Transcription
I think that people were honest. I actually think most of us are functionally independent. We just feel like we have to conform to one side.
Welcome to another episode of Ask a Brother podcast. I'm your host Jeff Saint.
[music] James and we're going to have a whole host of different people from different backgrounds.
[music] Coming in because it really is about building a community of like-minded people that's just open to listening and hearing from other perspectives. The revolution is going to be because.
[music] Of us. Bro, so let's jump into it. One of the first things that I had peeped and noticed one of my introductory things that I mentioned about kind of starting the book club and getting people kind of going was 1984 George Orwell, right? What are your thoughts about that book and from Orwell and the parallels you see in society and you know, our politics today?
One of the things I think is interesting about Orwell is that he wrote about what he saw in Italy at the time. Like a lot of people think he was writing about the future, but he was actually writing about what he was literally watching on a day-to-day. But the thing that's crazy about humans is that when you tell people something is wrong and you start, you know, saying like, "Hey, I'm writing about the problems." People are like, "What are you talking about? That's not That's not happening right now." So, the best thing to do is to write about the future as if the present is happening and then people will look back and start to see kind of how it happens or people in the future will say, "Wow, this person could see like where we went." And in actuality, he was just writing about what was actually happening in Italy at the time. And a lot of people don't realize that if you read through his biography, he was actually very frustrated with living in Italy and everything that was happening at the time and that was the whole concept of the book. But a lot of those books that feel like someone could see the future, they were actually writing about their present. They just couldn't talk about it at the time because people would not be happy to hear, "Hey, this is what's actually happening right now." Does that make sense?
Yeah, that makes sense and and and and also now that I'm thinking about how we watch movies like The Hunger Games and other movies like they always try to make make the dystopian world look so different but in reality there's just so many like parallels between like what we're dealing with today. So even when thinking about the book, is there anything in our current culture and society that kind of mirrors what you kind of noticed like in 1984?
I mean like one of the biggest things is like I don't know what's real when it comes to numbers. Like I don't know if you've ever kind of noticed this but like it doesn't matter who's in government, it doesn't matter what company like they put the numbers out that they want out and then they just change them. And that was like one of the the biggest things in 1984 that they talked about was like it was this shoe reference where it was like they say that they made 1,500,000 shoes. It might have been 1,800,000 shoes. It might have been 900,000 shoes. Nobody really knows but everybody knows that half the people don't have any shoes. And so in turn it was really just about confusion. And I I remember I I watched Eric Weinstein like podcast. He was on Chris Williamson and he was like what if the whole point of this is like just to confuse people? Because sometimes I wake up man and I'm like I'll Google something I remember seeing like 2 years ago. I can't find it. You know I I'm like I swear this happened, you know? Like the the whole Mandela effect. I'm like I remember this and I can't find any information about it. So I feel like that's like the biggest thing. It's like it's almost like it feels like it's meant to be confusing to people and that's what happened a lot. Like nobody really knew the truth, not even the people who were writing their own numbers, not even the guy who was the main character who was destroying stuff every day. He couldn't even remember. And that's just That's what I think is the the realest thing.
I I agree with that and I think we're in I I think like I'll bring up Donald Trump for this reason. I think that Donald Trump running for president the first time kind of ripped the band-aid off for a lot of people in terms of the illusion of what they thought politics was like. Where there's still obviously people even today that's like oh red team, blue team, you know, my side's better than your side, right? But back then when he first ran against Hillary, he kind of gave the game away. He kind of pulled the curtain back, right? And he was like, he was like, you you talk about me paying taxes or not paying taxes. He was like, you could have changed it at any time, but I know you won't because of who pays you. He was like, and I've paid you for campaign donations. So, he was like, and that was when it hit us for a lot of people who really didn't understand truly how corrupt it was. And with with 1984, I think in hindsight, 19 reading rereading 1984 now my second or third time, um I see it everywhere. I see it with the news that I feel like for the most part can't be trusted. I I see it with with compromised um you know, fields that's supposed to have integrity and protect the public. Uh a great example of this is like our trust in the uh big pharma, right? So, you'll have the news that tells you safe and effective. You know, why would you doubt the experts? And then right after they're done giving their spiel, it'll be a big pharma commercial that comes on. You know, some drug or that you know, something that they're kind of pushing or promoting. And now in hindsight, I'm looking back and it's like 1984 was almost like the revealing that you couldn't almost trust anything. You couldn't trust anything. And the more and more that I think about it and and seeing like who owns all the textbooks, who who creates the curriculums, who runs all these different industries, I'm looking in hindsight and I'm like, bro, I honestly think like we're so far in the weeds that what you said and what Eric Weinstein said I think is accurate.
