Q&A On Surviving In A Fragmented World

Ajouté : 2026-06-07

[00:00:01]Hello beautiful community.

[00:00:04]You can hear me, can't you? And you can see me.

[00:00:11]Let me apologize for being late. Tell me if you can see and hear me. I have had a bit of a brain stem crisis today after trying to reach for a nature book on the shelf with one of my grabbers. And if you want to watch that, there's a 30 secondond video of that event on Instagram. Um, after which I couldn't breathe for several hours and struggled to swallow, which I'm still doing a little bit. So, you're going to help me swallow. You're going to help me breathe. I'm also going to be helped by some sparkling water and a terrible takeaway coffee in a plastic free cup, but still terrible takeaway stuff that I wouldn't get unless I was sick. Let's rock and roll, beautiful community. We're going to do our honorifications of uh people who left comments above, but we're going to be briefer uh than usual. So, we don't sit around um outside of the live immediate interaction format for more than 20 minutes or so. Um Ross, AI might destroy some jobs. Might AI have any positive political effects by providing access to less algorithmically driven information? No. What AI could do is screw us over in a way that's just as bad but different to algorithms. I mean, you're seeing that already.

[00:01:46]What is an algorithm going to do? It's going to reinforce and intensify what you already think to the point that you begin to think what you didn't think via thinking increasingly more intense versions of the thought you already thought to start with. What uh Claude or Chad GBT would do is center you in a bogus center.

[00:02:13]So outside of scientific information though it can get that pretty wrong too.

[00:02:19]Um if you talk to these, you know, things about the humanities, about societal questions, they're going to give you a middle of the road answer. And if you're an expert in the thing you're asking it about, you'll recognize that the middle of the road answer is often prejudicial or inappropriately ideological or evasive.

[00:02:44]So, uh you're basically going to get a kind of complacent reinforcement of the status quo in a sort of uh frivolous and evasive way. So, that's a different kind of way of bringing out the worst in you.

[00:03:04]Darren, we've got to spend more on defense at the expense of societal safety nets.

[00:03:10]You've said Vlad, um causing political tensions. Any chance of a third way, like taxing the wealthy, we've got to find as much room as possible for a third way where you have both, where you get your cake and eat it. But realistically, we're never going to get rid of that conflict. We will undermine trust in democracy the more we spend on defense. The less we spend on defense, the less safe we're going to be from objectively existing threats. So, this is genuinely a conflict where each way you choose, you lose.

[00:03:53]But what I would say is that it's up to the political imagination of leaders to bring it about that we get as much of both as possible.

[00:04:09]Vlad, you said Russians are responsible for their states actions. Is an investor responsible for a company's actions? Uh is it moral to invest in defense? Um, and does necessity make it moral? So, necessity makes some things moral, but it doesn't make other things moral.

[00:04:30]I'll leave the necessity point at that.

[00:04:32]On investment, you're absolutely responsible, but it's a different kind of responsibility.

[00:04:42]You're responsible in virtue of your bond and solidarity and national belonging for things your government does.

[00:04:51]And that's even true if your government is authoritarian. You're not guilty for things your government does. You're responsible. And you're indeed responsible even when you're opposed to what your government is doing. I am opposed to what my government did in 2002 and in committing to a war in Iraq.

[00:05:10]I I marched against that. I even organized against that war, but I'm still responsible for the Iraq war as a British citizen.

[00:05:22]So that's how responsibility works. Don't confuse it with guilt.

[00:05:30]Now you are responsible for your investments. Yes. But there are degrees of responsibility, shades of responsibility. If you've put yourself into an index fund, that's different to a direct investment in Tesla.

[00:05:48]So, you're going to be very uh uh differently responsible.

[00:05:54]Um but you are going to be responsible.

[00:06:00]It's just that you have to have a healthy non-persecutory relationship with responsibility on the one hand, but on the other hand, you also have to acknowledge that there is responsibility. It's not just something you can wish away. Would relations between Germany and France be under stress if um exconservative authoritarian parties took power uh in both countries. like Marine Le Pen and the FD.

[00:06:37]These governments would be ideological allies.

[00:06:42]But being ideological allies doesn't make authoritarian exons conservative politicians get on. What would in practice be the case is that it would be much more up to the personal relationship between the two leaders.

[00:07:02]And that's the kind of world we're entering anyway, where individual relationships are going to matter more than the historical inheritance uh that the country enters into a conflict or negotiation with or the um dense bureaucratically complex, you know, entrenched position. the country has that's all going to diminish and um individual relationships between leaders are going to be more important which is the kind of world that Trump and Putin want.

[00:07:44]So don't confuse ideological uh alliance, ideological sharing with the idea that these leaders are necessarily get going to get on and volunteering. Dave says for a um as a support person for a teenager in care, most the programs he can access are outsourced to private organizations.

[00:08:12][sighs and gasps] this marketplace problematic to me?

[00:08:16]Seems problematic to me. Any thoughts?

[00:08:23]Well, between the private and the public center, we're failing to meet a lot of the basic needs of many groups of our citizens. And certainly citizens um with particular kinds of acute chronic illnesses and also citizens with particular kinds of mental illnesses are near the top of the list of groups whose needs we're simply failing to meet.

[00:08:50]Vlad I often watch your videos Stephan says um and think well I can kind of see the point in what Vlad is saying but not completely. But since it's Vlad who's making the point, there must be something to it. Am I in an epistemically unhealthy relationship with you? Um, if you freeze that, then you are in an epistemically unhealthy relationship with me. But if that is a stage along a process for you where you constantly re-engage the question of trust then it's okay because over time where you may be arriving is that you can better make judgments about how trustworthy I am than how um epistemically accurate I am on a particular issue. And there's absolutely nothing wrong as long as you keep engaged and reassessing your own position at the level of trust visa v me. Um as as long as you keep reassessing then it's entirely reasonable that uh you have greater epistemic confidence in my uh trustworthiness than you do in my accuracy on a particular view. and therefore you leverage your confidence in my trustworthiness to make certain presumptions about the possible accuracy on a particular issue. I mean this is actually going to get a lot more dramatic if I talk explicitly about philosophical issues. Right?

[00:10:21]So if I tell you something about Aristotle's ethical theory, right? Um, we've got 140 of us in in in the room, which is very nice because that means I can engage with more of your questions. Uh, it's nice to have a a small number and that's partly why I'm doing this at an unusual time on an unusual day. Um, basically none of you are going to have any clue whether I'm right or wrong if I say something about Aristotle.

[00:10:53]I mean, you're literally going to be as clueless as though I were speaking a foreign language.

[00:10:59]Um, now what you're going to be left with is the question, what would it take for Vlad to express a view on Aristotle?

[00:11:12]Like, how slow is Vlad? Is Vlad extraordinarily slow to express a view on Aristotle? Then I'm going to think, well, is I'm going to gamble that I don't have to settle on this, but if I were to take a guess, I'd probably guess Vlad's got a point.

[00:11:28]because he's so incredibly slow at forming a a view and his criteria for what it means to express a view about Aristotle are really high probably to the point of Vlad thinks most professional philosophers aren't qualified to say anything about Aristotle or you might think well no actually this whole business of Vlad being so slow is overestimated he's not that slow and therefore it's possible that he does say something about Aristotle without knowing what he's talking about So um it's completely reasonable for you to be making these procedural judgments, right?

