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1. 00:00 is getting it wrong My view just to stick with our two examples of
2. 00:06 of Trump and Musk they obviously cannot they're not detached
3. 00:12 from reality Um I think you one would say that they see potential realities and realize them against people who say that they're delusional And so does that
4. 00:25 I mean what how do you make sense of that I mean does that sort of confuse who's the real narcissist In other words
5. 00:32 are the people that's were the the people that were actually in denial of reality were the ones who told Musk and
6. 00:39 Trump that they could never create a satell a low orbit satellite system or become president a second time Yeah Well I misled you a bit and my apologies for
7. 00:50 that When I say in touch of reality I meant the elements of reality in reality that could challenge the self-concept It is the self-concept that is divorced from reality because the
8. 01:02 self-concept is godlike divine perfect omniscient omnipotent brilliant genius
9. 01:09 and so on So there is this self-concept evidently it's counterfactual It will not if it is exposed to to
10. 01:17 counterveailing information it will collapse it will crumble It's very fragile structure very vulnerable That's
11. 01:24 why we we today we distinguish between overt narcissist and vulnerable or fragile narcissist covert narcissist So
12. 01:31 it's a very fragile structure and so on So when I said not in touch with reality I didn't mean someone who can't who
13. 01:37 can't do shopping or go shopping or someone who doesn't know how to fly to to Shanghai Yeah It's not this kind of
14. 01:44 reality In other words we make a distinction between episodic and semantic
15. 01:50 Semantic is how to ski skill skill acquisition So narcissists are very skilled Many of them are you know uh scientists and chief executive officers and maybe presidents and so on They're
16. 02:04 very skilled The elements in reality that have a stand the chance of challenging
17. 02:11 or undermining or refraraming the inflated fantastic self-concept other ones ignored other
18. 02:18 ones denied other ones repressed And in this sense the reality testing is
19. 02:24 impaired It's compromised When the narcissist is forced to confront these elements in reality for
20. 02:31 example I think I'm a genius And then someone with authority Albert Einstein his ghost his spirit would tell me you
21. 02:39 aren't an genius You're an idiot It's a problem because it would it would
22. 02:45 challenge my self-concept as a genius and it would it would create a collapse
23. 02:51 That's a clinical term by the way narcissistic collapse I would get in touch with sh with shame and other
24. 02:57 negative emotions that gave rise to this counterfactual concoction or piece of fiction and then I would revert to a borderline state and essentially become suicidal and depressive and whatever So the price the cost of getting in touch
25. 03:15 with data or stimuli or information from reality that could even potentially
26. 03:21 however remotely undermine the self-concept The cost is so enormous that narcissists are what we call hypervigilant They are constantly on the alert constantly scanning the
27. 03:33 environment for threats and slights and insults and challenges and criticism and
28. 03:39 disagreements and so on and they become very aggressive and very defensive when they come across what they interpret to
29. 03:45 be any of these things So this is called hypervigilance And so imagine so now we
30. 03:53 have a concept of the locus of grandiosity Imagine that I'm a narcissist and the locus of grandiosity
31. 03:59 is that I'm a genius Okay that's my locus of grandiosity but I don't think I'm a great athlete recently As far as I know I'm not a great athlete Yeah I'm not a great basketball player whatever So if you
32. 04:11 were to tell me um you know Sam you're flabby and you're obese and you know it
33. 04:18 will have zero impact on me It is not part of my self-concept It is not the locus of my
34. 04:25 grandiosity But if you were to tell me Sam I've talked to the biggest minds on earth and I've interviewed you know the
35. 04:31 greatest and you're not among them You know you're not exactly a genius
36. 04:37 You're derivative You know that's a challenge to my to my self-concept That
37. 04:44 is the kind of thing that I would fend off isolate repress bury reframe you I would say this guy is an idiot is incapable of appreciating my my mind and
38. 04:55 so on So I would have multiple defenses I would also become very aggressive I would attack you I would devalue you I would push you away I would I would smear campaign you I would you know So
39. 05:07 when you look at someone like Donald Trump and I think to the best of my knowledge I tried to check I was the