Mhm. I don't think it's what they show us and tell us that's actually the worst things that this that's going on. I think I don't think it's the everything that's blaring on the news. Sometimes it's true and oftentimes it's not. That I don't think it's the worst thing ever. In my head, I think it's the things that we they don't tell us. I think it's the things that they kind of keep from us. Um and and my only reference point of knowing something's going on in terms of in-house in our country is when you look at other country standards in certain domains. Educationally, food, water, what they spray or don't spray in their air, and a lot of that and what they put in their cereal. A lot of that stuff is banned. But here, FDA says it's cool. Mhm. So, that's my first lens of like it seems like every major field that is supposed to kind of ensure certain things in terms of our safety, I don't I I don't totally 100% believe that anymore. Um and then like you said, all they got to do is change the change the rules. They're like, "Oh, well, this much of this product we can allow in there. This much of this ingredient, even if it's a little poisonous, it's not that bad." Like I I I think I think they're I think they're all in on it and Noam Chomsky talked about like they just give us the illusion of choice within the spectrum. And within that spectrum, you're allowed to have lively debate. And because you're debating and it's lively debate, you actually think that you have choice when you don't.
Um Uh two-party system. Um what are your thoughts about the two-party system that we have and people's level of understanding about the the concept of the duopoly as as of 2025?
Well, I think like just to take a step back real quick cuz I just wanted to make a point. I feel like what's really strange is that similar to 1984, I think that 99% of people are just doing their job. And like in a weird way, jobs and like what's actually best for people have become like two different things. You know, it's like I'm just here doing my job. Almost like, you know, the manager who's like, "I'm just doing my job. I can't help you. I can't do what's best for you. I know what I should be doing, but like I'm just doing my job." I actually think that runs kind of all the way through. And then when you think about it, like all the way up to the two-party system, I think people have just settled into the sides that they live in. So, like when you think about um when you think about scripts, like there's this concept that I love by this guy Claude Steiner, where he talks about like their scripts that we run, ideas that we have about life, that there's good, there's bad, and we live in these stories. And I feel like the two-party system ended up becoming two parties cuz we don't like to have six choices. Like in general, it's not helpful. If I give someone five options and I say, "Hey, which of these do you want?" typically they'll actually feel very overwhelmed. If you're like a realtor, one of the tricks they say is to show three houses, one of which is an easy no, so that then a person feels like they made that first decision. So, like in actuality, I almost feel like a lot of the things can be tied back to like human nature of what we really want more than anything. We want ease, we want an easy story, we want something to believe in, we want the same concept, the idea. Once we start like deviating from those things, it becomes very frustrating. Like there's a reason that movies are the way they are, why they show that duality. It's like we're all as much into the game as without realizing it, because it's not enough to just hear a new idea, you need someone to say, "Hey, here's the new best thing because these are the bad guys now. This is the Jedi versus the Sith. This is good guys, bad guy. This is Harry Potter versus he who shall not be named. This is good guy versus bad guy. This is right versus left. This is good guy versus bad guy. It's us versus them." Like our brains do not like it. Like I remember when I was first trying to maybe think about like, "Well, what if it's not a good versus bad?" And it's like, "Okay, well, what am I supposed to do now?" I didn't have an answer, and I didn't like that I didn't have an answer. I was like, "I don't have an like nothing's fitting now. Where's the duality? Where's the other side? Who's them? Who's they?" So, I feel like in some ways people keep trying to fight to almost create a third side, but really they're just like trying they end up just being at war with both sides typically. You know, like when somebody who tries to be independent the right or left or whoever is, you know, going to get hurt the most is like you realize you're hurting us and then and it's us versus you now. So, that's kind of where I think. I think it's like actually I think like when you really take a step back you start to realize we we can't like help ourselves to some extent because we love those stories and we hate when people take those stories away and don't offer a new story for us to to live inside of.
