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1. 00:01 Good morning uh gentlemen and a few very few ladies.
2. 00:08 Um how is your knowledge of English? Can you manage with English? Yes. All of you? Yeah, that’s good news because I can manage in English too.
3. 00:21 Why are you here? To learn something. Learn what politics. politics.
4. 00:28 But why? Because we we want to change something. You want to use politics to change
5. 00:34 something. You don’t want to use politics to get rich. No. Why? Many politicians end up rich
6. 00:42 ways to be to become rich. You have other Yes. But not as easy as politics. In some countries maybe Yes. I want to be rich, but in my heart.
7. 00:53 So your motivation is not personal enrichment and having a good life. That’s not your motivation. It’s contribute for people.
8. 01:04 So your collective motivation is to help people and to change things. Yes.
9. 01:10 Remember that as you become real politicians. It’s not easy to remember
10. 01:16 because the temptations and the seductions and the offers are always on
11. 01:22 the table and to say no is much more difficult than saying yes.
12. 01:29 So when you become real politicians, some of you, not all of you, I assume, but you may become real politicians and
13. 01:36 someone puts an envelope on your table or someone offers you to become a partner in something and all of them will all the time. Everyone around you will offer you things all the time. These are the temptations and seductions
14. 01:52 of politics. Remember this moment and remember your vow
15. 01:59 and honor. Honor it and say no. There would be time enough to get rich.
16. 02:07 Those of you who are capable of it. And as you said there are different types of riches. There are riches in the bank and there are riches in the soul. And the riches
17. 02:19 in the bank you can’t take with you. But the riches in the soul you can.
18. 02:25 My name is Sambaknin. I’ve been economic adviser to eight governments in the world including the government of Macedonia several times.
19. 02:33 And uh I’m a political analyst and so on so forth. I’ve been involved in politics for more than 40 years not as a
20. 02:39 politician but but as an observer as a consultant. I even worked with Buasmani
21. 02:47 for several years. He knows me well. I know him well. I respect him. So today
22. 02:54 I’m going to talk to you about politics as it is, not as it should be, not as
23. 03:00 you imagine it to be, not as you wish it would be, but politics as it is.
24. 03:08 Politics, politics is a very rough, tough profession.
25. 03:15 You want an easy profession, become a medical doctor. You want an easy profession, become an
26. 03:21 actor. You want a tough, difficult life full of anxiety and fear and failure,
27. 03:30 then go into politics. 90% of the time you will spend failing.
28. 03:36 90% of the time you will fail. You will fail to get elected. You will fail to implement your projects. You will fail to motivate other people to follow you. You will fail and fail and fail.
29. 03:49 If you are soft-hearted and thin skinned, don’t go into politics. You will not survive it. Your mental health will not survive it. Your physical health will not survive it. You may end
30. 04:00 up being tempted. And if you do, some become rich, some end up in prison.
31. 04:08 So this is not a profession for the faint faint of heart. It’s a profession that requires a lot of courage, a lot of
32. 04:15 resilience, a lot of strength, a commitment not to other people, a commitment not to other people, a commitment to yourself.
33. 04:26 The big problem will not be interacting with other people. You can deceive. You can deceive other people. It’s easy.
34. 04:32 Some people are stupid. Some people want to have hope. Some people lie to themselves. Some people will follow anyone because they think there’s money there or some jobs or whatever. It’s not
35. 04:43 difficult to manipulate people. It’s very easy. Any anyone can manipulate people. So it’s not a commitment to
36. 04:49 other people. Politics is never about other people. Politics is about you.
37. 04:55 Your agenda, your conscience, your vision, it’s about you.
38. 05:02 Your main constituency is you. When you ask yourself, am I a good politician? Do not ask yourself, did I win the latest elections? So what if you won the latest elections? If you’re a liar and a demagogue and you’re deceiving people, they also win
39. 05:19 elections. Actually, they win elections more than honest politicians. So this is not a test if you’re a good politician.
40. 05:26 A test if you’re a good politician is if you have betrayed yourself. If you have betrayed yourself, you’re a bad politician. If you had a vision, if you had a
41. 05:38 conscience, if you had a moral compass and then you gave it all up for money,
42. 05:44 for power, for trips, traveling, if you gave it all up, if you gave up on
43. 05:50 yourself, you have betrayed yourself, you are bad politicians and also bad human beings.
44. 05:58 Politics can drive you to become a bad person.
45. 06:04 Only politics as far as I know I have many other heads I’m a psychologist I’m a physicist so I know other professions intimately only politics is the
46. 06:15 profession that can drive you to become a bad person corrupt you not corrupt you with money corrupt who you are suddenly you wake up in the morning you look in the mirror and you say I don’t recognize
47. 06:27 myself I don’t like myself I’m disgusted by myself and then it
48. 06:34 drives you even deeper into the darkness. Never betray yourself if it means the
49. 06:40 end of your political career end your political career. If the price for political career is to not be you, to
50. 06:48 betray yourself and your political career. As simple as that. Never give up on the
51. 06:55 only asset you have. The only thing you really have in life, what do you think it is? your wife, your children, your
52. 07:01 house, your money. That’s That’s nonsense. The only thing you have in life is you.
53. 07:08 So don’t give up on the only thing you have in life, the only thing you really own. Don’t give it up just to make more
54. 07:15 money or to get another house or to travel to another country. Don’t give it up. I’m repeating these warnings because
55. 07:22 from the minute you become even the smallest politician, minor politician, you will be flooded with opportunities
56. 07:29 to betray yourself. And so you must remember these things. There are two types of politics. Two types of politics. One type of
57. 07:41 politic politics is intended to preserve to preserve what exists now.
58. 07:47 It’s status status quo anti- pololitics. It’s a politics that is concerned with
59. 07:55 preventing change with preserving what exists with maintaining the status quo. So these kind of politicians they are traditionalists they are conservatives they want to stay
60. 08:08 as they are. They want society to be as it is forever.
61. 08:14 Nothing wrong with that. If society is functioning, if traditional values uh
62. 08:20 make people happy, there’s nothing wrong in preserving society as it is. Remember
63. 08:27 this, change is not a value in itself. Change, you should not pursue change because you think change is good. Not all change is good. Some changes are
64. 08:40 bad. So it’s not when you say I want to change society and so on so forth.
65. 08:46 Change in itself, transformation in itself is not a value.