40. 05:15 first to suggest in March 2016 to the best of my know in writing I mean the
41. 05:21 first to suggest that Donald Trump may have narcissistic personality disorder
42. 05:27 March 2016 in American Thinker of all places It's a conservative outlet I gave
43. 05:34 an interview to American thinker and I said I think this guy has narcissistic personality disorder They asked me more
44. 05:41 or less the same questions and I explained I said he's very sensitive to criticism and disagreement is this is that I explain what is hypervigilance
45. 05:47 the protective firewall or the attempt to isolate the self-concept from any impinging or breaching information from
46. 05:55 the environment and so on These are all classical defenses of the narcissist In the case of the musk there is megalomania simply the what used to be
47. 06:07 called megalomania is today uh the new new new name is narcissistic personality disorder The man is a megalomaniac Now I mentioned before that
48. 06:19 narcissistic personality disorder is a positive adaptation in entrepreneurship for two reasons You
49. 06:26 overvalue your capacity and you charge ahead and you undervalue or
50. 06:32 underestimate risk We know that people with narcissism underestimate risk They are also very
51. 06:40 bad at predicting the consequences of their actions They also have a sense of immunity and impunity So all these if you put them together they're great When you have a startup you need to exaggerate the
52. 06:52 importance of a startup and its impact on the world You then need to charge ahead as if you
53. 06:58 are possessed of all the necessary knowledge and skills and what have you which is never right never
54. 07:04 correct And then you have to underestimate the risks And these are good things when you're an entrepreneur
55. 07:11 And of course he's his megalomania is so extreme He's going to save the human species and what have you that of course
56. 07:17 he also ended up being the richest man on earth There's a proportionality between how diluted you are and how
57. 07:24 successful you are as an entrepreneur Sam do you think that Trump derangement
58. 07:31 syndrome is partly explained by covert narcissists being triggered by overt narcissists or grandiose narcissists
59. 07:45 Narcissism is an organizing principle of modern civilization It is a hermeneutic principle as well It provides it has explanatory power If you want to make sense of your life of specific sectors
60. 07:57 of the economy of behaviors of politicians narcissism comes handy It's a great tool you know So it's an
61. 08:04 organizing and hermeneutic principle It means that it infiltrates and permeates the left the right this all ideologies
62. 08:12 and all human intercourse all human discourse all interactions all types of
63. 08:18 relationships interpersonal or not political or not etc It's useless therefore to say the right is
64. 08:24 narcissistic the left is not the left is narcissistic the right is not There are different expressions different
65. 08:31 manifestations The same way a gene can express itself one way or another But of course narcissism on the right would have very little to do with narcissism on the left Narcissism on the left would
66. 08:42 probably be victimhood oriented Whereas narcissism on the right would be power oriented or exclusionoriented So
67. 08:50 narcissism could have different you know settings and it's a very versatile and very malleable and flexible thing It it it's like water It goes where
68. 09:01 wherever And yes of course u an overt narcissist would definitely trigger
69. 09:08 massively overt narcissism We have this online You have forums of people who self-desate as empaths There's no such thing as empath It's a completely nonsensical invention There's no trace of it in clinical literature or anywhere
70. 09:24 These empaths are actually in my view covert narcissists who have been victimized and triggered by overt
71. 09:31 grandio narcissist like Donald Trump So on the left the progressive left the walk
72. 09:38 movement and I have many many videos severely criticizing the walk movement and all victimhood movements So on this
73. 09:47 I think we're on the same page I believe I don't know But now on the left the left is infused with and infested with narcissism of course And
74. 09:59 again the guys is victimhood because victimhood is pro-social Victimhood also affords you
75. 10:06 with enormous leverage because if you're a victim you have rights that confer obligations on others automatically Like
76. 10:14 just by virtue of being a victim you're endowed with rights and other people must oblige And if they don't they're bullies they're thugs they're abusers they are you know So it's a great tool