Uh bro, I I love what you just said about how we've been primed and conditioned to only view things as as a binary choice and that it's either good or bad, right or wrong. So, and I've been coming up against this both in this space and also in my personal life where and you notice it. It's the same thing with the Matrix is like every time you critique something or you bring up an idea or you bring up a contradiction on the side that somebody lands on culturally, socially, politically, even religiously, you see this visceral reaction and now they kind of now see you almost as like the enemy. And like you said, they've been primed to where independent thought and voting and people don't exist. You're just on the other side. So, it's like if I bring up something about Biden or the Democrats could have voted that way my whole life. The moment that I say something, oh, that means you're with Trump. And I'm like I didn't say that. I didn't I didn't say that. And like and it doesn't matter because in their world view, like you said, the movies, the shows, the way in which politics is covered here, um it's not like the UK with multiple different parties. It's literally good, bad, and and both sides are trained and taught that. So, if you try to critique the conservatives or or the right, oh, so what you a leftist now? Oh, so what you were with the liberals and you got with this agenda that and I'm like in my head, I think that people were honest. I actually think most of us are functionally independent. We just feel like we have to conform to one side and this the things that we disagree on, we tend not to talk about those things out loud or publicly.
Um, am I like all for only something like kind of of what you were saying? I actually think in some ways though like it's not even Like I don't really even know how to say it, but I found that people want to nest with their crew. Like you want to know how you belong. So like when I first started going into like reading Rich Dad Poor Dad and, you know, Napoleon Hill and all these others, I found a new tribe and it was us verse this other group. And then eventually as I spent more time with them, I realized like they were also not critically thinking beyond a certain point cuz when I started asking certain questions, the people didn't have answers, but they were like, "Oh, so you're with the other crew?" And I'm like, "Wait, what are you talking about? I'm not with any crew. I'm just asking questions." You know, like and the thing you're describing with right and left like I actually think that it like it's actually you're almost saying things that are starting to come up to the walls of like a person's belief system about life, about reality. And you're in some ways almost like it becomes an attack against them because if it turns out the story I'm believing isn't true, that means I got to find another story and that's actually really scary. So I've actually done a lot more to just ask people questions and allow them to communicate their ideas and even try to argue an idea because I realized the second I say something that I'm in opposition against or for, like they then take their side of whatever it is that they want to describe. It It doesn't matter what I say. So all I do is ask questions now. I'm like, someone's like, "Oh, Jenga, what do you think about this?" It's like, "Honestly, I'm not I'm not sure. Why could you actually tell me? I have I don't know much about it." And they're like, "Oh, well, let me tell you da da da da da da." And I'm like, "Oh, wow, where did you hear that from?" "Well, I saw it on Facebook." "Oh, wow, that's crazy."
That reveal I love that strategy um and I actually am starting to figure out how to apply that in my regular everyday life, personal life. >> Yeah. Doing it on podcast, I at least get paid for it. Yeah. But doing it in your personal life is actually exhausting because again and again and again, you're right. When you're pushing people mentally and emotionally to the limits of what they what they've been taught they're allowed to go to, um they they have this visceral um need to kind of defend their ideology and defend why they voted or moved or believe what they believe for so long. You see it especially with like religion. Um being like being a if if anybody who's going through religious deconstruction process, they probably experienced this. Where if you grew up in a certain religious or cultural environment, the moment you start questioning these things, you start seeing the whole other ugly side and I loved how you articulated that. It's it they're feeling like you're pushing them into a area they're not comfortable with. And all you're literally doing is just bringing up something that perhaps they never thought about or they never mentally or like emotionally wrestled with. And it's jar it is definitely jarring for those of us who I'm not one of the people that's like, "Oh, we're so awakened or we're so much more evolved intellectually than everybody else." It's just uh there are people that never really questioned anything. They they they really and for people that don't know when I use NPC, a non-player character, this is the concept of like if it's a video game, um you're playing a video game and you have your main player and then there's other characters in the video, but they're more or less like the background characters. They just have their role, they're just existing, they're not actively actually choosing to do anything. And a lot of times I think a lot of people There's There's people that say like as as high as 70 plus percent of the population of the globe um in the country kind of functions more or less like NPC characters. Um where they they where they were born, who they grew up around, that kind of dictates most things about you. Um, with how you vote, how you move, potentially how you dress, how you carry yourself, who you hang out with. A lot of it isn't as much as choice as much as you've been conditioned to think you can only be and do and think a certain way. And when people that kind of mess with what you thought you were taught to do, mess with that, they they internalize it as an attack.
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