[00:12:06]Um rather than uh making direct judgments about the subject matter I'm expressing a view on. And in fact these procedural judgments are healthy. They are the main judgment you should be making about people. Like does Michael Ignativ have any idea what he's talking about? Start with a procedural judgment. Don't start with Michael's made these four claims.

[00:12:31]Let me assess them and then I'll come to my view. No, no.

[00:12:36]Judge the process of how Michael comes to views.

[00:12:42]You know, you're a fan of Burton Russell. Well, think about how he arrived at views, right? You're a fan of Clive James, think of how he arrived at views.

[00:13:00]Fan of Iris Murdoch, think of how she arrived at views. So, I absolutely recommend this procedural stuff.

[00:13:10]Shocked that my family will be voting reform uh or has voted reform in the local elections.

[00:13:19]Um Oh, sorry. My grandson uh who is 25 shocked the family by voting reform in the local elections. His twin sister has effectively disowned him. The rest of us are seeking more positive ways to influence him. Any advice?

[00:13:36]Um don't try to influence his politics.

[00:13:40]try to engage with him in the way that will allow him to um keep open politically, not close and not also fall into various kinds of resentment and not also fall into defining his sense of his identity and tying his self-esteem to his political choice. help him with all of that. Don't directly try to change his mind. That's not really constructive. You change people's minds by not changing their minds, by engaging with them uh in meaningful and sincere ways. So that's what I would say. Um and also understand that this is a process, right? You don't care what you're where you're at at 25. You care where you're at across your life politically. So understand that this is a journey and some of the journey you won't get to see, some of it you will get to see. Um so so that's it. Um yeah, I don't see room for how dare you.

[00:14:51]What I do see room is maybe for a political conversation, but that depends on the personalities involved that detaches, this is the only political point I would make, the grievances and concerns he has from the vehicle he has selected to advance them. So it might be that you recognize all of his concerns as valid, but you can maybe make the case that the vehicle he has chosen are a bunch of incompetent charlatans. So even if all the concerns they claim they stand for are all correct, they ain't going to deliver on them, right, Jamie? Historically, British duty meant deference and punitive coercion.

[00:15:36]No, it's meant that, but it's also meant some wonderful liberal things, some wonderful things to do with self-sacrifice.

[00:15:49]So no, I mean that's a little bit of corrosive.

[00:15:53]It's both. It's both positive and negative. Is this authoritarian streak a fixture of our political psyche that reemerges during crisis? This is not the worry you got now. The worry you've got now is that the the entire sense of duty is being washed away.

[00:16:10]We're going liquid, right? Our societies are going liquid.

[00:16:16]Things are being washed away.

[00:16:18]And so depoliticization is a much bigger worry than the worry that there is a particular institutionalized culture of duty that's deterious and will be badly exploited. Um I I don't say that's not a worry, but I'm saying there's a priority here. And the priority is that um worry worrying that relating with a sense of duty to institutions it's going to get washed away is a bigger worry than destructive forms of duty outweighing constructive forms of duty.

[00:16:57]As a father of two boys aged three and a newborn. What things 3991 is asking in particular do you think I should focus on trying to teach and show them to prepare them to thrive in the future? I'm in the west.

[00:17:17]The most important thing you can do for them is a to be the least effed up version of yourself that you can be.

[00:17:27]Same goes for the mom.

[00:17:30]So being as as free and as real and as happy as you guys can be is the biggest thing you can give your kids.

[00:17:43]Then when we specifically talk about your kids, there's a lot.

[00:17:52]Number one, it's very important that children have a healthy relationship with frustration and that frustration can become a sight of curiosity and exploration and not a sight for intolerance and not being able to bear it.

[00:18:19]It's only if that's got right in an individual's psychology that they can grow. Our culture mitigates against having an adequate relationship with frustration.

[00:18:35]You've got to understand that it's incredibly important for your children to bear being frustrated and to be able to uh experience frustration as conducive to exploration and growth.

[00:18:53]That's a universal truth. But it's especially true in the culture that A is very individualistic and authenticitydriven and b in a culture that denies frustration.

[00:19:09]Um that wants to pretend that frustration is not part of human life.

[00:19:14]Number one. Number two, this is really a very big separate conversation, but confidence is incredibly important. It's incredibly important to be confident and you are confident if you receive love in a certain way. I'm not going to elaborate on that now.

[00:19:37]If you don't, you can still give yourself confidence later on, but that requires a lot of work.

[00:19:48]Understand that fundamentally much more important than teaching something to your children.

[00:20:02]You have to develop a relationship where the two of you, the four of you can dance with one another.

[00:20:21]where you can bring your personalities to your relationship and play and explore and you can't say this is what I need to teach my children. What you need to teach your children is something that is going to be a product of that kind of exploratory relationship you have because you're going to have to discover their personalities and respecting their personalities and them respecting your personality meet.

[00:20:59]And of course, also engage in conflict playfully and healthfully.

[00:21:10]Of course, there is so much more to say, but that frustration point is very important.

[00:21:22]as is the related point that making them feel that what they want is very important to you even if they don't get what they want. Right.

[00:21:36][sighs] Book recommendations. Yes. Um 99962. Um I've got a website. I'm going to do an email list soonishly. When I do it, I'm going to send out book recommendations also. Maybe put some on my website.

[00:21:55]Decisive 77. Is it ever appropriate or effective to fight a fake grievance campaign with a manifesto of genuine complaint?

[00:22:05]Negative politics often seem to favor the most dishonest. Have I misunders?

[00:22:10]I'm not quite sure I follow your question.

[00:22:19]fight a fake grievance campaign for a good cause.

[00:22:25]I think I'm not understanding you. If that's the question, the answer is no.

[00:22:29]You don't do that because how you advance a grievance is very important. And advancing a real grievance in a bad way can the grievance.

[00:22:51]All right, let's say we've done our in advance questions, beautiful community. So, let's rock and roll into the live.

[00:23:04][sighs] Let's rock and roll into the live.

[00:23:18]Yeah, decisive. Your question about um methods and campaigns and whatever else.

[00:23:23]Just reask it so that I get it. Maybe I'm being dumb today.

[00:23:30]Rachel is doing Pilates. I'm jealous.

[00:23:37]When will JD Vance ever say anything worth sharing? Well, because of his power, what he says is all too often um worth sharing. Um Hannah from Israel, hi to you.

[00:23:52]I can order a high quality coffee. Um it's just not going to arrive high quality. And because um I've recently stopped making my own coffee um for health reasons, I have got these terrible takeaway cups.

[00:24:10]Even though I get ones that don't have any plastic in them, but still not good.

[00:24:13]I wouldn't get them if I weren't sick.

[00:24:20]Why is it that intellectual people get so much more of classical music as compared to modern pu music? Um well first of all classical music is also modern. There is classical music being written today. Some of it is terrible.

[00:24:44]Some of it is good.

[00:24:46]In other words, this is a cultural misconception. There is classical music written in the 1980s like liates attitudes um that's on the level of some of the works of important 19th century composers like Shopopan and Schuman. So it's at a greater distance from common cultural consciousness but that doesn't actually mean it's not part of the culture. It's just part of the culture in an elite way.

[00:25:17]uh and that's unfortunate. Um now I am in a city where there is greater capacity to grasp that kind of art expression.

[00:25:28]Um London is crap at it, but crap is very good by international standards. Um so that's the first thing. Classical music is modern. It's still being produced.

