening bottom up? Or is it actually pushing it forward, sort of normalizing this kind of language, demonizing one side and the other? And it's not as if this is only going in one direction, like the demonization goes in both.

• 50:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, but there's legitimate, that's the problem is there's legitimately wrong behavior, objectively wrong, like I think it is safe to say that it's objectively wrong to celebrate Charlie Kirk's death and the response, some of the responses we've seen are crossing, I think, an objective measurable line.

• 50:23Speaker 01

  Again, it's gonna, it's because we see the world through stories. We make sense because we're narrative creatures.

• 50:31Speaker 01

  And we conflict drive story and it's this thing that's driving people to genuinely believe the other side is evil while also holding the thought in mind that there is evil there. And we can see examples of where that is. That's what I started, that's why I started the response with that because it does exist. You just gotta be careful about it. The solution, the only solution is to teach people that are claiming these things about fascism, they need, people need to explain more what fascism actually is. And it's such a, that's why I keep saying, I did get to talk to Joe Rogan and I was trying to delve into that a little bit with him because that is the singular to me, a window in time that has so much

• 51:15Speaker 01

  insight. And look, today, it's people are throwing around fascism, which echoes back to them, but they don't understand what fascism is. And yeah, it's slightly, it is difficult to define in a single sentence.

• 51:31Speaker 01

  But I think it's the authoritarian pursuit of national purity through force, something around those lines at the very core of it. And then components can be switched out.

• 51:44Speaker 01

  But it's a dangerous, it's a dangerous game. Maybe I'm misunderstanding the, I think you're asking like how to, where that's coming from?

• 51:51Chris Williamson?

  Which direction, basically? Is it simply, is the violent? How impactful, it's the age old question of like, do violent video games make children violent? What I'm asking is, is violent media, as in the sort of language inflammatory, especially sort of escalating up and using really horrific examples of people from history or from movies or from whatever, to describe someone? Like, Jordan Peterson was Red Skull, right? From the Marvel Comics. I'm sure that there's been a Thanos example used somewhere. And I'm sure that the right as well is slinging its fair share of murder, whatever this particular person is that's coming in to sterilize the youth or whatever it might be.

• 52:36Speaker 01

  But let's try and hold it in on that. Like, what would an example be on the right? Because I know it's absolutely happening on the, on the left, like Red Skull, the accusations of fascism, it's everywhere. But what would be, let's try and identify it on the other side.

• 52:50Chris Williamson?

  So the problem for me, I think, is that the response to these sorts of stories is always larger than the initial story itself. And that means that, given most of what I follow online is center, center-right, what I see is crazy left of center stories that are then being responded to by somebody from the Daily Wire, whatever, whatever it might be. It does seem to, I'm trying to equivocate, basically, to at least give the opportunity that I don't know everything. I'm, I don't see all of the internet. And I'm like, look, given that, maybe there is some stuff out there. I have to assume that there is some stuff, but you might be right. I may have a perfectly representative perspective.

• 53:34Chris Williamson?

  My sample may be like absolutely perfect when it comes to understanding what I see on the internet. If I was to go by my own algorithm, which is obviously hugely fucking biased, if I was to go by my own algorithm, I would say, yes, there does seem to be a lot more of that inflammatory language going from left to right, the purity spiral stuff, the holier-than-thou, the very, very sort of accusatory vindictive, over-exaggerated language does seem to go in one direction, but I just need to leave myself open to the fact that.

• 54:07Speaker 01

  I see what you mean. It's on the right, too. You're right. There's people, the accusations around. Jews, things like that. It's there's, there's, I mean, racism, there's, you see it on X. There's lines being that personally, I don't think that there's certain lines I don't think should be crossed or being crossed on X for sure. You're right. Yeah.

• 54:27Chris Williamson?

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• 55:08Chris Williamson?

  Upgrade your business and get the same checkout that I use with Neutonic on Shopify. Right now, you can sign up for a $1 per month trial period by going to the link in the description below. Heading to Shopify.com slash modern wisdom or lowercase. That's Shopify.com slash modern wisdom to upgrade your selling today. Yeah, I mean, you had, you had this idea about when, when you know that sort of behavior has gone too far, is there such a thing, the line between correct and incorrect behavior?