66. 08:52 The value is happiness. The value is functionality. The value is for things
67. 08:59 to work and when things work, people are happy. These are the only values. And if
68. 09:05 the only way to obtain this happiness and to obtain this functionality is to keep things as they are, keep things as they are. Don’t change them. Don’t
69. 09:16 change for the sake of change. Some people are addicted to change. They think if they change they’re active. If
70. 09:24 they’re active, they’re good politicians. If they are good politicians, they will be remembered and
71. 09:30 admired and appreciated. So they constantly change things. constantly change things and many of these changes
72. 09:38 are illconsidered not the result of analysis not the result of deep thinking with no vision
73. 09:45 no clarity not part of a program just to change for change sake Mr. Minister,
74. 09:51 what did you do last year? Oh, I changed so many things. I changed this office. I changed this. Why? Why did you do that?
75. 09:57 Everything was working nicely. People were happy. Why did you change? To be able to say that you did something as a
76. 10:04 minister. So remember this. The change is not always good. However, if the
77. 10:11 system is not working and people are not happy, the only solution is to change.
78. 10:18 Now, we have two types of change. We have disruptive destructive change
79. 10:24 where you destroy the system and you build from the beginning and we have incremental change where you change things gradually
80. 10:35 some elements not other elements slowly. So there these are two philosophies in
81. 10:41 the United States today. We have a guy with orange hair. His name is Donald Trump. And Donald Trump thinks that he
82. 10:49 should destroy everything. He believes in disruptive destructive change. He says we need to delete eliminate everything and begin everything from zero from scratch. Rebuild from the
83. 11:01 ground up. That’s one approach. If the system is hopelessly corrupt, totally
84. 11:08 dysfunctional, people are extremely unhappy, that’s one approach. Let’s start over. Let’s delete everything and
85. 11:15 start over. The other approach is let’s be more calculated. Let’s be more
86. 11:21 gradual. Let’s be more incremental. Let’s think each step at a time. Let’s be slow take one day at a time slowly
87. 11:27 slowly and so on so forth. As a politician, you will need to make a choice to which of these three groups you belong. Are you a status quo politician? politician who aims to preserve the system, protect the system, defend the
88. 11:44 system against critics, against dissent, against protests, against
89. 11:50 revolutionaries, against rebels. This one one kind of politician. Are you a politician who is invested emotionally invested in change? And if you are, do you want to destroy the
90. 12:02 system and start from zero? Do you think the system is that bad, that hopeless? It’s okay. it’s legitimate or do you
91. 12:10 want to modify the system, fix it, amend it somehow? Do you need to make the
92. 12:16 decision early on? Because as young politicians or young wannabe politicians, you need to make a choice regarding affiliation. You need to make a choice
93. 12:28 which group, which political group you’re going to join, which political figure, which political mentor, which
94. 12:36 political party, which political club, which political intellectual forum. You
95. 12:42 need to decide. You cannot do it on your own. Politics is a team game. There are
96. 12:49 no lonely politicians. There are no miracles of a politician that comes alone on a white horse and saves the
97. 12:56 state. There are no such things. Even the most extreme dictators, the most
98. 13:03 cruel, harsh, strong men, they rely they rely on thousands of other people. It’s not a solo game. So early on, you need
99. 13:15 to ask yourself, what kind of politician am I? Am I a traditionalist conservative politician? Am I a a liberal progressive
100. 13:22 politician? Am I a revolutionary rebellious politician? It’s all legitimate and it’s a question you
101. 13:28 should answer. Yes. But that is based in our decisions are based in which situation is the country. Mhm. Yes. But you will always find
102. 13:39 people who will say we should keep we should keep everything that exists and only change it a little. Other people
103. 13:45 will say the system is hopeless. we need to destroy it. Other people will say no, I like it as it is. I don’t want to.
104. 13:52 Even in a given situation, you will always have you will always have diversity of opinions. There’s no
105. 13:58 situation where everyone agrees. No such thing. You will never have consensus.
106. 14:05 And that’s a lesson in politics. Do not seek to be liked. Many politicians want to be liked. They want to be admired. They want to be loved.
107. 14:16 This is not a beauty contest. You’re not Miss America. A politician. Don’t want Don’t seek to
108. 14:23 be liked because always there will be people who will dislike you. Don’t don’t don’t want to be loved because there
109. 14:30 will always be people who will hate you. Haters. Don’t don’t try to forge a consensus of
110. 14:38 everyone because you will fail. So as a politician you need to accept
111. 14:44 hatred, you need to accept dislike, you need to accept opposition, you need to
112. 14:50 accept damage to reputation, you need to accept smearing. These are the delightful aspects of politics. So they come with a territory and you need
113. 15:01 to be prepared for all this. I’m trying to I don’t know what you’ve been told by others possibly the same. But I’m trying to bring you a bit down
114. 15:13 to earth. This is what politics looks like. Okay. Having decided what type of
115. 15:20 politician you are. You are young. Your problem is that you
116. 15:26 are young. In politics, youth being young is not an asset. It’s
117. 15:34 a liability. That you are young is not helping you. It’s against you.
118. 15:41 It’s not something that will you’ll say, “Oh, I’m young, so I have better chances in politics or on the very contrary.”
119. 15:48 Let me read to you a list. Modi, the prime minister of India, 74
120. 15:56 years old. Putin, the president of Russia, the Russian
121. 16:02 Federation, 72 years old. Xiinping, China, 72 years old. Donald Trump, United States, 79 years old.
122. 16:16 Mcuong in France is a youngster is only 47 years old. And Keith Starmer in United Kingdom, 62
123. 16:27 years old. Netanyahu in Israel, 70 almost 71 years old. Do you understand?
124. 16:35 None of them is a young person. Forget this. This is illusion. Forget about it. Before you have the very first taste of
125. 16:44 power, you will be 40 years old at least.
126. 16:50 So you are in if you enter this career, you’re going to spend the next 20 years
127. 16:57 being told what to do, having to compromise your values and beliefs, having to act and pretend that you are not who you are, suffering, attacked by
128. 17:08 the public with zero power for 20 years. Be prepared. If you’re extremely lucky,
129. 17:15 10 or 15, then you are prodigies. You are superstars. But 20 is the safe bet.