77. 10:27 for not only social control but extracting individual benefits and collective benefits It's in other words
78. 10:34 a social control and manipulative tool Louie Aluser who used to
79. 10:40 be neo-Marxist philosopher and ended up in a mental
80. 10:46 asylum like the best of them nichi and so on So Louis alusa called it interpolation So interpolation is when
81. 10:54 um society or a group in society um instruct you on how to be they define
82. 11:01 your identity construct your identity actually and it led later to the constructivism and so on But he was the first to suggest this that society sends you messages some of them implicit some
83. 11:13 of them explicit and so on And the totality of these messages shape shapes who you are constructs you like so many
84. 11:21 Lego bricks And so this is interpolation The the left interpolates people by by
85. 11:27 actually conveying a victimhood message And by conveying a victimhood message it constructs its own adherence You're a victim But it also constructs the
86. 11:39 recipients of the message Because when I get a victimhood message I have two choices If I decline the message if I refuse the message I'm automatically an
87. 11:51 abuser And if I accept the message I become submissive I'm interpolated I'm
88. 11:58 instructed how to act I don't have freedom of choice anymore So it's a highly totalitarian message
89. 12:05 highly authoritarian message ironically you know but the right is not exempt Not
90. 12:12 at all Don't misunderstand me And um but is the is it would you simplify it to
91. 12:18 say that the right the narcissism on the right tends to be more grandiose and the narcissism on the left tends to be more
92. 12:25 covert There's victimhood on in both spaces like white supremacism is is a is a victimhood movement in effect There's victimhood in both spaces but the way victimhood is construed is different
93. 12:38 Whereas in the left the victimhood is extortionate It's extortionbased victimhood I'm a victim You owe me And you owe me you will give me And if you don't give me I'll penalize you And one way to penalize you is to cast you as an abuser to defame you to take away
94. 12:55 your reputation There's a reputational cost when you don't conform to the narrative on the left On the right the
95. 13:04 victimhood gives rise to an operational agenda It's it's a very um functional
96. 13:12 kind of victimhood It's like I'm a victim but I'm going to do something about it I'm not I'm not imposing any
97. 13:19 anything on anyone I'm not expecting anything from I'm going to storm the capital or whatever I'm gonna take
98. 13:26 things into my hands I'm gonna because I think the the right is connected uh
99. 13:32 umbilic umbilically connected to the early individualism in uh you know in
100. 13:39 the in the in the west in wild west and so this kind of whereas the left is European the left is a foreign transplant
101. 13:50 the left in the United States I'm talking because in in Europe it's in indigenous and in Europe the left sits
102. 13:57 well with I think in in Europe the right is a foreign transplant
103. 14:03 in some ways because the modern right is not exactly Nazism Everyone conflates the modern right with Nazism Nazism was
104. 14:10 not I we could have another conversation I'm not sure Nazism was a right-wing movement but okay Uh the new modern
105. 14:18 right in in uh in Europe is imported and the modern left in in
106. 14:25 America is imported And they're both xenotransplantation They're both foreign
107. 14:31 to the body They're both there's an immune response in both cases And so in in America the left is European European values European teachings European teachers European gurus European I mean
108. 14:42 you name it I mean just look at the curricula in universities which I had the opportunity to do I'm now a a
109. 14:49 professor in um in the Commonwealth Institute in Cambridge So I received
110. 14:55 curricula to teach and and so even the United Kingdom is infected the the on the curriculum you
111. 15:02 have majority I would say French thinkers in Britain French thinkers not 18th
112. 15:10 century for example Adam Smith or Yung or no you have
113. 15:16 uh Aon and you have you know and you have you have
114. 15:24 so whereas the the the left I always knew that the left has
115. 15:30 no no way to survive in America It's alien to America It's not it's unamerican Not in the in the best sense Not not traitorous but it's not American Right is much more American Like do something about it And so the victimhood in the right is motivational to cut a
116. 15:47 long version is motivational And the victim on the left is attitudinal And that's quite a gigantic difference Mind you victim mode on the left is passive The victimhood on the left is