[00:25:40]So then the question is why do some people get more out of classical music than other kinds of music?

[00:25:49]Well, it depends what you're comparing it to. If you're comparing it to pop music, then the difference is that one is expressive and the other is non-expressive entertainment.

[00:26:02]Right?

[00:26:03]uh when you have a when you have let's say Elvis Presley right what you've got is not expression you've got symbolization right so what what Bhovven is going to give you is tenderness what Elvis is going to give you is the idea of tenderness rather than tenderness itself And that means that one is a transformational experience and the other is a non-transformational entertainment experience. One changes you, the other becomes a background to whatever state you are in and you remain in that state. So there's a difference of transformation. Now you could say that there's a lot of gray space.

[00:26:55]You know, how do you categorize the blues traditions for instance? How do you categorize a lot of jazz? How do you categorize a lot of folk music? Then you've got to deal with the fact that a lot of pop performers are much better than professional classical musicians, right? Nina Simone has greater rhythmical strength than the vast majority of famous pionists.

[00:27:21]Um, and she is better at characterizing than the vast majority of famous pianists. So that's another complicating factor. And there is also entertainment and there is entertainment. There is entertainment that then does begin to have I'm going back on myself a little bit a a transformational quality. So that's how that conversation would develop. Um, but what you can't say, I'm sorry, is that there are just different genres and that there's Bob Dylan and there is Beethoven and they're just different.

[00:28:01]Uh, no, I'm sorry. Be bubb,000 times more profound than Bob Dylan, even if one likes Bob Dylan a lot.

[00:28:11]So, we also got to cut the crap and call it as it is, right? Just because there's a preference for something uh that's more common doesn't doesn't mean that it has equivalent sophistication and equivalent depth, right? There's nothing that the greatest pop artist of the 20th century, who I would probably say is Nina Simone, uh uh uh has produced that could be comparable to a performance of Bman's late string quartets by the Bush Quartet. Right? So, a little bit of healthy perspective and healthy elitism is also going to have a place here. That doesn't mean that everybody's got to be interested in in classical music. Not at all. What it does mean is if there is room for that in your life, for that kind of thing, find something of that kind that's yours. It could be painting. It could be um some some kind of art expression, God knows what. It doesn't have to be music.

[00:29:17]There's nothing wrong with leading a life and never listening to classical music. Nothing wrong at all.

[00:29:23]Um and indeed there is nothing wrong with not engaging with any art form at all during your life. Human beings are complicated. Human beings are multifaceted and certain kinds of special relationships with certain things crowd out other relationship with certain things. Right? In a life full of a connection with nature and full of a great deal of physical activity like walking and hiking, there may be no space in that life for art. That's okay, right? Um there are a lot of people who have a very deep relationship with politics who don't have a single aesthetic bone in their body. That's completely okay. So we also got to appreciate that.

[00:30:25]Um he nick tells says Vlad disagree with your Hassan Paher take. Well my Hassan Per take is not about what Hassan said or didn't say. It's about whether he should be allowed into the UK, which he certainly should.

[00:30:47]So, that's the first point. The second point, why are you telling me that you disagree with me? Like, am I your mom?

[00:30:55]Right? I'm not here for you to agree with me. What What kind of interest is there in the fact that we disagree?

[00:31:01]That's excellent. If we disagree, there's no problem. You're not here to agree with me. Um, if you are here to agree with me, I want you to agree with me because you found your way to a view that happens to overlap with mine.

[00:31:18]I'm giving you some procedural things, right? But why would I want you to agree with me? Um, now I'm being of course a little bit mean, but the reason I'm being mean is I constantly get this email, a kind of a clarification email.

[00:31:32]Oh, by the way, Vlad, you've said 74 things. Four of them I actually don't share with you.

[00:31:40]Well wishes, Larry.

[00:31:43]Barry or Harry.

[00:31:45]Larry, thank you so much for pointing out you disagree with four things out of the 77 I I I uh mentioned. And uh just so great to have you with me next year. Hey Vlad, just to say there's actually two more things I've disagreed with you this year. Just going to list them below. By the way, um, best wishes, Larry. Larry, thanks so much for letting me know that you disagree with two more things I've said. That's terrific. Um, and it's also terrific you agree with most of the other things I've said. So, that's great. Right. We're not We're not doing that, right? We're not doing that.

[00:32:20]We're not here to agree.

[00:32:29]Malfitano, thank you so much for facilitating us. I was convinced you would be um uh in bed on your time zone.

[00:32:41]I'm sorry not to even tell you we were doing a live. Didn't expect to see you.

[00:32:52]Oh, hi Nick Tela. By the way, I I've just got a call that you've got some different views about different things.

[00:33:01]And I don't know what they are, but I bet I disagree with some of them. So, I just want to share that with you that you've got lots of views, but actually I might disagree with some of them. And I want you to know that, you know, Um, hey Vlad, what's your uh opinion on Cordon Senites and European democracies?

[00:33:50]Presumably that's about keeping parties you regard as unconstructive um out of politics.

[00:34:00]This is difficult and it's going to have to be responsive to local political culture.

[00:34:08]Because what you don't want to do is artificially narrow the uh range of permissible debate because that's actually only going to put fuel on the fire of authoritarian populism.

[00:34:32]Because what populism is in the way that John Gray uses the term, not me, I use it in terms of discourse and the bridging of um public discourse with private sentiment. But the way John would use it would be along the lines of populism being backlash against the counterproductive and destructive and uh restrictive uh policies of uh liberal centism over the last couple of decades. And in that sense, if you continue to insist on some of the barriers that generated the very problem you've got, then you're going to be in trouble on the one hand. On the other hand, you have to demand that people respect the democratic game, that people are uh constitutional.

[00:35:30]Um, and that reminds me, I think I missed a question above. I'm going to check once again. Um so this is going to be a very difficult balance uh to strike. How you strike it is going to be dependent on uh local political culture. I am of the view tendentiously that you've got to be very slow with the idea of designating certain political forces even if they're irresponsible as being beyond the circle of permissible participation because I think that's going to be counterproductive and you've got to make a lot of citizens feel like you're gaslighting them. But this is this is a conflict. There is no sort of easy solution here.

[00:36:19]Um, I think there was a question on institutions and I was looking at it and then I lost it.

[00:36:32]Let me see if it's right at the top.

[00:36:53]Yes, I've lost the question, but I remember what it is. Um, the question was, is the fact that institutions usually seek consensus a problem in an age of distrust where you have to show people that you can get things done? And the answer is that actually institutions don't seek consensus in a democracy. Typically what they seek is a certain procedural way of handling conflict. What they seek is the idea that yes we can conflict within the institution and between institutions.

[00:37:34]But there are certain principles that mean that the conflict is not going to get existential.

[00:37:42]Right? It's going to be the conflict of a game of tennis where there is genuine competition but the competition does not become a sort of war of all against all where rackets get thrown across the court. So that's the risk. The risk today is that institutions lose the capacity to arbitrate conflict without the conflict becoming conflict between not opponents but conflict between enemies. That's a problem [sighs] and that's a very difficult issue about which we'll speak more.

[00:38:31]Benjamin is asking about book recommendations. I'm a political science student. What do you recommend? Um, look, if you're a political science student, read Charles Taylor's 1971 essay um on social sciences and the interpretation of man.