• 55:42Speaker 01

  There you go. That's the, that's the question at the heart of it because. So going back to postmodern thinking, which most people echoing the sentiment don't realize they're talking about postmodernism. So you go to a therapist, the therapist to them, there's no such thing as a correct behavior. They're not going to tell you what to do. They're not, they're just going to affirm because it's just a matter of perspective. There's no such thing as the right way to do something. There is no ideal behavior in any given scenario in that worldview. But I disagree. That's why I talk about the fabric of reality, which we strive for. Even if you can't achieve that ideal, you have to have the target to aim for, which means there is an ideal, whether we can achieve it or not, there is a best way to behave in any given scenario.

• 56:28Speaker 01

  And you can judge that if you had parallel universes that you could measure each. Different type of action and then you could actually see the outcomes. You could compare those outcomes and one logically will have to be better than all other potential outcomes. One has to be, but you have to have a way to quantify it. Right. So, but so to answer, yeah, there's, there is that's, we've lost sight of that. It's become this postmodern idea of everything is just a matter of perspective and is equally valid. There's no narrative, no shared meta narrative. There's no ideal shared story that is better than any other story.

• 57:14Speaker 01

  Everything is equal. It's just a matter of perspective and it's really a dangerous, that's really a dangerous idea. So I'm glad you mentioned that.

• 57:22Chris Williamson?

  How do you, how do you operationalize this? How do you, what does it mean for a society to say that behavior is bad or that it's gone too far? Or that, that this is something, this is, this is a line that's been crossed. You mentioned that before. I feel like a line has been crossed. And that was a line has been crossed within speech, right?

• 57:42Speaker 01

  Um, yes.

• 57:43Chris Williamson?

  Talk to me about that. I need you to dig into that.

• 57:44Speaker 01

  That's why we have the legal framework because that's the closest we can come to actually writing in black and white what these lines are. So freedom of speech, for example, how do we determine when speech crosses that objective line? Well, hate speech, no, because who can define hate speech? We can't. There's no way to determine where that line exists. So the best we can do, the least bad way of approaching this, they're all going to be flawed. The least bad one is to say, okay, we have these laws that draw these lines, calls to violence, defamation, whatever they are. But those are laws and beyond that you have legal freedom of speech. Now, yes, an employer can create their own framework because they have the freedom to pay who they want to pay and how they want to do it.

• 58:30Speaker 01

  But we're talking about the larger framework and that's really what laws act as. Which is why the J K Rowling debate comes back to where the rubber meets the road, which is the legal framework. Tomorrow, if I can decide that I'm a woman, the real question is, am I a woman under the law? Not, do you need to use my pronoun at that? That is the question. Everything else is beneath that question. It's, am I treated as a woman under the law? Because. Today, if I were to walk into that space, that changing room, they have the legal right to call the police. Now, tomorrow, if I can decide I'm a woman and I walk in that same space, do they have the legal right to call the police? It has larger ramifications and that's what J.K.

• 59:15Speaker 01

  Rowling has been trying to articulate to everyone. Just that, it all comes back to that, which all comes back to the legal framework, which is our attempt to create these objective laws.

• 59:27Chris Williamson?

  Well, I mean, it is, uh, I was gonna say, it's a shame that we have to rely on the legal framework to get people to behave in a pro-social manner, but maybe that's just like human nature is.

• 59:39Speaker 01

  I don't think we do. It's just we have to have some, we have to have it written. We have to have the constraints.

• 59:46Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, sorry. I don't mean, I don't mean that it's a shame that that is a thing that exists. It obviously needs to exist. My point is, it's a shame that we're having to think about that as what we now rely on as opposed to, you know, common decency, shared humanity, et cetera, et cetera, like massive scaling problem when you don't see people as your neighbor, you don't see them as human. I realize this. There was, there was this insight that I'd had. Um, I think watching the rise of, Peterson was the first one that I really saw this with. There seems to be a level of fame or exposure or notoriety, a threshold, and when people cross that, some big portion of the world doesn't see them as a human anymore.