117. 15:59 active They're both victimhood movements but very different Anyhow coming back to your question there was a long detour
118. 16:06 Yes I think Donald Trump triggers and provokes the narcissist on the left
119. 16:13 Absolutely Many of them are not covert Even I'm not sure all of them are covert
120. 16:19 Narcissists trigger narcissists because they have competing claims for grandiosity And usually they compete for
121. 16:25 the same space So if I go to an academic conference I consider myself a genius Anyone else
122. 16:33 there would claim to be a genius I would become an instant competitor I become hostile and aggressive I would try to
123. 16:39 shoot them down take them down you name it Narcissists don't sit well with each other So what you call uh Trump
124. 16:46 derangement syndrome might well be narcissistic injury That's a clinical
125. 16:52 term might well be a kind of reaction by narcissists when they are exposed to other narcissists with identical claims
126. 16:59 for the same space of meaning the same So I fully believe that Trump succeeds
127. 17:06 and I think pretty deliberately by the way I think he's playing with them He's toying with them in my view He knows
128. 17:12 damn well what is I think he's triggering them on purpose I think many of his practical jokes and uh crazy
129. 17:19 pronouncements and promulgations they are absolutely intended to provoke the narcissist on the left and they succeed
130. 17:26 Mhm They are because narcissists are not intelligent They are
131. 17:32 reactive They're binary machines So they they're not really that's there's no sophistication there There's no if you trigger them they react Mhm And so it's very easy to trigger them All he has to
132. 17:44 do is is say "I'm the king I'm a king." And then sit back and and enjoy the show
133. 17:51 And they give it to him They're stupid They give it to him That's always it see it seems like that was the whole strategy from the beginning is Trump said that Obama he implied that Obama did not have
134. 18:03 a birth certificate was not born in the United States that seemed to trigger the narcissistic identification between
135. 18:10 progressives and Obama and then he said that the immigrants coming here who the left had viewed as as victims were in
136. 18:18 fact predators Um and and then he allowed the the hostility and aggression from the
137. 18:25 left and really you go all the way you know to last year's elections where I think a lot of people voted for Trump
138. 18:31 because they were so frightened of how what the left was doing Narcissists cannot refrain from reacting It's it's
139. 18:39 an impulse Narcissists in this sense are impulsive They are not in there's no impulse control They they cannot you
140. 18:45 cannot say for example to a nar I'm a king and expect the narcissist to say
141. 18:51 okay what an idiot I mean we're going to react no they have to go they go online they write articles and opeds and they analyze the statement and there's a threat to democracy and and you know he
142. 19:02 knows how to push the buttons pushes the buttons expertly is amazing and the only reason he's so good is a narcissist I as
143. 19:10 a narcissist know exactly how to trigger another narcissist I do it expertly If you are not a narcissist you will never come You'll never reach my level I because it's intimate knowledge It's
144. 19:20 I've lived with it for I know how others push my buttons So I know what to do to others Mind you that is not to imply
145. 19:29 that Donald Trump's statements are you know there's veracity there that is
146. 19:35 adheres to facts that is truthful I'm not saying any of this Narcissists are not truthful They are and so on So
147. 19:43 that's not what I'm saying I'm saying that it's simply two groups of narcissists fighting it out duking it
148. 19:49 out The movie we're watching is a competition between two groups of of
149. 19:55 narcissists over a limited space basically which is it happens to be the United States And who will
150. 20:04 prevail We don't know Narcissists are great at constructing cults cult following Um there is something called collective narcissism
151. 20:15 There is a mob mind or a hive mind or a cult mind Cult mind is a clinical term So we have this where people disappear
152. 20:22 into the collective suspend their judgment their reality testing Relegate
153. 20:28 internal functions We call them ego functions Relegate them to an outsider The borderline has a cult with her
154. 20:35 intimate partner He she outsources her internal regulation to the intimate
155. 20:41 partner She gives the intimate partner complete control over her emotional over
156. 20:47 emotions over her labile moods over her experience of reality And that's that's