[00:38:52]I will have emails and website blah blah blah with book recommendations in the near future because I want I want that to be available.

[00:39:06]The cunning of unreason is a very good 20 25 year old book by John Dunn that's a general introduction to politics that's that matters.

[00:39:18]Read or listen to some Alistister McIntyre.

[00:39:22]Um, if you want a more casual and conversational voice that's very contemporary, you could read Jason Blakeley, um, who has, um, written quite a bit about the, uh, pathologies of the sorts of things that happen in political science departments.

[00:39:57]understand that if you're an America, you're at bigger risk of scientism in a political science department.

[00:40:06]I mean I as a postgrad at Oxford 20 25 years ago met quite a bit of scientism but luckily I took a wonderful course um with Alan Ryan um on the philosophy of the social sciences. So also just Google Alan Ryan and the philosophy of the social sciences. Um there's a book that I think is edited by Alan Ryan. It's a collection of essays on this um from decades back. It's also worth worth grabbing.

[00:40:49]And of course you need something to reflect on democratic decline. Um Charles Taylor is stronger than that.

[00:40:56]And um there's there's a book I tend to recommend. I forget what it's called.

[00:41:00]It's a book of essays on it's called democratic regeneration or democratic degeneration and regeneration. Something like that.

[00:41:10]Enough.

[00:41:14]Of course, I would also say for goodness sake, stay close to the great texts.

[00:41:18]Don't allow yourself to be bogged down in you know little essays written in the 1960s or the 1990s. Have some kind of relationship with Hobbes Makavelli Tidities.

[00:41:42]Why is it I never find the question Vlad answers here in the chat? Um uh six brought sling. Don't know you can try.

[00:41:56]Uh you can try me by asking a question of your choosing. Uh the smaller the group, the more chances I I answer.

[00:42:08]If you email me at the get in touch with Vlad address, I have an existent answering rate, but it's small because I I'm overwhelmed. If you're finding that it's very significant for you that I answer a question, my recommendation is to email me three times once a month with the same question. I won't experience that as spam.

[00:42:44]Um, Ukraine question. Vlad, any advice for someone join joining combat soon?

[00:42:52][snorts] Have largely made peace with death but not lifealtering injuries. Um, how does one deal with that fear? Thank you.

[00:43:23]It's very difficult for us to sacrifice ourselves for our country.

[00:43:32]Which is why when Russia attacked Ukraine and Ukraine is a European country that we can to a degree relate to in the west a lot of Westerners thought what the hell is that?

[00:43:44]Why are they defending themselves? Why aren't they shopping?

[00:43:49]So this is very very difficult for us and the reason it's difficult for us is that is in part because more than any humans who have lived before us we feel that we are entitled to get what we want from our lives.

[00:44:10]You know, if we listen to the Morse code messaging of the Titanic, what's so haunting about it in 1912 is that it's in between a world where people are modern in that sense that they expect life to give them what they want and not yet modern that they have an expectation of reconciling to life not giving them what they want. And that means they have a very different relationship than we would have in some respects at least with this extraordinary tragedy that was happening to them um on the 14th of April 1912.

[00:44:54]So that's one thing. It's very very difficult for us to go on as though um we are okay with not getting what we want from life.

[00:45:15]I don't do war because of my privilege, but I am significantly ill and significantly disabled. Right? I couldn't reach a bookshelf um earlier with a grabber. I've got significant microvascular damage.

[00:45:35]That's life giving me something I didn't ask for. It's life giving me something I don't want.

[00:45:42]So integration for you would mean accepting.

[00:45:53]But acceptance is a dance and acceptance comes with refusal to accept and acceptance comes with the balance of uh acceptance and refusal to accept. But it means accepting that life can give you something you don't want. And therefore going to war is not a sensation of your life but a part of your life too. It's just life giving you something you don't want.

[00:46:21]Even if you want to go and fight, you don't want to go and fight in the sense that you don't want the bloody war.

[00:46:28]So integration means accepting that this is not just a complete break in your life, but that it is part of your life.

[00:46:50]If something radical happens to you, you can't prepare for that in advance. Um, and you have to understand that when big things happen to human beings, it normally takes probably about a year and a half before that thing has properly percolated. So, let's say losing a couple of limbs significantly, right?

[00:47:11]It's It's going to take a human a year and a half to sort of process that.

[00:47:31]If you receive a significant limitation on your life as a result of um being wounded, [sighs] um it is going to be an exploration what it means to live with that. And you're actually going to end up surprised by both what is difficult but also what is possible.

[00:47:55]When we are limited, the limitation might be fixed. Let's say somebody doesn't have two legs, but what is possible for them isn't fixed.

[00:48:09]It might be that they thought they couldn't work like that, but they suddenly discover they can. I mean, look at look at me. I'm working. I can't even sit in a wheelchair for more than half an hour on some days, but I'm working.

[00:48:23]Now if I thought of work as I have to be in an academic philosophy department 9 to5 or I can't do anything then work would be impossible for me right so it's an exploration what is possible even when we have a very very fixed uh limit and then of course under conditions of war uh you're going to have a certain shedding of skin a certain kind of uh reduction of yourself to something more like your animal nature.

[00:49:01]And also there's going to be something exhilarating about that. And it's going to be important to not get off on that too much either because there is going to be an element of sort of looking under the carpet of existence.

[00:49:16]And one of the problems a lot of people who come back from war feel actually is that life is not radical and existential enough and so everything feels gray.

[00:49:34]So I think it's important to be open to what might happen.

[00:49:46]Not over catastrophize it, but catastrophize it to a degree.

[00:49:51]And get yourself prepped for being ready to respond and grow through different scenarios so that you're not in complete denial about the possibilities and that if one of them occurs, um, you have at least begun to direct yourself at a mental and physiological level toward preparing yourself.

[00:50:14]uh for them. Another thought that helps is just humans in history. Humans have been through a lot of crap in history.

[00:50:22]Humans deal with a lot of stuff in history and we can learn a lot from their capacity to sustain hope and their resilience.

[00:50:32]Obviously, I'm sorry that the bloody ruskies are causing this needlessly.

[00:50:43]We've got a lot of completely needless human suffering in the world.

[00:50:52]What question would someone who is thinking about going into politics ask themselves? I think I have the skills for it, but I think I would find it too frustrating to be effective. You need to ask questions about your capacity.

[00:51:08]You need to ask questions about specifically your leadership capacity, even if you're not going to be a leader of any party. And you need to ask yourself ethical questions about how you can maintain your ethical radar while having dirty hands. Politics is a dirty business.

[00:51:31]Politics is a business of compromise.

[00:51:34]Politics is a business of alliances that are semi-palatable to get results that are preferable.

[00:51:44]Right?

[00:51:46]Certain people are primed for that, others aren't. Right? I have no interest in politics myself. For instance, if I were healthy, not I'd be any good at it, but I have no interest in it at all.

[00:51:59]Partly because I am not interested in the enormous amount of harm that a constructive and benign political leader at a high level of power will inevitably have to induce.

[00:52:29]Uh Hussein, what led to workism go going away so quickly? It was like yesterday people were trying to cancel Beth. It was such a powerful movement that it felt it wouldn't go away. Did people suddenly collectively come to their senses? No.