• 1:00:29Chris Williamson?

  They see them as a conglomeration of ideas. They're a representation of an, like an ideology or, or, or story or narrative or something?

• 1:00:38Speaker 01

  Right there. The story, because we see, because we're narrative creatures and we see the world through stories. We cannot separate the character from the story. So when you see Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson, it's all the past context you have psychologically is impacting how you see them. The only way to really perceive that, the massive amount of that effect, it would be to have parallel universes where you could have a politician who's Trump do the exact same action, same proposed policy, but doesn't have the backstory, the story of Trump, and you could see how the audience responds and you could have some quantifiable outcome. That's the only way we could ever begin to really observe just how powerful this effect is.

• 1:01:18Chris Williamson?

  But the thing that you notice, at least that, that I saw when this threshold is, has been breached.

• 1:01:27Chris Williamson?

  People seem to be prepared to do and say things that they wouldn't of a person who doesn't have that story armor, whatever it is that they think that they've got, that hasn't gone through that altitude. And it was disheartening. It was disheartening to think, you know, these people are still people on the other side of this. Like, if you say this thing or send this thing, that I've spent the last seven and a half years, you'll be episode like 1005, at no point on this journey to building this platform has someone sat me down and taught me about like the super secret squirrel technique that is only taught to people

• 1:02:11Chris Williamson?

  that are moderately fucking well known on the internet of how to not feel really disturbed when nasty shit happens. Like, there's no, and champagne problems, you know, what an issue. Do you not know that people are in poverty? You just need to make video. Hey, hey, I do not disagree, but the social issues are still a social issues. Like, if you felt ostracized or condemned, or like you were being accused of all of these things, it would be tough. And, uh, yeah, it was just, it was really interesting to me that there is a size that you get to where you are no longer seen as a human, and it changes the way that people behave. And I fear that Charlie Kirk, Charlie Kirk had breached that as well.

• 1:02:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't, I wouldn't know about that. I'm not near that size you have. Charlie Kirk did. But I think you're right. I think you're, I'd have heard you talk about this before. I understand it's a real, and I know people dismiss it as champagne problems, but it comes with baggage. Just my little bit of whatever this is that I'm doing. Yeah, it's, it has, there's a cost, for sure.

• 1:03:19Chris Williamson?

  But it's, it's not just the cost, I don't think. It's the lack of, it's the lack of humanity from people seeing, seeing those individuals that like Joe Rogan, like you can do and say whatever you want about that guy. Or, you know, like, pick somebody on the other side. Like, holy fuck. Some of this stuff, true or not, funny or not, that was said about Joe Biden last year was fucking horrific. Like, think about if you are that guy. You're this dude who has been thrust into a position.

• 1:03:53Chris Williamson?

  That you were physiologically really, really gonna struggle with, probably pumped with all manner of whatever they needed to keep that racehorse running for the space of four years. And you're just like, oh, it made it made me feel really sad, made me feel really, really sad for him, for the human that is Joe Biden, like, holy fuck, it's so awful what he had to go through. And um, but people are just like, well, you know, like, you rise to the top and you're you're you be the arrows are gonna be slung your way or whatever. I don't know. Maybe I'm too much of a pussy.

• 1:04:30Speaker 01

  No, no, it's not that you're being a pussy. It's because you, because your ego is in check and you have, so your ego is not flawed because you've achieved success. You know, you're like a handsome guy, tall, worked it, you work out, whatever, all that stuff. It's like you don't have anything to prove. So you are now in this place where you have the, I get what you mean. I don't know the words for it. I don't know how to describe it, but it comes down to, it's the attachment to ego that I've, and I can counter that often, man. It's ego is really the, emotion is the death of reason and emotion comes from ego.

• 1:05:07Chris Williamson?

  What's the relationship with ego and dehumanizing people?