130. 17:22 This 20 years, you’re going to pay all the prices of being a politician. People will believe that you’re corrupt. People will attack you. People will hate you. You will be able to do nothing for the
131. 17:33 people. Other politicians who are more senior than you will make you do things that you hate and don’t want to do for
132. 17:40 them, for the party, and otherwise. All this will last for 20 years. You will
133. 17:46 pay all the costs of being a politician and you will not have one benefit of being a politician. You will not have power. You will not be able to change anything. You will not benefit from anything. Nothing.
134. 17:58 This is apprentichip. You heard of the apprentice the show with Donald Trump when he had on television reality television or the apprentice. Apprenticeship means you get attached to
135. 18:10 a master and you spend 10, 20 years learning the craft. So you could could
136. 18:16 be an apprentice of a carpenter. You’re working with a carpenter 20 years and only after 20 years you can become your
137. 18:22 own carpenter. This is called apprenticeship. And you as young people you have to go
138. 18:28 through a an apprenticeship. Now as young people you could be one of
139. 18:34 three things if you want to enter politics. There are only three venues three channels open to you. Only three.
140. 18:43 When you are much older politician, you’re 45, 47, 50, 60. The older you
141. 18:49 get, the more channels open to you. It’s exactly opposite what you may be thinking. You’re thinking that you’re
142. 18:55 young, so you have all your all the possibilities and opportunities. This is not how politics work. When you are
143. 19:01 young, you have zero options. When you are 60, you have many options. When you
144. 19:07 are 80, you have huge number of options. That’s how it goes in politics. If you survive until age 80, many don’t. Okay.
145. 19:15 So, as young people, you have only these three options. You can be activists,
146. 19:22 social justice activists, social movement activists,
147. 19:28 uh climate change activist. You can be activists. We’ll discuss activism in a minute.
148. 19:34 You can be um influencers today through social media.
149. 19:41 You can influence people, you can influence people also politically. So if you have a big following, you are beginning to accumulate power, political power. Sometimes it’s a shortcut.
150. 19:55 If you have a social media presence, we’ll discuss it a bit later. If you have a social media presence and half a
151. 20:01 million people follow you, that gives you power. The politicians notice you.
152. 20:07 And as the polit the older politicians notice you, they will bring you into the game, not you. You’re half a million
153. 20:14 followers. They want the people behind you. So being an influencer is a shortcut. But how many people can have
154. 20:21 half a million followers? How many people in this room can get half a million followers?
155. 20:28 I’m not sure that no one, but extremely few. So while theoretically this is open
156. 20:34 as a shortcut option it takes you know a lot I have on all my
157. 20:41 media uh social media including YouTube I have 600,000 followers
158. 20:47 it took me 20 years to build this 600,000 followers is it takes 20 years to build this following it’s a lot of hard work I don’t want to be a politician but had I wanted to be a
159. 20:59 politician I could bring with me these 600,000 people and
160. 21:05 uh political parties will talk to me. So influencer and the third option as a
161. 21:12 young person you can join someone’s staff you can become personal assistant
162. 21:18 to someone you can join a minister’s cabinet you can be uh an aid to someone. So you
163. 21:28 you join as a member of the staff, you fulfill staff functions. This is a
164. 21:34 shortcut to politics because if you work with a with a minister for example and you are an assistant to the minister,
165. 21:41 personal aid, um a member of the staff, working in the cabinet, the minister will remember you
166. 21:50 and gradually the minister can introduce you into the political party and into the political game. So this is a career
167. 21:58 a career path for you. These are the three options. Don’t kid yourself. Nothing else is open to you right now. Another 10 years, invite me for a lecture. In 20 years, I will come in a wheelchair and I will tell you what the other options are. But right now, these
168. 22:14 are your only options. There are none. Here’s the problem with young people.
169. 22:21 Not only in Macedonia or I would even say mainly not in Macedonia, but young people all over the world. Young people are helpless. They’re helpless and they’re hopeless.
170. 22:38 They’re helpless and they are hopeless because they are powerless. They have no power.
171. 22:45 Young people will be affected by climate change. Climate change will destroy the
172. 22:52 lives of young people. I know it’s difficult to believe. I know some of you deny it. I know you would like to dream
173. 22:59 differently, but you are young enough and all of you will pay the price for climate change. All of you. Make no
174. 23:06 mistake about it in this way or that way. Floods or fires or something. All of you will pay a price for climate change. The younger the person, the higher the price. And yet, can young
175. 23:18 people influence climate change? They cannot. They tried. They tried. There
176. 23:24 was a movement of young people headed by Greta Turnberg from uh Sweden and they
177. 23:31 failed. Nothing happened. On the very contrary, the situation became worse.
178. 23:37 So, you are stakeholders. You’re involved. You’re going to pay the price. It’s going to have an impact on you. But
179. 23:43 can you do anything about it? Zero. Nothing. You’re powerless.
180. 23:49 Similarly, the pension system, the pension system is about to collapse.
181. 23:56 All of you who are working, who have jobs, you are paying into the pension system. Not only in Macedonia, all over
182. 24:02 the world. You’re paying into the pension system. The pension system in 10, 20 years will collapse completely.
183. 24:08 You will never see your money back because it is built in a stupid way. It is built, the suspension system is built
184. 24:15 that young people are supporting old people. The young are supporting the old. But
185. 24:22 there are many more old people than young people. Now the population is becoming older all the time. So now we
186. 24:29 have many more old people and much fewer young people. So the system will collapse. Who will pay the price? When the pension system collapses, who will pay the price? I
187. 24:42 dinosaurs don’t pay the price. You will pay the price. Can you do something
188. 24:48 about it? No. Nothing. Zero. You are powerless. In the United States, to rent an apartment takes 40 to 50% of the salary.