[00:52:45]Um so workism um hyper identity politics which is roughly when you make political disagreement moral make moral disagreement about identity and make identity disagreement something you want to enshrine institutionally right uh when you do that you're being toxic why are people doing less of that. Why has this gone down? It's partly gone down because there is a counterrevolutionary authoritarian wave coming to wash it away. So we're replacing the um if you like apolitical authoritarian tendencies of certain middle class elites which is roughly what work is miss sociologically with the more politically ambitious partly fascized authoritarian tendencies of these ex-conservative politicians.

[00:53:55]So the problem now is that anti-woke is worse than what woke was.

[00:54:02]Anti-woke is normatively impeccable as a position. But what I'm saying is in practice 98% of anti-woke is now authoritarian. And so we're now going to have institutions tilting from woke to complicity with or type politicians.

[00:54:24]Today workism is still dominant.

[00:54:29]Um, I would say it's gone from 8 out of 10 to three out of 10 and it's going to be at one and at zero. The biggest challenge is how do we protect the groups that workers most vehemently advocated for in a counterproductive way, right?

[00:55:01]ethnic minorities, trans people, different groups who are still partly or in in some cases wholly clinging to workism as a vehicle of advocacy whereas in fact it's digging their graves politically, right? Um, so that's a very dangerous position and we need to change and to do more politically effective advocacy for groups that are still trying to be woke and self- advocacy. Well, it's going to undermine them eventually. It's it's a recipe for political defeat.

[00:55:42]So, don't do it.

[00:55:45]Um, but it's not gone down because people came to their senses. It it it went down because there's a counter counter, you know, counterweighing political wave and people who were quiet but unhappy with workers and now feeling freer to stand up um and they're getting less backlash. Workers was never a majority position. Uh most UK humanities academics were always non work. Even at the height of workism, they just kept quiet. They just thought this is embarrassing and ridiculous, but I'll I'll be quiet because I'll they'll try to cancel me unless I say the particular words they want me to say, right? Um, so it's not gone away for sort of epistemically constructive reasons. It's got washed away. Is Scott Ritter believable? Not no. I mean he's believable as a sort of um propagandist.

[00:56:48]What's your MyersBriggs? I am E N FP.

[00:56:57]I am E marginal.

[00:57:00]I'm a bit more extroverted than introverted, but it's close. The reason I'm extroverted is not because I love all the attention. It's because um obviously apart from my health which is a physical reason that I can't do certain activities but at a psychological level socializing doesn't drain me which is a very key feature of introversion. Socializing never drains me emotionally.

[00:57:27]Um but then that's how I'm extroverted but then I'm introverted in the sense that I could spend two years not talking to a human being and remain stable just do bit of philosophy.

[00:57:39]Um then on the second letter I am much more n than s which you'd be surprised by because you'd think philosophers are analytical but I'm about 92% 90% sometimes 88% is swings if I redo it. uh intuitive and that's even how I do philosophy. I'm much more intuitive than anal than than analytical.

[00:58:05]um then I am by a smaller margin feeling over thought u maybe like 6040 again you'd be surprised by this if you have certain conventional prejudices about oh philosopher analytical and then on the end I am P I have quite a bit of J I think this is how the certain ways that I want the world to look but of course as a philosopher MP of course as a philosopher MP because I look at the way things are.

[00:58:36]Number one, only number two do I want to rearrange the world. Number one, I look at the world. Okay.

[00:58:43]Um, and then also if you add the extra bit about assertiveness, I used to be 97% assertive.

[00:58:54]Um, and that feels too high. So, I'm trying to get myself back to 90.

[00:59:01]My friend Katarin is not watching, but she's committed to getting me down to 90, so I'm a bit less assertive.

[00:59:11]What qualities uh to build uh to become a more independent thinker? How do you train yourself to be an original thinker rather than just repeating other great minds? So, um there are 246 people in this room. It's possible that one of you could be an original thinker, but it's highly unlikely.

[00:59:32]Highly unlikely. So, um, to be an original thinker, you have to be at least a low-level genius. What you want is to be a free thinker, not an original thinker. You have to be an independent thinker who can think for yourself, right? And yet you have to be mature about what it means to have an original thought. Having an original thought is difficult, right? If you stop 400 people on the street, the chances are very low that any of them can think originally about anything of significance except for personal things in their life, right? So um we don't aim for that. If you're an original thinker, you should probably be a professional thinker quite frankly.

[01:00:23]Otherwise, you'd be wasting your talent.

[01:00:26]Um, so what you want is to make sure that you don't swim about uh being essentially at the mercy of not just what the crowd thinks, but what the crowd thinks in this algorithmically mediated way. Read chapter three of John Stewart Mills on liberty.

[01:00:56]Um, I mean, let me try to give you a quote.

[01:01:23]Let me see if I can find the the quote cuz I've got brain fog. I normally can recall it, but I can't.

[01:01:51]due to public opinion. Chapter 3 on liberty. Let's see if we can get it.

[01:02:44]I'm going to give 30 seconds to myself.

[01:02:47]Otherwise, I'm going to give up Yeah, I can't find it for some reason, but um and my brain is too too weak to reproduce it at the moment verbatim by memory. Um, so what you want is I beg your pardon for this waste of time. Um, what you want is to um not be this kind of algorithmic bot that I often warn us against being who basically gets uh tantalized by cellotaping themselves to a particular group position, an algorithmically mediated group position.

[01:04:04]Uh you don't want to do that.

[01:04:17]And partly I think my answer is going to be that I'm going to do a workshop on something like this. How to go on online is going to be just itself an important part of this. Um, another part here is that you've got to have some kind of constructive dialogue offline about important issues of politics. And if you don't have anybody um uh to do this with, you have to do it with yourself inside your own head.

[01:05:13]It's essential that you don't identify with your political positions, right? So for example, if you were a NAFO, be careful, right? because NAFO would be training your brain to latch on to a set of pre-prescribed commitments and positions um which infuse your identity.

[01:05:41]Doesn't mean there's anything wrong with being in NAF, but you've got to have that self-awareness.

[01:05:50]Try to always procedurally give an evaluation to yourself of your own capacity to judge something, right? Do I even need to get into this? Do I even have an opinion about this? Um, how good is my opinion on this going to be given my level of familiarity with it?

[01:06:13]So I'm still trying to find the mill quote.

[01:07:04]I have no idea why I'm being so slow with it. All right, that'll do for that.

[01:07:12]Let me get a little bit more concentrated than sharp so that we stop blubbering around.

[01:07:21]Uh, how would Westerners cope psychologically if their countries were invaded like Ukraine, ignoring nukes?

[01:07:28]Uh, not well, but war concentrates the mind.

[01:07:36]Don't forget Ukraine is pre-war a society that's got quite a lot on Russia politically. It's got lots of um political and civic uh myths and values tangibly expressed in culture that are about challenging authority.

[01:08:01]But before the war, Ukraine is a civically disengaged, heavily neoliberal, heavily depoliticized, very low trust society.

[01:08:14]Ukraine is a lower trust society than the UK uh before the full scale invasion. So understand that war concentrates the mind, but that when the war stop the same patterns come back again, right? um these social forces that we're all victims of, Ukraine is again going to be a victim of when the war stops. Um so what I would say is we may have done a bit worse than Ukraine, but don't overromanticize the difference and understand that lots of patterns can will rec recur after the war stops. difficult patterns that make democracy hard to sustain.