• 1:05:12Speaker 01

  I think we want to dehumanize people from a place of ego often. It's like, uh, well, it depends on the example. Maybe we,

• 1:05:23Speaker 01

  if you dislike someone, a coworker, for example, maybe this is a bad example because it would be a coworker, but they have something you don't have, or someone makes a video criticizing Chris Williamson's take on this political thing. And do you respond with a counter video that's kind of going off the wall? And when you, a person that would respond is probably doing so from a place of ego. I think it often comes from that thing that we call ego. What ego means, we could, yeah.

• 1:05:54Chris Williamson?

  At least for me, it, it.

• 1:05:59Chris Williamson?

  Perhaps part of it is the champagne problems thing. This person has enough going on that there's like a ballast in the system, right? They've got like enough, enough buffer stability that I can use them as this sort of um, like rhetorical punching bag in a way. When Jordan was ill a few years ago, or when, who was the guy who got attacked by the dude in the, with, with the hammer in the house like last year?

• 1:06:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, I forget his.

• 1:06:33Chris Williamson?

  Not Elizabeth Warren's husband, somebody else's husband. And on that, you go, Jesus Christ, like an old dude getting attacked by a guy in his house. And um, look, maybe this is just what, maybe this is the most basic bitch point in history, which is people become famous and then people take the piss out of them and are mean. Like perhaps it's that, but it feels like it's something a little bit deeper than that to me, this sort of loss of humanity. And I wonder whether it's tribalism that this person begins to represent something that you either agree with or disagree with. So they're kind of like a flag bearer in some sort of a way, or a totem or a mascot. And like you're behind this thing or you're against this thing. And if it's a big thing, like you kind of throw arrows at it or, and if you're with

• 1:07:17Chris Williamson?

  it, then you kind of defend it vehemently. And that, you know, just naturally sort of spirals up the inflammatory language. Maybe that plays a role. I feel, I feel like it does.

• 1:07:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it's the example of Jordan Peterson. If people were, people, yeah, the way they were attacking him, the way they're going to continue, oftentimes I do think it comes from that part that's missing from them. It's almost as though they're jealous of, in some way, they would never say this probably. Whether it's his ability to think what he has achieved or being at peace with straddling two worlds and not, you know, falling into one tribe. What you're talking about, this team mentality, I think is so silly. Because we.

• 1:08:02Speaker 01

  Where it's people, so many people are, it's like, I'm on this team, therefore I'm going to check off all the boxes. And that's how they form their thinking. It's just, I don't understand that as opposed to going point by point, following the logic.

• 1:08:14Chris Williamson?

  Well, yeah, I mean, if you, if I know one of your opinions and from it, I can accurately predict everything else that you believe. You're probably not a serious thinker.

• 1:08:22Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:08:23Chris Williamson?

  Right. You've, you've taken a onesie and put it on and called it an outfit. Um, but no, that, that's mono thinking, right? And, uh, you know, it's because the demand for answers outstrips most people's supply. And in, in that case, you have to retrofit all issues. All questions are given the same answer. Everything is climate change or everything is capitalism or everything is progressivism or everything is LGBT. Everything is fascism. Yeah. Um, and that mono thinking is a great shortcut. The human brain loves those, right?

• 1:08:58Speaker 01

  Uh, but it's an indication, like if you've just, here's a good way to think about it.

• 1:09:06Chris Williamson?

  When was the last time that a content creator that you like, or a, um, person that you read, or some news contributor? When was the last time that they surprised you with their take? But I would say, for instance, that Bill Maher is somebody who regularly surprises me with his takes. And that makes me, Sam Harris fucking almost always surprises me with his takes. If I was to like roll a dice and try and predict what it is that's going to come next out of Bill Maher or Sam Harris. There's some, I have some predictive power, but not that much, to be honest. And I'm like, wow, that fuck, I didn't think he was going to say that. Um, and that's good.

• 1:09:50Chris Williamson?