189. 25:02 If you want to rent an apartment in United States, it’s about 40 to 50% of the salary. Depending on the city, it is
190. 25:08 70%. in San Francisco. Okay. So, young people cannot rent
191. 25:14 apartments. They cannot rent apartments. So, what do they do? They live with
192. 25:20 their parents. They continue to live with their parents. Today, depending on the country, 40 to 50%
193. 25:29 of people under the age of 35 live with their parents because they cannot afford
194. 25:35 to rent an apartment and they definitely cannot afford to buy an apartment. A typical apartment in the United States
195. 25:41 takes 52 years of work. 52 years to buy an apartment. So, no one can buy an
196. 25:48 apartment. No one can rent an apartment. And people continue to live with their parents because they continue to live with their parents. They cannot have sex. They cannot have a girlfriend or a
197. 25:59 boyfriend. They cannot have romance or intimacy. They cannot have a family. So most of them have no families. Most of
198. 26:06 them have no children. Okay. You agree with me that this is the problem of young people? You agree with me? This is
199. 26:14 the problem of young people. Can you do anything about it? No, you cannot do anything about it. So I’m mentioning all these problems and there are many more just to show you how
200. 26:27 helpless you are, how powerless you are as young people. You are going to pay
201. 26:33 the price 100% not the old people but you can do nothing about it. And because you can do nothing about it, this creates this creates two types of reactions,
202. 26:45 political reactions. The majority of young people in the world, about 67%
203. 26:52 opt out. They tune out. They say, “We don’t care about politics. We don’t care
204. 26:58 about the news. We don’t care about society. We care about sports and we care about entertainment. We care about video games and Taylor Swift. And we care about, I don’t know,
205. 27:10 whoever it is in the NBA.” Yeah. So that’s a majority of young people about
206. 27:16 almost 70% of them. This is tuning out. That’s a political decision.
207. 27:23 Not not doing anything is a political decision. You think that politics is
208. 27:30 only about doing something. No, politics is not only about acting. When you
209. 27:37 decide to not act, for example, when you decide to not vote, you don’t want to vote. That’s a political decision. It has political
210. 27:48 implications. By not voting, you are actually choosing a party that will win
211. 27:54 the elections. So everything you do as young people, whether you you act or you don’t act is a political decision. And 70% of young people decided to say goodbye to reality, goodbye to politics,
212. 28:06 goodbye to the news, goodbye to their own lives and to their own futures. To live with mommy and daddy, watch video
213. 28:13 games, go to the pub in the evening, drink something, come back home. Many of them don’t have jobs. Unemployment rate among young people is much much higher
214. 28:24 than unemployment rate among older people. That’s the situation. Because
215. 28:30 the situation is so bad, only onethird of young people decide to do something about it. But when they decide to do something about it, they’re very angry already. These young people that decide to be politically active are already
216. 28:45 very, very angry. They come to politics not with any positive attitude, not with
217. 28:52 any optimism, not they come to politics with rage. They’re full of rage, full of
218. 28:58 envy, full of hatred. We call it in psychology negative effects. They have negative effects. And so they come to politics and they become nihilistic.
219. 29:10 Nihilis, nihilism is a political philosophy. Nihilism says that all
220. 29:16 systems, all humanuilt systems are bad and wrong and should be destroyed. And
221. 29:22 the majority of young people who join politics nowadays all over the world are actually nihilistic. They don’t join politics because they want to build something. They don’t join
222. 29:34 politics because they want to improve something. They join politics because they want to destroy something. They’re
223. 29:41 furious. They want to destroy. Destroy the system. Destroy the old politicians. Destroy the institutions. Destroy. The
224. 29:48 core value of nihilism is destruction and most young people today are
225. 29:54 nihilistic. Young people also develop a victimhood mentality. I’m describing you the describing you the state of mind of most young people. Why
226. 30:06 am I describing to you this state of mind? Because when you enter politics, you will be faced with this. This is going to be your reality. When you go and talk to people, you
227. 30:18 think they’re going to smile at you. You think they’re going to be happy and thankful and grateful that you’re talking to them. They’re going to hate
228. 30:24 your guts. They’re going to be angry at you and furious at you and they would like to decapitate you. Unfortunately, it’s not allowed. Yeah. Under the law. You’re not the friends of the people. And the people are not your friends.
229. 30:36 It’s enemy territory. It’s a war. You’re entering a war zone. Make no
230. 30:42 mistake about it. It’s not the carnival. It’s not entertainment. It’s not Disneyland. It’s Gaza.
231. 30:49 That’s where you’re going. So be very careful with this idealization or ideal
232. 30:56 view of politics as if it is, you know, politicians talk to people together they work and create something new and
233. 31:02 beautiful. That’s complete unmitigated counterfactual nonsense.
234. 31:09 So that’s why I’m describing you the state of mind of the people you’re going to try to help, the people that you’re
235. 31:16 going to change things for, your constituencies. Yes.
236. 31:22 And so today the predominant state of mind in
237. 31:28 all electorates in all levels of the electorate young voters, older voters,
238. 31:34 very old voters, everyone the state of mind is known as victimhood mentality.
239. 31:42 So people feel that they are victims. There is a victimhood mentality.
240. 31:48 Everyone is a victim. everyone and their dog and their mother-in-law is a victim
241. 31:54 and everyone is victimizing everyone. So you have in thei take the United States
242. 32:01 for example, the blacks claim that the whites are victimizing them. The whites say that the blacks are victimizing them. The the rich say that the state is victimizing them. The the poor say the rich are victimizing them. Everyone is someone’s victim. Everyone is someone’s
243. 32:19 victim. If you want to understand the me the state of mind, the minds, the mentality of your voters, they are
244. 32:26 victims. And if you want to connect with them, you need to take care of their
245. 32:33 grievances. Grievances is a fancy word in English for complaints.
246. 32:40 people. When you talk to people, they’re not going to tell you, “Wow, there’s a new road here. Wonderful. The road is much nicer.” And so on. They’re going to tell you, “Basically, the the commun
247. 32:53 telecommunication is working well. My internet is okay.” They’re going to tell you this. They’re going to tell you
248. 32:59 what’s wrong. They’re going to tell you what’s not working. They’re going to complain. They’re going to grieve.
249. 33:05 They’re going to attack you. They’re going to all the time. You will never hear a thank you. Never hear a thank
250. 33:11 you. You will never hear unless they want to manipulate you. Yeah. So if they
251. 33:17 want to manipulate you, they will tell you how wonderful you are and so on because they want something from you. They want a job, they want money, they want something. But in honest conversations, for example, if you have a town hall, town hall is when you go
252. 33:27 and meet the people. If you have a town hall, you will hear only negative things because we live in an age of victimhood
253. 33:35 mentality. Everyone is a victim. And there was a sociologist. There is a
254. 33:41 sociologist. His name is Bradley um and Campbell. Bradley Campbell. And
255. 33:47 Bradley Campbell said that we have transitioned globally. We have transitioned from the age of dignity to
256. 33:55 the age of victimhood. My mother,
257. 34:01 if we were all starving and dying, would never go to a politician and ask for for
258. 34:08 something. Never. My mother, it was a different generation. Our dignity and self-respect were important. But today, everyone is asking for something. Everyone is demanding. Everyone becomes
259. 34:20 angry if they don’t get something. It’s entitlement and victimhood. This is the profile. And there’s a lot of shaming.