[01:09:05]And don't dramatize that gap between us and Ukrainians. Probably could be a bit of a gap. Um we would be we'd be worse. Um but I wouldn't over dramatize it because of the way um war concentrates the mind.

[01:09:30]But also don't underestimate how many Ukrainians also just don't want to fight, right? They don't want to be there. So understand that there's a complexity of reaction. There's there's deep uh diversity and pluralism in Ukraine, right? Ukraine is not a cartoon. It's a real country with real people.

[01:09:49]Uh, so that's what I would say. I don't think it's a very useful thing to overexaggerate this story. Oh my god, look at these Ukrainians. If only we were a quarter like them, we'd be okay.

[01:10:03]Uh, no. That's not how it works.

[01:10:14]Is it wrong or dangerous to be completely unaware or indifferent to one's personality type? If you mean something like the MyersBriggs personality type, no, it's not wrong or unaware to be completely indifferent to it. It's just a tag that doesn't explain much. It's just a useful shorthand to help you get on with people. But is psych psychic psychonalytic psychological understanding of yourself in general important? Yes, it is. Right?

[01:10:41]Because partly living life well means understanding life and understanding life means understanding yourself.

[01:11:26]How is disability different or similar to the experience of aging? It's nothing like the experience of aging in the scheme of things. It's much more horrific and violent and scary and unpleasant um except for aging just short of death. Um, and uh, terminal disease processes, the end of life could be worse, but they're probably even going to be better. The kind of disability I have on research studies has been um, shown if you average out all the patients, some of them are so severe they don't tolerate any light, any touch and so on. Um, they have to be tubefed, but also they're suffering and all that.

[01:12:11]They're just in the state of cessation.

[01:12:14]But I mean that's that's not comparable to aging at all. Um and studies show that my disease especially if you consider the most severe people although now I have another disease I have long co which is for me even worse than near me because it's stopping me from standing at all. Um but uh studies showed that it's worse than than most forms of cancer and u most forms of heart disease and most um uh of the common big illnesses up until a couple of weeks out from death.

[01:12:52]So that the degree to which people with me suffer is extreme. So it they would rightly be deeply offended if you compared it to aging. Um, that's a sort of a mellow, quaint comparison that just sort of, you know, converts a storm into slightly choppy waters.

[01:13:21]War is a much better analogy.

[01:13:24]Um, right. Amalfitano is very, very sick. So she, and I'm sorry, it's not disrespectful to say that she is she is at war. She's not at war. She's at home, but she she is um uh uh it's war.

[01:13:43]That's a much better analogy. And the violence of it and the visceralness of it um uh is much more that than aging.

[01:13:54]Um so like night and day difference.

[01:14:06]Um what do you think of the idea Richard is saying um that psychic uh juvenility immaturity is a source of many political social problems? Yes. Um, as the psychoanalist Adam Phillips likes to say, the inducements into adulthood are very impoverished in our society.

[01:14:26]Our models of happiness are essentially the models of children.

[01:14:32]Um, so we lack the language for adult fulfillment properly in our societies.

[01:14:41]Um, and so it's not that humans can be suddenly immature. It doesn't happen uh at the level of sort of the deep psychological structure. Uh at that level, we're roughly the same as humans a thousand years ago. But what our culture can do is suppress and express different bits of us. And uh we are encouraged to live as though our happiness needs the happiness needs of children. Even though the happiness needs we have are the happiness needs of adults and the central expression of that is the unbelievable evasion of of the issue of death in our society. The unbelievable evasion of it. A lot of our self-help culture is uh people be being on the run from death.

[01:15:36]What you want instead is to live as long as you can the healthiest life you can uh in an accumulative way that if you are lucky enough you get to a place where you say now um it would not be inappropriate to go right uh do you understand psychopathy sociopathy Empathy how do you understand it size TV is asking is there a way to know if one's oneself an example of it so um you asking about it decreases the chances that you are it but doesn't eliminate the chances that you are it right um who is this um the biggest narcissism you YouTube uh commentator of for goodness sake. Um, yeah, I've got a brain book about everything today.

[01:16:42]Um, Sam Vakn. Yeah, Sam Vakn says, "Let me tell you about narcissism as a narcissist."

[01:16:59]So, uh, that doesn't rule it out.

[01:17:05]Uh if you ask the question and you are one, does being one prevent you from recognizing your one? No. No, it doesn't.

[01:17:29]But of course, back to Ross' question, of course, some disabilities are like aging. Some disabilities are gentle and sort of delimiting in a particular respect. Others are violent. That's why we make this distinction between chronic illness and acute chronic illness.

[01:17:50]Okay, let's see if there are any super thanks, super chats, whatever they're called. Okay.

[01:17:58]I'm not fond of romantic music, but very fond of uh classical and modernist. Can you explain my taste? Mario is asking.

[01:18:09]Mario, you could try some different list. Maybe you've been uh hearing the wrong performances. Try to listen to Villin Kemp playing list on the piano. See what that does for you.

[01:18:31]Listen to Kemp playing the two legends.

[01:18:35]Um not from the 70s but from the 1950s recording. Um beyond that, there's nothing wrong with that preference. Um I I I do think that you have a if you have a relationship with classical music, there are certain composers you just can't do without. So um if you tell me I I need to do without list and vagna, I could just about begin to accept that in the way I couldn't accept if you told me I want to do without Bethovven and Mozart or Bach or Hayen.

[01:19:06]That would be too much. It would be like saying I prefer houses without roofs. I mean, we could just about get there, but it'd be weird. Um, but these are people who are obviously essential for me because I have a relationship with musical language as it evolves. That's very important to me.

[01:19:27]But I do think that there's a difference between an emission of Beethoven and an emission of Vagnner.

[01:19:33]um you can have an adequate relationship with that particular musical language without having a relationship with Vagna the way you probably couldn't if you had no relationship with Bach. Um but I know I can't explain because um I would need to understand exactly how this works for you and I can't just by you describing what you like and what you don't like without me knowing why.

[01:20:00]Have we reached a point where only a major catastrophe can bring countries together? Um or do you see a credible path toward renewed cooperation? There is no credible path journey toward renewed cooperation through serious crisis.

[01:20:15]But there can be elements of this, right? So we can say, "Hey, China, we're America.

[01:20:23]These are two really big threats that AI poses this century. They could become existential. Let's work together. So it could be partial cooperation like that.

[01:20:35]Uh but overall um could catastrophe bring us together.

[01:20:40]actually um catastrophe caused by us wouldn't. Um the only kind of catastrophe that would bring us together is a catastrophe of something like an asteroid impact uh which could happen or alien invasion which is theoretically interesting because then it would elicit uh as Bernard Williams argues in his lecture a human prejudice. It would it would elicit our sense of species identity because we do have a latent sense of species identity.

[01:21:18]It comes out in things like if you had to save a human baby or 15 gorillas, you'd save the human baby even though the gorillas are limitlessly sophisticated uh experience pain um and you know are incredibly uh remarkable in all kinds of ways. You'd save the human baby because they're human.

[01:21:44]If you started going utilitarian on this, you'd have to save the 15 gorillas probably. You'd have you'd need that species identity and contrary to what Peter Singer would tell us, it it is there and it is appropriate and it will get activated and you'll save the baby.

[01:22:02]Um, that will be dramatically activated if there were an external threat, nonhumanly generated threat. But that's pretty much it. That's the kind of crisis we need to um elicit specieswide identity.

