Peter Boghossian

00:06we good ladies and Gentlemen please welcome Peter beian hello are bud thanks for doing it appreciate it man um I I I think I found out about you through Sam Harris I'm I'm not sure but uh you're also friends with my friend Rory singer oh Rory is a great guy great guy and he got excited when he found out that you were coming on Rory of course uh martial artist former UFC fighter right and uh he's tapped me many times I'm sure he tapped me many times too so you you're uh you you work at um University Portland State Portland State yeah work Portland State teach philosophy there and you're also a guy who is you're an you're described as an atheism Advocate like not just an atheist but someone who actively promotes hey you should probably try this um I promote critical thinking and reason and rationality and I I think and they two go together yeah and I I think

01:00that naturally leads to to atheism if people are honest with themselves and I'm and you know you mentioned Rory uh I've been a long time martial arts my whole life actually really what did you start off with the fantasy based martial arts the like which ones uh I did everything I mean I did I tried Kempo I tried I I I literally tried all if you would have put all of the martial arts together that don't work and put them in one Suite I tried them all of them well Kemp's got some good striking techniques they just don't have an overall comprehensive system to deal with grappling yeah I tried gundo I tried uh Taekwondo I tried uh I tried Tai Chi so I tried them all and then I actually one of my turning points was when Ron Van CLE who was in the original UFC's early UFC yeah he was in like UFC three or four or something like that early on and he was like in his 50s yeah

01:59he was older he's in still in very good shape he he like competed in a tournament a karate tournament I think deep into his 60s yeah I trained with with Ron and I trained with this guy Shian Hector Santiago who was quite something and I trained with them for years in New York City and when Ron Van CLE got taken down and just dominated that was a huge moment for me that was a Then I then that started me on this whole other path and then I trained with Greg Jackson from New Mexico were you in New Mexico yeah you living there or well I I train I started in in New York City before the UFC's came came along and I trained there and then I train in New Mexico and now I train with Matt thoron from straight blast uh who's John Kavanaugh's coach who's obviously Conor McGregor and Nelson's that's that's a great lineage man so you saw Ron vanle get dominated by hoist Gracie yeah like

02:56fairly easily it was kind of interesting to watch like a guy who is this Legend really well respected in the karate World total Legend and just get smoked like a beginner yeah and I saw those guys like I saw Hector Santiago fight in real life and he is a very dangerous person you saw him fight like in a street fighter yeah so I used to live in the lry side between a and b and uh so so all of this this was just part of my my experience and and I thought a lot of this stuff was real and it just turned out to be fantasy turned out to be make Bel you know well I think that's an interesting parallel when we were talking before the podcast we were talking about critical thinking and Brazilian jiu-jitsu and martial arts in general and there are a lot of people that have very distorted ideas of many things not just of their ability to handle themselves physically but just of

03:49the world in general and I think martial arts sort of highlights a lot of that critical those critical thinking issues yeah and I think that's that's one of the reasons I was so excited to on this podcast today is because I think you're ideally situated to have a have that conversation with me because Jiu-Jitsu Brazilian jiu-jitsu specifically aliveness training training against resisting opponents we don't talk about this is a huge area that nobody is talking about we can understand all of reason and rationality through Jiu-Jitsu through corrective mechanisms through aligning your beliefs with reality I mean little things from you know testing ideas yourself not having to take it on faith Faith um I I was talking to um I was talking to uh uh his name eludes me now I I think I think that there's something Chris howder I think he's a super good guy great guy yeah yeah there's

04:44something in the process so so you've been tapped thousands of times sure probably if I counted them all up yeah I've been tapped thousands of times there's something about the type of person who would either if you frame it in terms of subjecting yourself to that there's something about that that's fundamentally differentiates us if you will from people in fantasy based martial arts it develops a kind of character it develops a kind of attitude when you place yourself in situations and get tapped it's it's a type of uh corrective mechanism Jiu-Jitsu is a corrective mechanism it can help you align your beliefs with reality and and I I'd love to explore that with you today and talk about that means just in the case that some people might not know what that means what mean by tap is submit um when you do Jiu-Jitsu like I believe it or not I've talked to I I just assume that