260. 34:28 The main emotion is shaming. There’s a cost, reputational cost. People destroy each other’s reputations. The minute you become a politician, your reputation is at stake. Other other
261. 34:42 politicians, the the media, just people in the street, they will dig up your
262. 34:48 past. They will look for everything you ever did with everyone. And when they find some black spot or something you did wrong when you were 12,
263. 34:59 this will become weaponized. It will become a weapon against you. And you will pay a reputational cost. Not
264. 35:05 necessarily because you did something wrong, but because people love to destroy politicians. They love they love
265. 35:12 it to take down the the power, to take down the hierarchy, to take down. So
266. 35:19 people love to destroy their betters. When someone is better than you, richer than you, more famous than you, have more has more power than you, more educated than you, you want to destroy
267. 35:30 them. There is envy, huge envy, and it’s a driving force. So this is the polit,
268. 35:37 this is the political scene of today, not only in Macedonia. Don’t misunderstand me. This is in Israel,
269. 35:43 this is in United States, this is in United Kingdom, this is in France, this is in India, everywhere. This is the
270. 35:50 political scene, the global political scene. And today, because of mass media, because of social media, we are all the same. Young people here remind me of
271. 36:01 young people in Russia where I was teaching. Remind me young people in Israel where I was teaching. Remind me. So, young people are young people everywhere. You’re wearing the same clothes. You’re seeing the same things. It’s we’re all homogenized. It’s a
272. 36:13 homogeneous universe, globe. So everything I’m telling you applies in Macedonia but also applies in United States of course. Yes. Everywhere. So this is unfortunately the landscape
273. 36:26 and um young people
274. 36:33 are choosing one of these courses of action. After I finish this, I’m going
275. 36:39 to tell you what I think you should do right now. What I’m telling you is what the situation is. I’m not telling you
276. 36:46 I’m not advising you what I think you should do, but I’m just describing the battlefield. I’m describing the war
277. 36:53 zone. I’m describing where you’re entering. Okay? So, usually young people do one of
278. 36:59 these things. They go on protests and demonstrations. We see many young people. These are all political acts.
279. 37:07 These are all political acts. And they are also political instruments. As a young politician, for example, you may
280. 37:14 decide to organize demonstrations and protests. It’s a political tool. So they
281. 37:21 go and protest and demonstrations. Some young people become defiant. Defiant means in your face, my way or the highway. I don’t care about you. I’m
282. 37:32 going to do whatever I want. I don’t care about the consequences. The hell with the institutions. The hell with other people. I so this is defiance.
283. 37:41 Many young people are politically defiant. For example, we saw it during
284. 37:47 the COVID pandemic. During the COVID pandemic, young people were saying, “I don’t care about other people. If other people are vulnerable, if other people have a problem, let them stay at home. I
285. 37:58 don’t need to protect them. I don’t need to put a mask. I don’t even need to take a vaccine. It’s not my problem. I’m
286. 38:05 healthy and I will continue to be healthy. I may infect other people. I may infect other people but that’s not
287. 38:11 my problem. That’s their problem. They should stay at home. So this is defiance.
288. 38:17 Consumaciousness. Consumaciousness is when you reject authority and when you
289. 38:23 devalue authority. When you say anyone who is in authority is suspect corrupt
290. 38:30 maniac. I’m never going to listen to anyone in authority. authority and authority structures and hierarchies and institutions are hopeless and we should destroy them. This is known as
291. 38:42 contumaciousness. So you see types of young political activists. Young young politicians are
292. 38:49 either protesting, demonstrating or defying or consummatious or rebellious.
293. 38:55 Rebellious politicians work within the system. They work within the system
294. 39:01 trying to transform it from the inside in a way that will make it
295. 39:07 unrecognizable to change the system so much that it’s no longer the same system. But
296. 39:15 contumacious politicians reject the concept of authority. For example, they
297. 39:21 are anarchists. They reject the concept of author. They say there should not be an authority.
298. 39:27 Rebellious politicians work from usually from within the system. So you could
299. 39:33 have for example a political party and then you have young people forming a faction within the party faction within the party and attacking the old
300. 39:44 leadership of the party that is rebelliousness because they work within the party and they attacking the old
301. 39:50 leadership. Virtue signaling. Virtue signaling is when young people
302. 39:57 engage in political acts not because they care about politics or about other people because they want to be seen. Look at me. I’m such a empathic person.
303. 40:09 I have such a conscience. I care about other people. I’m I’m not Am I not amazing? Selfie.
304. 40:16 That is virtual signaling. Okay. So it is doing the right things but in
305. 40:23 order to be noticed in order to get attention or stentatious. So this is virtue signaling. And finally there’s nonconformity. The non-conforming politician is a
306. 40:35 politician who always questions and doubts established norms and conventions, established rules and the established ethos, the philosophy, the
307. 40:46 story, the narrative that creates the political sphere or the political environment uh in the country or in the city or whatever. So the nonconformist
308. 40:58 is um challenging the story that we all tell ourselves. I give you an example.
309. 41:06 We all say we all tell ourselves there’s a common narrative there is an ethos
310. 41:12 that democracy is good or more precisely that universal suffrage is good. Do you
311. 41:18 know what is universal suffrage? Universal suffrage is anyone everyone gets one vote. Everyone, men, women,
312. 41:27 young, old, everyone gets one vote. The the uneducated, the educated, the farmer, the city dweller, the politician, everyone gets one vote. This
313. 41:38 is called universal suffrage. We all have this story, this narrative. We are
314. 41:44 all brainwashed from very early age that universal suffrage is good.
315. 41:51 that it that that’s the way to go that everyone should have one vote. We all if I if I if I make Anetta here if I ask
316. 41:59 all of you I think all of you will say that yeah every human being every person should have one vote. Am I right? Does
317. 42:06 anyone disagree? Do you disagree that every person should have one vote? No. Don’t by the way don’t hesitate to answer to laugh to disagree to this is I
318. 42:18 I come from the west in the west we are much more dynamic okay because you all look like you’re in a state of advanced
319. 42:24 toxic shock please wake up okay when I ask a question please answer so
320. 42:31 you all agree that one vote one person one vote is a good idea
321. 42:37 uh nonconformist nonconformist would challenge this. He would say, “No,
322. 42:44 it’s not a good idea. Actually, it’s a bad idea.” And a non-conformist would challenge this ethos. It’s called ethos. Would challenge this ethos, this narrative, and would try to introduce alternatives.