[01:22:27]Why do I feel like a lot of American Christians have become ex-Christian in the way they interpret their religion similar to ex-conservatives?

[01:22:35]Um I think Jason Blakeley again is good on this.

[01:22:39]um follow him on Twitter or wherever you are.

[01:22:43]Um he's a philosopher of the younger generation who's uh written a couple of good books.

[01:22:51]Roughly that's true.

[01:22:54]I think that's a good thought. I think you should stay with that thought. I think you should explore that thought.

[01:23:00]And that's all I'm going to say for today.

[01:23:12]What's the role Hussein is asking of decline in belief in the situation that it's very difficult for Westerners to sacrifice themselves for a greater good.

[01:23:21]If you don't believe in God or the afterlife, then living as long as possible makes common is common sense.

[01:23:36]That's a product of the social forces that are generating a situation where people might not be so keen to fight for their country.

[01:23:46]It's not the cause. In other words, the sorts of things that are causing it are the sorts of things that are causing the decline in belief, not the other way around. You see, you've got you've got a consequence. you're confusing with the cause here.

[01:24:04]The causes are various forms of liquidity in our society, diffusion, and also various forms of um reflectiveness, asking more and more questions that can't be unasked.

[01:24:22]So the decline in religious belief is itself um the result of that rather than the cause of it. What I'd also invite you to think is that the key thing here is not actually how many fewer people believe in God, but how much more secular the people who still believe in God are.

[01:24:49]That's important. And there's a beautiful book that discusses that called a secular age from 2004 by Charles Taylor. It's uh one of the two best books of philosophy in of social philosophy in the 21st century.

[01:25:14]Sam, I'm an American. Since 2001, I've seen us leverage our global empire in unproductive and unethical ways, but also in some ethical ways, perhaps support for Ukraine, right?

[01:25:26]Would it be irrational or unethical to advocate for the dismantling of our empire? No, it wouldn't be unethical or irrational. Um, it might be wrong, but it's not unethical or irrational.

[01:25:44]it's going to be well rationally supported.

[01:25:47]Um, I disagree with you. I think that there are certain things that we can't solve without the projection of US power. Certain problems we can't solve.

[01:25:58]We can't solve the Ukraine conflict really without the projection of US power.

[01:26:03]But the problem is that we can't do anything about the decline of US capacity to project its power which is what we're witnessing now.

[01:26:15]And therefore we have to adjust to a world without uh the global projection of US imperial power of the kind we're used to. um we have to get used to that world.

[01:26:33]Um and that's the pattern you've got to respond to. In other words, you're kind of too late with your conversation.

[01:26:41]You're sort of 10, 20 years out of date.

[01:26:44]Uh the issue is that the empire is dismantling itself and it's not doing so in a constructive way. It's self- emulating. It's, you know, absolutely devastating its own state capacity. Like look at what it it did to USAD for example. It didn't just cause a a diffuse global humanitarian catastrophe.

[01:27:08]This is what these fools did. Um doesn't mean there's nothing wrong with USAD. Uh not doesn't mean that none of the criticisms of it were valid, but that's what they generated in practice.

[01:27:22]and a a a collapse in uh US soft power as well. Um so uh the empire is dismantling itself and we're living through the consequences of it. So you're too late as it were with that question.

[01:27:42]It's about can we make that dismantling be less bumpy and less um destructive.

[01:28:00]Predot says, "I feel like um [sighs and gasps] lots of people would die to protect um a certain amount of people they love."

[01:28:10]The the big problem in our world is that we've got a collapse of thin bonds and uh a retention of thick bonds. Thick bonds are roughly bonds to people you you you physically interact with and know your family, your close friends, so on. Thin bonds are bonds you have with either human strangers or perhaps just members of your society. And what we've got is a complete collapse of those relative to recent historical memory.

[01:28:40]And that's a real real problem because it's really humans going on as though others don't exist unless the others are people they love. or at least care about in a personal capacity.

[01:28:55]Which means we've got a a you know a a collapse of what you from what was already a low level of good will toward the public good to in some dimensions almost zero goodwill in relation to the public good. And you just can't sustain democracies with that. You just can't.

[01:30:04]I'm looking. I'm looking. I'm looking.

[01:30:06]I'm not frozen.

[01:30:20]Okay.

[01:31:37]How can I as an adult dependent on parents because of illness but not yet diagnosed with a maga mom with algorithmic thinking and relative ly isolated, survive and develop intellectually uh as well as a well person. It's a challenge and I'm so sorry that you're that sick and dependent on your parents. It depends on how sick you are.

[01:32:06]Like can you read? Can you listen? Do you tolerate screens? These are all really important questions.

[01:32:15]But the fact that you're here suggests you have a degree of independent capacity to negotiate the informationational environment. That's already very very positive.

[01:32:29][sighs] The relationship of dependence is very difficult. That's very toxic because you can't um because you can't differentiate yourself uh appropriately from your parents by you know creating distance um and separateness in a healthy way. Um, I'd strongly recommend staying out of politics with with them if there are differences and I'd focus above all on sort of educating them on the basic needs of your illness so that these are uh as met um uh as best as they can and understood as best as they can.

[01:33:25]your engagement with other ill people is already going to get a bit political because it's going to touch on obviously research, funding, political investment.

[01:33:35]Um it's going to touch on the politics of the medical profession, blah blah blah. So you're already involved in a community that is in a very existential way politically discursive.

[01:33:58]There's just far too much to say. What I would say is in your least sick moments, try to fly and try to grow. And don't beat yourself up about whatever happens in your more sick moments. But in your less sick sick moments, try to play, try to grow, try to be outward. Uh even if that's from bed and understand that the pressure on you to build yourself the right information environment online is fiverx than that on other people in this group who are healthy because they have real life and you largely don't, right? You're going to be confined to your bedroom to whatever degree you are, to your bed to whatever degree you are. And so, you especially need to have systems for how your online world works. And you've got to have systems whereby even if some of your interaction with the internet is unconstructive or sort of junky or destructive, you've got to have systems to to have magical experiences online.

[01:35:21]Um, one way I recommend doing that is creating walls.

[01:35:25]So for example, I am planning to start a classical music channel a little bit soon, health allowing, but I'm in that channel cons uh uh engaging with content. Um so what happens is when I log into that channel, the algorithm doesn't recommend me anything that's not classical music. So I've created a wall.

[01:35:49]So when I'm there, I'm not going to see Tucker Carlson. I'm not going to see dog videos, just going to see that. So, I've created a wall. So, one way to do that on Twitter, for example, is to create lists.

[01:36:04]Um, so I have lists, for example, on god knows what. I have lists on Iran.

[01:36:13]I have lists on uh uh uh Iran which just contain Iran experts. If I log on to that list, I'm not going to see Ricky749 expressing an opinion. In fact, I'm not going to see anybody saying anything about Iran who hasn't written a book about Iran. Um, so these subdivisions are very important. And then you can have some spaces online where it's junky junk, junky junk, and you're watching pig videos. And I do that. I watch pig videos on Instagram.

[01:36:47]There's a pig called Rosie, who's my favorite pig on Instagram. That's completely okay, but you've got to be much more creative, much more imaginative um in the way you use the internet because in in many ways it's closer to being everything you've got for you, right? And in many ways a lot of people can learn from folks like uh you who you know uh are much more confined to the online world about how to organize their online world.