157. 20:53 a cult of two one leader and one follower The same dynamic exactly the same dynamic occurs between the last narcissistic leader and the tens of millions who follow him M so it's the
158. 21:07 same dynamic It's a suspension suspension of things suspension of judgment of reality and so on And Sam
159. 21:14 how would when you and I first spoke which was now probably almost 3 years ago I was asking for you to help me
160. 21:21 understand You're probably Oh you do too You do too I think it's our haircuts You get the haircut shorter Um there were climate activists throwing soup on paintings
161. 21:36 um and uh you know shutting down traffic and and crying on camera and describing how uh the world that they were given is is fallen Now we we don't see after
162. 21:47 Trump's election uh he's now dism he's pulled the United States out of the Paris climate agreements He's ended many
163. 21:54 of the climate green investments He's uh expanded oil and gas production
164. 22:01 and yet we don't have climate change protests Instead we have protests of
165. 22:07 Teslas Um and Greta Tunberg has moved on from climate change to activism on
166. 22:14 Palestine Are those signs that really there wasn't a core commitment there to
167. 22:21 addressing climate change and that it was really about you know narcissists
168. 22:27 expressing or gaining seeking to gain attention just using whatever was in the in the news at the time Listen you're so
169. 22:34 good at this I have no idea why you're interviewing me Yeah Yes Yeah On the on the part of these people Yes However scientists for example who have
170. 22:45 dedicated their careers to climate change and so on they have vested interests obviously But on the other hand many of
171. 22:51 them are truly committed to the issue They really are exercised by the issue They feel strongly about the issue They
172. 22:58 delve into the issue and so on so forth The honest ones among them change their minds from time to time and so on But
173. 23:05 the core the core topic remains and these are the only dedicated
174. 23:11 people The others like Thornberg and worse they're itinerant narcissist in
175. 23:17 search of self agrandizing causes and what determines their
176. 23:23 commitment is exposure Climate change afforded exposure then it didn't Palestine
177. 23:30 afforded exposure and soon it won't They will move on to the next thing God knows
178. 23:36 what These are professional activists These are victimhood These are
179. 23:42 victimhood professionals Mhm There this is called this has a name It's called competitive victimhood or professional
180. 23:48 victimhood It was first described ironically by Israelis Uh there was um there was four
181. 23:54 studies by Gabay G- A B A Y and her allies her colleagues four studies
182. 24:01 published in I think all of them were published simultaneously in the year 2000 and she 2020 I'm sorry 2020 and she
183. 24:12 described u mental state of victimhood a the a
184. 24:19 personality that seeks victimhood in order to
185. 24:25 self-regulate and then she described this personality and she said these people would go looking for situations where they could consider themselves to be victims would
186. 24:36 ostentatiously display their victimhoods victimhood would manipulate other people
187. 24:42 using their vict alleged victimhood would insist on would be entitled would
188. 24:49 feel entitled What she didn't realize it's a she what she didn't realize is that when
189. 24:56 I finished reading the paper it was an excellent description of narcissism Narcissists are self
190. 25:02 agrandizing They're untitled They feel victims all the time They claimed to be victims a victim with mental or stunts
191. 25:09 and so on She was a shrianist and and and then there were studies in British Columbia and in China
192. 25:16 and Taiwan and other places and so on And today it is widely accepted that uh there is such a thing victimhood construct victimhood personality and these people um leverage victimhood
193. 25:30 or use victimhood as a vehicle to regulate themselves internally because they're narcissist Mhm And so there were studies that have demonstrated pretty conclusively that narcissists and psychopaths have penetrated the upper echelons of most major victimhood
194. 25:48 movements and they now are in control of these victimhood movements narcissist and psychopath So yes Greta was not committed to any specific cause It
195. 26:00 afforded her the exposure It was great And then you know it dwindled There was a far there was a right far right and right backlash People began to lose interest a bit It
196. 26:12 was a bit fattish to a large extent There were these agreements Paris