323. 42:57 Do you want do you want me to do this exercise nonconformity? Okay. You say that every person should
324. 43:03 have one vote. But if we look at history, when we had universal suffrage,
325. 43:09 when every human being had one vote, we ended up with bad leaders.
326. 43:15 Adolf Hitler was elected in free and fair elections three times. Donald Trump
327. 43:22 was elected in the United States twice. Every dictator was elected by the people
328. 43:30 and then became dictator. So it shows that universal suffrage actually leads to bad outcomes. So what am I proposing? I’m proposing that there
329. 43:41 will be a system of voting. But in order to vote, you will need to pass an examination. You will need to prove that you know how to read and write. You will need to
330. 43:52 prove that you know what are the issues that are on the ballot, the issues that are the topic of the elections. If you don’t know how to read and write, if you never listen to the news, if you have no
331. 44:03 idea what are the issues that are bothering the nation, you should not vote. Simple.
332. 44:11 So, I’m giving you an example of nonconformist argument. Okay? So, some young politicians are
333. 44:18 nonconformist. And these are the six these are the six
334. 44:24 options usually open to young politicians.
335. 44:31 Unfortunately, because the general general political environment is toxic and dead and
336. 44:38 hopeless and really bad, young people accepted it and they go in negative only
337. 44:45 in negative ways. You see all of these, they are not for something, they’re against something. This is against. This is against. This is against. This is
338. 44:57 against. This is against the these are all against something. We entered the territory of negative politics. Your identity as a politician
339. 45:08 is no longer defined by what you are for but but by what you are against. Your
340. 45:15 identity is polit as politician is no longer defined by who you are for but who you are against. So I’m against the blacks that makes me a politician. I’m against the Jews that
341. 45:27 makes me a politician. I’m against the Macedonians or the Albanians makes me a politician. You know, it is what we call
342. 45:34 negative identity formation. What defines you as a politician is the people you exclude, not the people you include. the values that you exclude, not the values that you include. Not what you
343. 45:50 stand for, but who you hate, who you reject. That’s the modern politics all
344. 45:56 over the world. So in Europe, for example, the major politicians are
345. 46:02 anti-immigrants. They’re against immigration. They’re against foreigners, xenophobic.
346. 46:09 If you ask me what is the positive platform of Victor Orban in Hungary or
347. 46:17 Erdogan Doran in Turkey, I cannot answer that. They have no positive platform.
348. 46:24 The platform is 100% negative. Erdogan is against the EU, against the Jews,
349. 46:30 against the is the Israelis, I’m sorry, against the Israelis, against against against against the urbanites, people in
350. 46:37 the cities, against intellectuals, against the opposition, he’s just against. I can’t think of a single thing
351. 46:43 that Erdogan is for. It’s all negative politics. And unfortunately the young
352. 46:50 people have fallen in this trap and they are the most vocal negative politicians.
353. 46:56 The young people are the most extreme radical vocal negative politicians. Why?
354. 47:03 Because it makes them popular. When you’re a negative politician, you’re popular.
355. 47:10 Remember this. As a politician, you must make a decision. What is it that you’re looking for? Are
356. 47:16 you looking to be popular or are you looking to make a difference? If you’re looking to be popular, I have an advice for you free of charge. I charge governments. I don’t charge you.
357. 47:28 If you’re looking to be popular, go negative. Attack people, show hate,
358. 47:34 provoke people, agitate people, create movements against other people, against
359. 47:40 values, against ethnicity. Be against. If you are, you will be super popular.
360. 47:47 The most popular politicians in the world, without a single exception, are haters. The haters. They hate other
361. 47:55 people. And this is their political platform. If this is what you want, here’s your easy solution. Select a
362. 48:02 target. The target could be anyone. It could be a group of people, could be ethnicity, could be it could be the
363. 48:08 homeless. It could be the poor. It could be Albanians in Macedonia. Macedonians in Albania. It could be the Greeks. It
364. 48:14 could be Bulgarians. It could be the Turks. It could be the Jews. It could be select a group or select values. Select
365. 48:23 certain values and then hate. Hate on them. Hate, attack, denigrate, devalue.
366. 48:32 If you do this, I give you my word. In one year, you are super popular
367. 48:38 like our government does. I’m not going into specific politics. You will all be super popular. You want
368. 48:44 600,000 followers, not in 20 years like me, in 20 months become haters.
369. 48:53 So many young people because they want to become popular. They enter politics in order to become popular. They measure
370. 49:00 these young people measure their sense of self-worth and self-esteem according to how many likes they have and how many followers and how many fans and how many subscribers. That’s how they measure their self-esteem. So when they hate on other people, they suddenly have 100,000
371. 49:17 subscribers and a million likes and they feel like, you know, someone they have
372. 49:23 self-esteem and self-confidence. Tik Tok. Go to Tik Tok if you don’t believe me. Have a look at young politicians on
373. 49:30 Tik Tok. See what they’re doing. And they feel great. They feel wonderful because they come from a small village
374. 49:37 where they share the they share the house with the cow. And now suddenly they have a million followers and they
375. 49:43 are well known all over the world and big companies are offering them to make deals and you know and they are their
376. 49:49 faces are and they are so this is what what what we call political narcissism.
377. 49:55 It’s political narcissism. If you want to go that way and this is everything you want to do in life become one big selfie. You want to become one big selfie then go ahead. That’s the rule.
378. 50:07 If you want to do something, if you want to leave a legacy, because these people leave no legacy, when they disappear, they are never heard of again. I will
379. 50:18 prove it to you. Did you hear of uh Kennedy? You heard of Kennedy. Did you hear of
380. 50:25 Huie Long? Huie Long? None of you heard of Huie
381. 50:32 Long, right? You know why? Kennedy was a positive politician. UI Long was a negative politician. UI Long was much more popular than Kennedy. Actually, much more well known than Kennedy. Very
382. 50:44 well known. And yet he’s forgotten. It’s forgotten because he left nothing
383. 50:50 behind. Hatred. Hatred dies with you. Hatred dies with you. Something you build, something you write. Positivity survives
384. 51:02 you. Survives after you. If you kill someone’s child,
385. 51:08 you will not be remembered. But you have if you have children of your own, if you bring life into the
386. 51:14 world, you will be remembered at least by your own children. So legacy depends on positivity.