05:39people know what we're talking about but I've talked to people go okay what is jiujitsu like what are you doing what submission grappling which is uh jiu-jitsu's one style of it but it's all about using leverage and technique uh against joints or chokes against arteries like choke holds uh to cut off the blood to your brain or neck cranks and when you train Jiu-Jitsu as opposed to other martial arts uh other than wrestling which I consider martial art you can go full speed on that you go you go 100% And that's the difference between those martial arts and striking based martial arts where you really shouldn't go 100% because you only have so many punches your head can take before your body just stops working that's just a fact you could train sparring hard for you know a certain amount of years but you're going to you're going to your mind is going to turn into mush there's just no doubt

06:33about it we know that for a fact people do Jiu-Jitsu into their 60s and 7s oh yeah well Anthony Bordain didn't even start until he was 58 and he's obsessed he trains every day he goes sometimes twice a day he'll take a private in the morning and then he'll he'll train in a group class after that he's a maniac um but the difference being like you absolutely know what works and doesn't work and you absolutely know how good people are so if we rolled fake it yeah if we rolled 20 times and you tapped me 18 of those 20 times you know and someone said how good's Peter I'm like he Taps me most of the time yeah and then we know you know we we have know the opposite in that case but yeah well you know what I'm saying we know it's clear yeah and you so you can't fake it there's no pretending there's no there are no like you know bowing rituals and Masters and all this

07:21nonsense all of those structures I think are put in place to conceal the underlying pity of the effectiveness of the the techniques and people come up with this so the other thing about that that that I think is so important is that all of these combat based martial arts I've been waiting for this conversation for a long time all of those combat these combat based martial arts let's take a look at you mentioned wrestling we know it works we know there are some things we just know that they work right we know the kickboxing works we also know that it's head trauma for kickboxing we know that Muay Thai which is in my opinion an insane activity but we know that it works we know that Western boxing works we know that Jiu-Jitsu works so the reason that we know we can test these things we can take people and hopefully later on we'll talk about the difference between

08:13Brazilian jiu-jitsu and Japanese jiujitsu right same techniques different pedagogy different Training Method that's a $2 word for Training Method we can take that we can adjudicate these things because we take two people of equal weight and we stick them in a cage and we have some very basic rules and also for your listeners who aren't familiar MMA gloves are very thin you know I think people who don't understand MMA they think that they're kind of like boxing gloves they're very very thin gloves that they don't afford much protection at all they really let the person punch you harder so they don't have to worry about breaking their hand but as far as like cushion to your brain yeah or your head they're not a cushioning yeah so so we can look we we can judge what works and the one of the ways that we do that is two people same size put him in a cage and we see what

09:00works the other thing is that when you train against a resisting opponent and I think this is the key you can figure out what's real like that's a mechanism it's a corrective mechanism it's a way for you to discern make believe land and reality real you know what what works and what doesn't work and once we start introducing that in systems like look let's say that I said to you hey I've I've come up with this technique uh I know this going to sound crazy but it's incredibly effective and you say what is it and I say it's a a pinky Blitz Creek I got like use it okay and so I this he say well just come attacking with pinkies yeah I say you know but it's a certain you know stance and I do this and you know come btis stance whatever and you say really and so you call up unbeknownst to me you call up you know like I heard a show your buddies with Eddie Bravo right you

09:56call up and say look we got this guy in here he says that he has this technique pinky blitzk I'm going to send him over there put him up against your good purple belt get it on video and we'll see what happens so it's a it's a way to test it now now if that works you'd be like holy like I can't this is awesome like we nobody ever thought of the pinky blitzk it's incredible but what you've done there is you that's a core component of critical thinking it's a willingness to revise your beliefs it may sound like but you're completely open to the possibility if this works against a resisting opponent right so let's say that I tap out his tap out his uh purple belts and he's like all well brown belt at at some point it it would be so absurd that you'd think that Eddie and I were in on it right I don't know the guy I've never roll with them never met him so you'd call someone else but and then