197. 26:19 I mean Kyoto then Paris and this and that and and people said well you know we're taking steps We're doing everything we can And there was a shift I think in in the studies of climate change from we can't stop climate change
198. 26:32 It's inexurable let's learn to live with it So there were a lot more resources diverted to how to survive with climate
199. 26:38 change how to cope with it how to plan ahead how to which is I think the right emphasis I mean just have to accept some
200. 26:46 things and live with them you know And so her kind of protestations and and grandstanding and and became a bit uh comic and people began to kind of be
201. 26:58 disenchanted with her Mhm And then she discovered Palestine and reemerged and
202. 27:04 tomorrow she'll find something else This woman until the day until the day she dies at age 85 I hope for her will be
203. 27:13 committed to these are serial activists like there are serial monogamies and serial killers These are serial
204. 27:19 activists and the victim changes exactly like serial killing The victim changes from
205. 27:25 each incident to another I am not impressed by any of this and all these ostentatious displays in in at the
206. 27:33 universities in United States Colombia and this and that I I I was watching this It's cringeworthy Simply
207. 27:39 cringeworthy These people and the test is very simple Do you know what you're talking about
208. 27:45 That's the test Mhm Narcissists have what we call in psychology headline
209. 27:51 knowledge It's a clinical term Headline knowledge means you're superficial You
210. 27:57 browse a few articles and so on You consider yourself a worldleading expert That's the narcissistic the
211. 28:04 narcissist way Narcissist is a self-declared expert on everything and
212. 28:10 everyone under the sun just because he has been exposed to a 5 minute Tik Tok clip or video on YouTube that makes him an expert So the test if you want to ask
213. 28:21 yourself is this a narcissist who is who is adopting the victimhood mental in
214. 28:27 order to garner a narcissistic supply or is this someone or is it someone who is truly committed to the cause Ask
215. 28:34 yourself how much they know And so a Palestinian from Gaza who would make the same proclamations and promulgations as as Greta is probably a
216. 28:46 true activist probably motivated by real personal loss and an intimate knowledge
217. 28:52 of what is happening Greta is not She's headline knowledge A climate change scientist may
218. 29:01 have valid and cogent arguments about climate science because he spent 20 30 years studying the topic Greta didn't
219. 29:08 She was 18 when she started M this headline knowledge is a key
220. 29:14 feature which distinguishes narcissist from you know and and Sam do you think that that
221. 29:22 that's I for the first time I'm sort of feel like I'm connecting a dot here which is it seems like we're seeing more
222. 29:30 displays of narcissism in the culture and over a period where social media has
223. 29:37 become you know pervasive and So has social media in your view created that
224. 29:44 feeling among people that they understand issues better than they do and that's then contributed to this
225. 29:50 exaggerated certainty dogmatism and intolerance and and narcissism
226. 29:57 Yeah there is malignant intolerance I call it malignant malignant tolerance I'm sorry Malignant tolerance is uh using coercion to force you to be
227. 30:09 tolerant even of things which in principle should never ever be tolerated So this is malignant tolerance
228. 30:16 And another phrase I coined is malignant uh in malignant egalitarianism If you have access to Wikipedia you're as much as an expert as anyone As much as a scholar as anyone As
229. 30:28 much of a scholar as anyone So you have access to Wikipedia You're a historian you're a medical doctor you're a physicist or you're an expert on narcissism like you know most YouTubers
230. 30:39 So yes there is this sense that technology not only
231. 30:46 empowers but has the transformative value of what Jung may have called
232. 30:52 collective consciousness Not collective unconscious but collective consciousness It's as if the repository of human knowledge being accessible to each and
233. 31:03 every individual it renders them equal to someone who has bothered to peruse the
234. 31:10 repository In other words the emphasis has shifted from intimacy to
235. 31:17 access Whereas in the past I would ask you how intimate you are with the topic
236. 31:23 Today I would ask you do you have access to information about the topic M which are not the same things They're not
237. 31:29 tantamount There's no equality here And yet it gives rise to this hubris and