387. 51:23 Negativity never leaves anything behind. If you want to think about this, if this is the way you want to go, then you need to be a different kind of politician. You need to be positive and constructive politician. Kennedy, I mentioned Kennedy, but Obama
388. 51:40 was also a positive politician, a constructive politician.
389. 51:46 And so what are the hallmarks? We’re about to end the first lecture.
390. 51:53 I’ll give you a break.
391. 52:03 I’m repeating what I said before. I teach in Cambridge, United Kingdom. In
392. 52:09 Cambridge, United Kingdom, when you enter the classroom, the all the students, they throw shoes at you and
393. 52:16 attack you and shout at you. This is how we do business in the West. That’s how we do education in the West. Have no
394. 52:22 respect for me. I do not deserve your respect. What deserves respect, your respect, is
395. 52:30 what I say. So if you disagree with with what I say, have no respect for me.
396. 52:37 Attack me, disagree with me, right? Don’t be afraid. And don’t A
397. 52:44 respect for people, a respect for personalities is very bad. Never respect
398. 52:51 a person. Never respect another person. Respect what they do and respect what
399. 52:57 they say but never respect the person. Similarly, never attack the person.
400. 53:05 Never attack the person. Attack what they are saying and attack what they’re doing but not the person. In Rome, in
401. 53:14 ancient Rome, they had a saying. They called it ad homonym. Ad homonym means
402. 53:20 you don’t focus on the actions. You don’t focus on the speech. You don’t focus on what the person is saying. You’re focusing on the person. So if I’m saying something and one of
403. 53:31 you would tell me, “Yes, but you are short and ugly.” That is an attack on the person. Happens to be true, but okay. That’s an attack on the person. But if I’m saying something and you’re telling me I completely disagree with
404. 53:42 you because you need to explain why, that’s perfectly okay. That doesn’t show disrespect. On the very contrary, I think ignoring what I’m saying is disrespectful.
405. 53:54 So I want you to be completely free and alive and not to feel that you owe me
406. 54:01 anything. You understand? You don’t owe me anything. Okay. So
407. 54:10 what are to remind you where we were? I I told you that if you want to leave something behind, if you want to leave a
408. 54:16 legacy, if you want to be remembered for having done something, having changed something, having improved people’s life
409. 54:22 lives, having helped people, you need to be positive politicians, not negative politicians. What are the traits? What
410. 54:30 are the elements of character that a positive politician must have? So the
411. 54:36 first thing is you must have adversity tolerance. Adversity tolerance simply means that
412. 54:42 you have a thick skin. You’re not insulted easily. You’re not offended
413. 54:48 easily. You don’t get angry easily. You are able to absorb criticism. You’re able even to think about it and maybe change your mind. You’re open. You’re open to criticism and you don’t take it
414. 55:00 personally. You don’t take any attack, any disagreement, any criticism personally. That is known as adversity tolerance. thick skin. Number two,
415. 55:12 you need to get rid of your ego, of your vanity.
416. 55:18 You need to work with people. You need to create teams. You need to create coalitions.
417. 55:24 Politics is a process. It’s not about you. It’s never about you. Politicians
418. 55:30 come and go. No one remembers them. Do you remember politicians from the 1960s?
419. 55:37 Who remembers politicians? They come and go. They’re not important. Politicians are not important. But it’s easy to
420. 55:44 forget it. It’s easy to forget that you’re not important. Why? Because you have million cameras from television
421. 55:51 stations. You see yourself in the camera and say, “Wow, I’ve made it. I’m so
422. 55:57 important and powerful.” You know, this is a wrong approach to politics. Your power comes from your colleagues. Your power comes from your teams. Your power comes from your coalition,
423. 56:08 the coalitions that you build. Take away these people and you are zeros. You’re nobodyies.
424. 56:14 Even as prime minister, you’re nobody. If the parties in the coalition break up and leave you alone, you’re no longer
425. 56:20 prime minister. So politics is about building collaboration, building
426. 56:26 cooperation, working with other people, not emphasizing yourself, not taking
427. 56:32 selfies all the time, not believing that you’re God. not behaving with vanity and you know
428. 56:39 that’s not the way to be a politician and if you do that very soon you’ll find yourself all alone unable to accomplish anything. So this is the second element. The third element is you need to decide
429. 56:52 as a positive politician as a polit positive politician you need to have an inclusionary identity.
430. 56:59 A positive politician brings people in
431. 57:05 in collects people. It’s like a hoarding hoarding people. Positive politician
432. 57:12 accumulates people. A negative politician is exclusionary, excludes people, does not allow people to come in, does not allow them to enter, bars
433. 57:23 them, blocks them, bans them. Think think of social media. If you have
434. 57:29 a channel or an account or whatever, you have two options. You can invite everyone to join you. Everyone can become, let’s take Instagram. Everyone can become a follower on Instagram and
435. 57:42 read your messages and argue with you, agree with you, whatever. That’s an inclusionary politician.
436. 57:48 Or you can be an exclusionary politician in the sense that you make your account private or you delete you ban, you block
437. 57:59 people who are outside your inroup. So I don’t know a Macedonian politician
438. 58:06 would block all the Greeks. He has an Instagram account, but if you’re Greek and you’re joining the
439. 58:12 account, he will block you as an example. That is negative identity. It’s
440. 58:18 exclusionary. If you want to be a positive politician and leave anything behind, you need to be inclusionary.
441. 58:26 You need to forget identity politics. Identity politics is asking are you
442. 58:32 Albanian? Are you Macedonian? Identity politics is asking are you a woman? Are you a man? Identity politics is asking
443. 58:38 are you a Jew? Are you a Muslim? Identity asking politics is asking are you black? Are you white? You need to
444. 58:44 forget all this It’s all It’s all complete non-scientific nonsense. There’s no such thing as race,
445. 58:52 for example. So, you need to forget all this. If you want to build coalitions and build teams, you need to welcome
446. 58:59 everyone with goodwill and something to contribute. Their personal history,
447. 59:05 their background are much less important. I’m not talking of course about pedophiles or criminals. Yeah, not
448. 59:12 talking about these kind of people. But normal people, average people, they come, they want to join you, they want to help you, they want to collaborate with you, they have good ideas, they have a good heart. Welcome them. Never
449. 59:24 exclude, never create an inroup and out group. Never do this. If you want to
450. 59:30 change anything, help people, leave something behind. Next thing is
451. 59:37 learn to manage your growing power. If you persevere, if you persist in politics, gradually you will accumulate more power. You will accumulate more power because your position will change.
