As promised last episode, we at least glance off the topic of population reduction, but from a very philosophical angle and with the help of an interesting, alternate, metaphorical interpretation of the Garden of Eden story. What makes humans human, what are the real existential problems with AI, and what is the best way to define the choices of this crossroads humanity finds itself at? We examine the motivations and worldview of the "tech bro" class via Malcolm and Simone Collins, particularly in relation to population reduction and what is emerging as a new, anti-nature AI centric religious structure - which looks eerily similar to the old religious structure.

Episode Notes

Based Camp podcast on Eden story:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUIvHU9jbnM

Hoe_math's simplified version of the levels of cognition:

https://itishoemath.com/free-levels-chart/

Episode Corrections:

Joel says "John Smith" when talking about the book of Mormon - he meant the Mormon leader Joseph Smith

Tyler can't remember who actually modeled the levels of cognition and never circles back to find out - it's Ken Wilber and his Integral Theory

Following right up on our prior conversation, which has become an unintentional three part series (this being the third and final part), we go beyond the practical politics discussion to get to the philosophical root cause of the sandbox of stupidity - which happens to be the slave morality we've been lamenting since episode one. We also finally manage to better explain what we've meant all along when referring to the "elites" as weak people.

More of Ted K's critiques of modern society make an appearance and we expand our Cormac McCarthy philosophy collection beyond No Country For Old Men, making use of Blood Meridian to help illustrate critiques of slave morality.

"Why dost thou tempt me?" answered the other. "Thou knowest it thyself better even than I. What was it drove me to the poorest, O Zarathustra? Was it not my disgust at the richest?

-At the culprits of riches, with cold eyes and rank thoughts, who pick up profit out of all kinds of rubbish- at this rabble that stinketh to heaven,

-At this gilded, falsified populace, whose fathers were pickpockets, or carrion-crows, or rag-pickers, with wives compliant, lewd and forgetful - for they are all of them not far different from harlots. Populace above, populace below! What are 'poor' and 'rich' at present! That distinction did I unlearn, then did I flee away further and ever further, until I came to those cows.

...

It is no longer true that the poor are blessed. The kingdom of heaven, however, is with the cows."

- Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_Meridian

"L'enfer, c'est les autres" ("Hell is—other people")

- Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit

We realize this quote is taken out of context and we're using it differently than it was used in Jean-Paul's No Exit - but we mean it exactly as we're using it in its standalone context.

In this episode we expand on the prior episode's idea of unserious people, broadening the concept from a failure to institute change to the actual mechanism that creates the trash heap that is modern society. Far from simply causing a failure to "drain the swamp" - the unserious people (your friends, family, and neighbors) are the swamp. This leech classes comprises the vast majority of society and works tirelessly to maintain the status quo of inefficiency, rampant stupidity, corruption, and anti-meritocratic structure. In these days of widespread, totally contrived "noticing", this reality is the one thing you're never supposed to notice. It's so important you not notice this phenomenon, that the elites have begun a campaign of attempting to get you to direct your anger at them rather than the real problem: the people around you.

As promised in last episode's show notes, we move forward directly off our prior discussion to finally, two years into the podcast, stop just calling common people idiots and actually go in depth on both why they're idiots and through what specific mechanisms this idiocy results in commoners being the basis of society's problems (including the problems they themselves love to lament).

“The worst conspiracies are in plain sight”- Edward Snowden

Mentioned in the episode:

The Real Reason For the 40 Hour Work Week:

https://www.businessinsider.com/the-real-reason-for-the-40-hour-workweek-2014-6

Which Lives Actually Matter? (my blog post on the emergence of BLM):

https://thewhiteboardpig.wordpress.com/2014/12/15/which-lives-actually-matter/

Currently trending distractions continue to offer us perfect opportunities to explore tying together many previously discussed concepts and examining how they play out via these circus acts - in today's case, the "Epstein files". Sick of hearing about Epstein? We are too, but the situation (more importantly, people's reactions to it) is too perfectly illustrative of our worldview to ignore.

We continue to refine our idea of what Jeff was and was not, but more importantly, we take a look at people's reactions to help understand what the point of these voluntarily self-indicting releases are. This discussion goes full circle to tie back to previously discussed topics like Eddy Bernays, incapacitatingly stupid solutions, boogeyman, and the common person as the real problem with the modern society.

We're planning to follow this episode up with a continued, more detailed discussion of how underlying personal weakness drives people to engage with these topics in the way that they do.

“If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?”- Anton Chigurh, No Country For Old Men

In this rather lengthy episode we start with a bit of "told you so", hitting on our predictions regarding the reveal of Julie Andrews and the unwinding of the existing social control structure. We examine these things in the light of current events and reactions to current events. As it turns out, what really upsets people has very little to do with the actual happens in the world, but a lot to do with the dissolving of their comfortable delusions. With the world at an inflection point, it's time for people to decide whether the delusions are worth clinging to, particularly after the realization that it's exactly those delusions that landed us where we are.

“The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.”- Frank Zappa

With the world continuing forward in a perfectly predictable fashion - so predictable that it's becoming tiresome and repetitive to keep addressing it - we launch what we'll consider "Season 3" with a return to our philosophical roots.

In this episode we bring back one of our best lines of discussion: how to live life and create a meaningful existence for yourself without the need to bury your head in the sand and ignore everything else we've talked about on the podcast to do so. We explore the idea of living an authentic, aesthetically pleasing life.

"It will be the strong and domineering natures that enjoy their finest gaiety in such constraint and perfection under a law of their own; the passion of their tremendous will relaxes in the face of all stylized nature, of all conquered and serving nature. Even when they have to build palaces and design gardens they demur at giving nature freedom."

- The Gay Science

“I keep having the same experience and keep resisting it every time. I do not want to believe it although it is palpable: the great majority of people lacks an intellectual conscience. Indeed, it has often seemed to me as if anyone calling for an intellectual conscience were as lonely in the most densely populated cities as if he were in a desert. Everybody looks at you with strange eyes and goes right on handling his scales, calling this good and that evil.

Nobody even blushes when you intimate that their weights are underweight; nor do people feel outraged; they merely laugh at your doubts. I mean: the great majority of people does not consider it contemptible to believe this or that and to live accordingly, without first having given themselves an account of the final and most certain reasons pro and con, and without even troubling themselves about such reasons afterward: the most gifted men and the noblest women still belong to this "great majority." But what is goodheartedness, refinement, or genius to me, when the person who has these virtues tolerates slack feelings in his faith and judgments and when he does not account the desire for certainty as his inmost craving and deepest distress—as that which separates the higher human beings from the lower.
Among some pious people I found a hatred of reason and was well disposed to them for that; for this at least betrayed their bad intellectual conscience. But to stand in the midst of this rerum concordia discors and of this whole marvelous uncertainty and rich ambiguity of existence without questioning, without trembling with the craving and the rapture of such questioning, without at least hating the person who questions, perhaps even finding him faintly amusing—that is what I feel to be contemptible, and this is the feeling for which I look first in everybody. Some folly keeps persuading me that every human being has this feeling, simply because he is human. This is my type of injustice.”

― Friedrich Nietzsche