238. 31:37 grandiosity that you know I'm as good as the next Wikipedia article or as good as the next surf surfing browser surfing So yes social media contributed to the
239. 31:48 leveling of a playing field that should have never been leveled because expertise is hierarchical
240. 31:55 knowledge is hierarchical and non-democratic This tendency to introduce democrac to
241. 32:01 democratize everything is really really bad is really self-destructive in as far
242. 32:08 as a species goes in my view and um it's both right and left there these
243. 32:15 self-start experts are equally represented on the right as they are on the left and uh so but I think
244. 32:25 um I think another contributing factor is what we call in psychology conspiracism Conspiracism is a trait It's a tendency to spot conspiracies or
245. 32:38 alleged conspiracies everywhere as an organizing principle of life Not that you say "Okay everything is normal
246. 32:45 regular everything is trustworthy but there's this niche where probably there's a conspiracy like in the CIA
247. 32:52 maybe." But you say "No conspiracy explains the world Conspiracy organizes
248. 32:58 reality I can make sense of everything only via conspiracies by assuming conspiracy So this is called conspiracism Conspiracism has spread dramatically because of rising uncertainty And when I say uncertainty I don't just mean economic uncertainty For example the
249. 33:15 abolition of gender roles created enormous uncertainty When uncertainty rises so does
250. 33:21 conspiracism M and so when you assume that there are conspiracies everywhere then there is no objective knowledge because you you suspect the scientists of falsifying knowledge because they I don't know being being
251. 33:37 paid their shields for someone they are falsifying data they are you know so there's suspicion about that in other words conspiracism undermines authority and perhaps first and foremost intellectual authority
252. 33:54 You cannot be a conspiracist and accept authority So we say that conspiracy is conspiracism is contumacious It's a it's
253. 34:03 underneath it all There is a rejection of authority because there is a distrust of authority and there's a distrust of
254. 34:09 authority because of rising uncertainty It's a bit of an infantile reaction You expected your mother and father to
255. 34:15 provide you with safety and a secure base and determinacy and they failed So now you reject them as authority figures I don't trust you anymore I don't believe you anymore It's a toddler
256. 34:26 temper tantrum Yeah And when you couple conspiracism with malignant
257. 34:32 egalitarianism you get today's picture Because if I were to come to you and
258. 34:38 give you a fact you need to believe in my authority you It doesn't mean that you shouldn't doublech checkck the fact that you shouldn't ask for a second opinion that you shouldn't do your own your own research That is not what I mean Of
259. 34:54 course I'm not I don't mean that you should have a logical fallacy from authority But what I mean is you need to
260. 35:02 assume that I'm providing you with information that has been vetted by me with the best intentions I'm not trying to mislead you I'm not trying I don't have a hidden
261. 35:13 agenda ulterior moti motives I'm not goal oriented or so That's not the case today No one believes it about anyone
262. 35:21 So you couple conspiracism with malignant egalitarianism and people say since no authorities exist no unbiased authorities no unprejudiced authorities
263. 35:32 nor not real authorities say it's no I will be my own authority and I'm perfectly capable of
264. 35:39 being my own authority because I have Wikipedia and that's where we are today a post-truth society I tell you a story it's a real story I went online on a forum
265. 35:50 and and the guy says said uh the battle of Hastings was in 1066 Another guy said
266. 35:56 "No it was 1089." The first guy posted an excerpt from the Britannica And the second guy said "Well
267. 36:04 that's your opinion Maybe the Britannica's opinion My opinion is that it was in
268. 36:11 1089 He didn't even present He didn't even present it as a fact He said it's just my opinion It is a validity of a
269. 36:18 fact." No Yeah Yeah I mean I mean it's also though that we just come out of a period where
270. 36:25 we've had a real destruction self-destruction of elite credibility
271. 36:31 You know COVID laboratory leak the COVID vaccines didn't prevent infection or
272. 36:37 transmission The Hunter Biden laptop had nothing to do with the Russians There's no evidence that I would argue I would argue with some of the facts you presented but I agree with you that the COVID pandemic has been a period of
273. 36:49 great questioning of the wisdom at least of the authorities if not the knowledge