[01:37:24]Um because I've got to say there is still an incredible amount of magic in the internet and actually given how ill you are it'd be so much worse if this was 1990. So you're very lucky to have this.

[01:37:41]Um but you've got to make it work for you.

[01:37:47]What I would say is intellectually as sick as you are it's possible always possible to grow. And so a good litmus test is unless you had a really terrible month there's no pressure to grow. But if you're having a semi- tolerable month or you've got a range of functioning even if it's from bed is it possible to grow just a couple of millimeters?

[01:38:14]You you you've recognized that your your your thinking is less restricted in some dimension or you've discovered something uh something different um that you know uh enriches your sense of an important topic you care about grow I'll be talking more on the me diary channel about growing while being very Beer, you're my favorite YouTuber. Keep up the good work. Thank you so much.

[01:39:00]What were you looking up in Nichch's books? So, I was planning to release a video, which I won't now tomorrow, but hopefully soon on um this um quote unquote Russian slavery dream. Of course, there is no such thing, but there's such a thing as in fact, there's a bit of a fascized label, but there is such a thing as fatalism and extraordinary extraordinary recourse to pacivity in Russian culture relatively to other cultures.

[01:39:32]um certainly relatively to western cultures but at the same time also a lot of Russian pacivity is actually ubiquitous. It's just part of the universal stuff that's produced by social forces that affect all of us. All of this needs to be distinguished. But um in in there, I want to say something about what's wrong with this kind of appeal to willpower and appeal to, you know, kind of keeping our nerve when it comes to fighting for our democracies. And that risks um relying on a kind of bogus will to power attitude to politics where you ask for the impossible.

[01:40:18]Um uh where you can't bear accepting the limitations of social conditions. So, I wanted to look something up in um the gay science toward the end of the gay science where nature talks about a kind of defensive optimism um that's a product of not being able to accept reality.

[01:40:50]And I'll mention that in the video when I connect Russian pacivity with western pacivity.

[01:41:17]H E1 on books and reading. My teachers were on the side of getting me to write more than read. Though in our culture I see more say I see more more of it the other way. There is no shortage of content. Yes, everybody is literally interviewing everybody else in our culture.

[01:41:41]I am not somebody who thinks you've got to produce instead of sorry for the awful word consume. I am more somebody who thinks you've got to consume high quality.

[01:41:55]So I'm not somebody who that much regrets that you know middle class people don't practice the piano. I actually think that listening to a high quality music recording is better than playing the piano on the level.

[01:42:16]Can you analyze Putin's reaction to Zilinsk's open letter? Perhaps not in depth in this video, but roughly Putin thinks that eventually he's going to win and that Zalinski hopefully ought not matter.

[01:42:37]But he's beginning to have second thoughts about that. He's beginning to worry that he might need to deal with Zilinski, but his uh aspiration is still that uh he won't because eventually he'll grind Ukraine down and be able to negotiate on his own terms.

[01:43:02]I think I discussed this in one of the recent videos on the chat channel.

[01:43:09]Uh surely let me just check Putin's Baltic folder.

[01:43:35]Maybe I discussed it in Putin's Baltic folder.

[01:43:41]a little bit. This is shall discuss it more.

[01:44:04]Um, could you compare how people in Iran, Russia, Bellarus live under authoritarianism? Well, there are going to be very, very, very, very, very many differences.

[01:44:18]Um, Russia is the most depoliticized of the three countries by far.

[01:44:35]Bellarus and Iran are more much more politicized.

[01:44:50]The politicization in Bellarus is more directed toward liberal democracy than the politicization in Russia and Iran.

[01:45:08]Bellarus and Russia are largely secular societies whereas Iran is not.

[01:45:17]I mean this is not an answer. We can go on but I mean uh get yourself going and think of contrast and comparisons.

[01:45:55]will Putin eventually absorb Bellarus.

[01:45:57]Um well Bellarus is and is there a risk of a Ukraine scenario? not not a great risk of a Ukraine scenario because Bellarus is uh essentially controlled um by Moscow in all kinds of deep ways.

[01:46:22]Um so by the time the Russians lose that control over Bellarus, they're going to be too weak to do a Ukraine on Barus. So that's why I would say that scenario is unlikely.

[01:46:37]But you couldn't rule it out 30 years from now as some kind of further convulsion uh on the course of Russia's imperial decline.

[01:46:49]Um what you've got in Barus is a latent but already articulated consciousness of the illegitimacy of their government.

[01:47:03]Um and that clearly is suppressed.

[01:47:06]But you have a a a civic declaration in and palpable civic declaration in Barus of the kind you don't have in Russia about the illegitimacy of the regime.

[01:47:34]Uh this is not an energy drink. This is purely sparkling water. And I'm sorry that I'm um drinking from weird containers. That's for health reasons that I'm not being good to the climate.

[01:48:02]Let's run till the 2our mark.

[01:48:32]What's the deal? Zad TV is asking with the media intensifying the message that Ukraine is winning last month in the Zilinski letter at the same time as something going on behind the curtains.

[01:48:44]Uh what's the deal with Ukraine winning?

[01:48:46]Um, so there are certain things Ukraine is succeeding at and there are certain things that the Russians are failing at that are palpable.

[01:49:00]Um, the Russians have run into a problem where the technological nature of the war means that hypothetically numbers might not make as much of a difference as you know they could have done several years ago. Even if the Russians do another wave of mobilization, the Russians are now being struck uh you know deep inside their territory.

[01:49:28]Um what Ukraine is not quite managing to do is to deliver these strikes with a kind of repetitiveness that would uh bar Russia from repairing the damage and getting things back online after damage is incurred.

[01:49:48]But nevertheless, uh Ukraine has uh expanded its capacity to prosecute a war on Russian soil.

[01:49:56]So Russia is doing badly on some measures and Ukraine is doing well on some measures that we can see. The problem is that people have lost perspective in the pro- Ukrainian bubble uh about where this leaves the cumulative balance of advantages and disadvantages that still is ambiguous and certainly on balance doesn't favor Ukraine more than Russia.

[01:50:25]You have to be objective about this. You also have to be objective about particular things that are likely missing from your information environment. Right? Notice this. In your information environment, you're constantly seeing um as per the Ukrainian state information campaign about all of the terroristic attacks that the Russians do which harm civilians.

[01:50:52]You're hearing less about um Russian attacks on military targets. You're hearing less even of Russian attacks on civilian infrastructure when civilians are not directly hit.

[01:51:08]Part of the reason for that is that covering that would expose the extreme weakness and vulnerability of Ukraine.

[01:51:17]So uh things about h how difficult the situation is for Ukraine are underplayed in your info bubble. Things about how difficult things are for Russia overplayed in your info bubble.

[01:51:33]So it's difficult to get the right balance here.

[01:51:37]Um but that doesn't make it false that Russia is doing objectively worse on certain measures.

[01:51:46]And that doesn't make it false that Ukraine is doing well and better on certain objective measures. It's just that you mustn't make a mistake when you convert these observations into that cumulative balance of strength and weakness, advantage and disadvantage.

[01:52:22]So, I'm beginning to fade more, beautiful community. So, we're going to call it a day. Um, it's been lovely to have a smaller group. Thank you so so much for being with me. Um, I look forward to seeing you soon on chat, but also hopefully in uh in a few days on the main channel as well. Uh, happy Saturday. Saturday.

[01:52:47]Lots of love and catch you soon.