  I think that's a good thing, but what it feels like to people on your side. It looks, i- i- it feels like you're an unreliable ally. And what it looks like to people on the other side is a lack of conviction. It's like, see, see, he's not with them on that thing. I mean, he was with them on whatever, but January 6th, he's not with them there. And he was with them on COVID masking, but he's not with them on immigration. And you go, okay, that looks so much like an opportunity for both sides. Like people on, in your own camp and people in the other camp. Neither of them are going to agree with you for you dissenting. The other group is going to remember the fact that you didn't agree with them previously.

• 1:10:32Chris Williamson?

  And your own group is going to be like, wow, Warren, fucking hell. I thought you were with us on gun control. You were with us on immigration, or you were with us on economic policy or on healthcare. And I'm obsessed with this idea, fucking obsessed with this idea of what I think. It's so cool.

• 1:10:47Speaker 01

  That's especially when it comes to high, we'll call them high stakes topics like Christianity or whatnot, where it comes down to faith and belief. And that's essentially what happened with Jordan Peterson Jubilee, that the criticism he got from that, which I think is silly. But he had a really interesting response to that, where it was essentially an argument of utility. He's saying, because I can reach more people, there's a reason that I don't want to beyond just that it's private and it's extremely complicated.

• 1:11:18Speaker 01

  He's a guy who's always straddling that reality that words are just the tools and everything of substance is beneath the service. And that's what gives him that ability because he's doing things with those tools no one else does. He's like actually trying to reach more people with an incredibly complicated topic. The problem is with Christianity, it's literally. And I struggle with that. I consider myself a Christian, but I struggle with the idea that all you need to do is say the right words. And that makes you a Christian. And if you don't, if you don't say the right words and claim. So many people like genuinely seem to believe that it's you have to literally just proclaim certain things in order to be saved.

• 1:12:01Speaker 01

  That's really important to them, the words that you say the right words. That's, I'm not disagreeing with any of the beliefs or anything, but I, I do, I tend to. There's things that Jordan Peterson says about this topic that I resonate with on a gut level.

• 1:12:20Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:22Chris Williamson?

  Strange one, man. It is a fucking fascinating time to navigate the world of rhetoric and, and communication. And what do you think the next, I mean, you don't have a crystal ball. But what do you think the next few years looks like? In terms of the way that this communication goes forward, have you got any early inclinations?

• 1:12:53Speaker 01

  Well, the ramifications of like this technology, this medium is changing everything. We're seeing that it's harder, it's harder to hide anything.

• 1:13:05Speaker 01

  And in that sense, I think it's a good thing because I do have this sense of the fabric of reality exists and that the audience doesn't lie, that audience meaning that's reflecting what is, and we don't want to pull the wool over their eyes, the more transparency, the better. It's, uh, there's, there's that pendulum that seems to swing from the left to the right.

• 1:13:33Speaker 01

  I, I don't know what will happen. I don't, I mean, as far as politics, I would never consider myself a political expert. It's difficult. It's, it's a, it's a, I think the universities are in real trouble.

• 1:13:51Speaker 01

  They're in real trouble and that's another thing Peterson's right about. I don't know how they're going to come back from it. So there's going to be big change around that. I think that this agent Hollywood is transforming. They're trying to catch up with these technologies. They're realizing that the ability to connect to that audience, that thing that's reflecting the fabric of reality has shifted. I don't, you probably have an agent. If you don't, I'm sure there's agents looking at you because they're launching new departments, recognizing that this is the future and what the real ramifications of that are, I do not know what the real ramifications are of this conflict between good, not politics, but right versus wrong behavior.

• 1:14:38Speaker 01

  I, well, going back to the beginning of the conversation with Jay, there's something shifting, which is why Emma Watson came out and made those comments. Something, something's shifting for the better.

• 1:14:50Chris Williamson?

  Warren Smith, ladies and gentlemen. Dude, I appreciate you very much and I applaud you for taking something that could have been horrific and turning it into a springboard to make something great. So that's, that's real alchemy there. Where should people go? They want to check out all of your stuff. Oh, just YouTube, Warren Smith's Secret Scholars Society. Heck yeah. Amen. I appreciate you.

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