452. 59:49 You will, you were assistant to the minister in the cabinet. Now you’re the minister. 20 years later, you’re the
453. 59:55 minister. So your position changes. But also people owe you favors. People owe
454. 60:01 you. You did favors. You help people and they owe you. This this network gives
455. 60:08 you power. It’s known as patronage. Patronage network. They it gives you power. So 20 years later, you’re very
456. 60:15 powerful person. You’re in a powerful position. Many people owe you all kinds of things, favors, money, access,
457. 60:23 business, whatever. And you need to learn to manage your power. If you do not manage your power, you become corrupt. You become cruel. You become hated even more. And ultimately, you lose the power. You lose the power and
458. 60:41 you leave nothing behind because the people who come after you, they hate you so much they will destroy everything you
459. 60:47 built. Absolutely. Eliminate you, delete you. You know the ancient Egyptians when there was a new pharaoh. A new pharaoh. The new pharaoh deleted erased the names
460. 60:58 of the old pharaoh on all the monuments on all the pyramids. Just scrub them. So
461. 61:05 if you are hated figure because you’re corrupt, you use you abused your power and so on, you were cruel, sadistic,
462. 61:12 you’re hateful, you will end up being forgotten. You need to learn to manage your power. It’s very tempting to abuse your power. Next thing is
463. 61:24 you need to use your power where it counts the most. You have power. Now
464. 61:31 where to use it? You have a million opportunities, a million challenges, a million demands, a million emergencies,
465. 61:37 a million crises, million people asking you for something, you know, but you have limited amount of resources, limited amount of money, limited amount of time, limited amount of power. You
466. 61:49 need to learn to say no. You need to learn to be selective. You need to learn
467. 61:55 where to use your power for the maximum benefit. So this is an art. The art of leveraging
468. 62:02 your power you need to tolerate. I’m talking now to remind you about the psychological profile and the operational profile of a positive politician. Politician who wants to
469. 62:15 leave a legacy and make a difference. So the next thing you need to tolerate boredom. You need to learn how to be bored. Politics is the most boring profession
470. 62:26 imaginable. most you are going to be bored you know
471. 62:32 bored uh you understand what I’m saying bored you know like bored like in this lecture
472. 62:39 okay so you’re going to be bored like 99% of the time
473. 62:45 99% of the time your brain will not be challenged you will not have to think you will just have to do repetitive chores you will have to go shake hands
474. 62:57 Yeah, Mr. Minister, you’re great. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. You have to go to weddings. You have to go to uh
475. 63:04 ceremonies. You have to you have to work with many stupid people. You have to It’s
476. 63:10 extremely boring. If you don’t do boredom well, if you have low boredom
477. 63:17 threshold, low tolerance for boredom, at some point you will do stupid things.
478. 63:23 You will create drama. you will explode or implode something. You will make wrong decisions if you
479. 63:30 don’t have a good relationship with boredom. So boredom tolerance is critical.
480. 63:37 And finally, you need to you need to make a decision
481. 63:44 to be good. Yeah, I know it sounds strange because you all consider yourself good people.
482. 63:50 Yeah, you’re not good people. I would bet 100 to one the majority of you are not good people at all.
483. 63:57 To be good is a choice. To be good is hard work. To be good is investment and commitment and repeated actions until they become a
484. 64:09 second nature. To be good is to brainwash yourself. So you need to choose to be benevolent,
485. 64:16 good people, people who are giving, people who empathize. You see some some
486. 64:23 guy from the village, you have nothing in common with him. He’s a seliac. Nothing in common. You know, he’s a
487. 64:29 peasant. You he has no education. He can hardly speak and so on. You need to become that
488. 64:38 person for a few minutes. You need to become that person. You need to think
489. 64:44 about what makes this person sad and what makes this person happy and how this person sees their future and what
490. 64:52 they regret in their past and what makes their lives impossible and difficult. You need this empathy. It’s called empathy. You need this. You need to be good people. Every morning you will get up and your true nature will take over.
491. 65:08 Selfish, not empathic, contemptuous, arrogant. This is your true nature. And you need to suppress it. You need to say
492. 65:19 in the morning before everything, before you brush your teeth, today I’m going to do good and today I’m going to be a good
493. 65:26 person. And every time I am not a good person, I’m going to catch myself. I’m
494. 65:32 going to remind myself that I’m betraying my promise to myself and betraying who I want to be. So to be
495. 65:39 good is the core, the main qualification for being a positive politician. These
496. 65:46 people with the protests and so on, they’re not good. They claim that they’re good. You know, they make demonstrations for climate change or demonstration for black people,
497. 65:57 demonstration for against child abuse, sexual abuse or whatever. And they think, see, see what a good person I am.
498. 66:04 Look at me. I’m supporting all the right causes. They’re not good people. They’re arrogant. They want attention and they want to destroy someone. They they are destructive people. Your work, your work is similar to the
499. 66:21 work of an actor. An actor in a movie, they stop being themselves and they
500. 66:27 become someone else. Right? That’s what an actor does. Tom Hanks is no longer Tom Hanks is someone else. So the same
501. 66:35 with a politician. A politicians needs to act but not by falsifying not not to fake but to become someone else. The politician needs to become their people,
502. 66:47 their constituents. Who is doing this in daily life? Mother. Mother is doing
503. 66:53 this. A father is doing this. A mother and a father wish well to their
504. 67:00 children. When the child is in pain, the mother is in pain. When the child is disappointed, the father is
505. 67:06 disappointed. You need to be mothers and fathers. And only then you will leave
506. 67:13 something behind. You will leave your children. You will leave people who remember you. You will leave your
507. 67:19 projects behind. And your memory will last in the sense that you have left you
508. 67:26 have left the earth or your country better than you found it when you were born. And that is a great definition of
509. 67:33 politics to leave your country better than it was before you were born.
510. 67:39 That’s all. So this is the first part. The second part is shorter. We’ll discuss social media.