274. 36:56 but at least the wisdom and of course it exposed the inner mechanism of science which is about falsifying about lack of certainty
275. 37:08 Science is not about finding the truth Scing science is about finding the falsities the wrong things Science is
276. 37:15 concerned mainly with finding what are the wrong answers so that we can eliminate them with them out So suddenly
277. 37:23 people saw that the process of science is constantly evolving based on doubt
278. 37:30 and that there are no answers there only questions So initially they said masks
279. 37:36 are not needed They're totally useless And then they said no masks are the solution And then they said okay you
280. 37:43 know what masks may be the solution but only for certain age groups and vulnerable people And so and people said
281. 37:50 to themselves these guys don't know what they're talking about But what they people didn't understand layman is that this is exactly how science works Exactly how science works The more knowledge accumulates the more the more
282. 38:01 we change our answers Science is protein is ever changing Is it can't give you an
283. 38:07 answer Science is about asking the right questions and eliminating the false
284. 38:13 answers That's the main and so applying science to the COVID situation was a
285. 38:19 catastrophic mistake It was the wrong discipline You should never use science to regulate
286. 38:27 social relations to regulate social functioning to establish a lifestyle
287. 38:35 These are not the roles of science It's illequipped to do all this and we did We
288. 38:41 made scientists the emperors they they dictated to us and because they were accumulating data and the data kept changing and the answers kept changing people lost trust in science completely
289. 38:54 but you know it started long before what did science give us what nuclear weapons it's science and not only
290. 39:02 science all the ideologies all the institutions science among them failed us failed us we have spent the past 400 years since the enlightenment I would
291. 39:13 say we've spent the past 600 years since the renaissance started renaissance and
292. 39:21 then enlightenment and so on we spent the past few centuries experimenting Ericson called the calls it moratorium
293. 39:28 period moratorium period in the in Ericson Eric Ericson's theory of human
294. 39:34 development the moratorium period is when you experiment with different identities the adolescent for example
295. 39:40 exper experiments with different sexual identities It's called mogato So we had a moatanium period The species had a
296. 39:46 moatanium period We were adolescent We adolescent species We're very young And so we experimented We experimented with
297. 39:54 liberalism with democracy with socialism with Nazism with communism with every ism imaginable We experiment We exper
298. 40:02 experimented with science and alchemy and and witchcraft and astrology and physics We experimented and the end result was that everything we've ever tried failed
299. 40:15 miserably We failed as a species That was the more common experience Successes
300. 40:22 were few and far between and usually transient In the long run and on the big
301. 40:28 questions we fail catastrophically Catastrophically And so people lost
302. 40:34 trust because who came up with these experiments the intellectuals the scientists the elites and they all failed They all failed us So people said "The hell with
303. 40:45 that I'm going to be my own you know shepherd I don't trust anyone anymore."
304. 40:52 Sam there's been a lot of talk about rising anxiety I have to I have to apologize to you but I thought it would
305. 40:58 be 90 minutes I fixed dinner and I played but but I would love to continue
306. 41:05 this conversation with you if you have additional questions So I'm at your disposal but I'm at your disposal only
307. 41:11 tomorrow because after I'm gone for 10 days and then I have a seminar and then I have a documentary with with a German
308. 41:17 television So I would love that The only time I'm available is tomorrow if you want to continue That sounds great What
309. 41:24 time works Same time Let's make it 3:00 if you can Okay sure Can you make it 3:00 Because then then I have a lot more time That sounds great Right now it's 6 something
310. 41:35 here So I have family obligations and so I have to go to dinner
311. 41:41 Okay that sounds great Thanks Sam Okay so I'll expect I'll await your Zoom invitation Yeah for 3 p.m C 3 p.m C for
312. 41:49 tomorrow I'll be I'll make myself available and then then we can have like three hours even No no Okay Okay sounds
313. 41:56 great Thanks Sam Apologies Take care Don't forget your question The one you wanted to ask Take care There's
314. 42:02 many more All right Take care Okay