10:50you can test it so you can watch it eventually you can test it with you know your friends so this idea of testability and people can figure out things for themselves they don't have to go on the history of tradition or you know some guy punched a bull in the head or there was a blind nun walking through this and she killed all these guys that's what we always had to deal with that was that was the history of martial arts was always maso Yama killed a bull with a punch we always hear about masuyama who this was he kilin or I think he was kushin right is that his lineage I don't I don't remember but he was a famous Japanese guy who apparently had killed a bull with a punch which uh and then that that that that comes down as Legend So when people are said well you know how do you know that works why should you do it well this guy killed a bull well did

11:33you see the bull did you see it you know so so it's a it's a fable and the Fable takes on a life of its own and the the the genius about the ultimate fighting challenge was then you had a way to test ideas right you can literally watch these things unfold against people of in the early ones you know people of different weight classes they had the sumo wrestler and the kick boxing guy so but not only that it was an opportunity for you to figure out what was real and there's something that's incredibly appealing to that like think about think about Kata right what a waste of time like not only is it a waste of time in terms of let's say what Kata is it's like a you want to go yeah it's so it's well they're forms and what a form is it's like a pattern of movement that you that everyone does you get one when you get your white belt you practice that you get really good at it

12:33you do it for a test you get your yellow belt and in a lot of traditional marshal arts that is part of how you test right you know I I got my black belt in Taekwondo and I had to remember all those goofy moves and they never came into play ever when I competed they were they were sort of nonsense it was a waste of time and as soon as I did get my black I forgot all of them barely remember them it's it's a waste of time but I'd argue it's even worse than a waste of time if it were just a waste of time then you know you could have been staring at a wall but you thought that you were doing something to help you achieve a goal and the goal was to win a fight so you thought you were engaged in activity that the whole there's no resisting opponent so when there's no resisting opponent it's not a it's not testable you can't bring the tools of science to right

13:26so so you thought you were engaging an activity that brought you closer to your desired objectives but it didn't here's the argument against that though the what it does do is it helps your Precision movement and you could argue that learning how to execute these patterns in a very beautiful Way shows control and it and it shows Precision movement they the problem with it is that there's some of those movements that are completely in effect of like double knife hand block or thrusts knife hand thrusts there's movements that are they're not applicable to MMA but the concept behind it is actually something that a lot of really good mixed martial artists like Carlos condid or even Conor McGregor are doing they're doing a lot of like movement training and um although I don't think Kata is the best way to achieve those kind of goals yeah I think that there's something to be

14:23said for not just martial arts techniques but other things as well like yoga I think is extremely effective in enhancing your ability to um to control and manage your body in in movements all gives you weird strength so we're on the same page so think about it I'd offer a constructive way to think about like this so what you just said I don't know anything about basketball so I'm going to just use basketball as example there's a ball and a net and black eyes and there big court so so so somewh guys when when you think about basketball what you just described was a guy on a court practicing a layup over and over again I think a layup is like when you bounce it and you shoot you don't know the lay how dare I don't know anything about basketball so I'm not you you run up to the not a fan you run up thing and you throw the ball in that hole and everybody gets crazy okay but think

15:15about K don't think about Kat so so I think thinking about Kata like a layup in terms of precision is the wrong way to look at look at it think about Kata as a layup without a basketball mhm think about the practice of basketball the practice quote unquote of basketball without a basketball right okay here's the problem with that what about Shadow Boxing Shadow Boxing is extremely effective and Shadow Boxing in a sense is a form of kada Shadow Boxing and including not just boxing but kicking and punching and kneeing is a long long accepted excellent form of training and visualization yeah so so one of the things that Shadow Boxing you could do you can warm up with shadow boxing like when I when I W up with in jits and just to be up front I suck I've been doing it for a long time but I'm not very good I just I love it blue belt so I'm not long you doing I'm not you

16:12tell you I'd be embarrassed since 1999 how dare you how come you're still a blue belt um how often do you do it well only once a week if I'm lucky oh okay that's you got to go Anthony bouraine sty you got to get obsessed yeah I just don't have a lot of opportunities like I have a family that I push forward I have have a work career and I have how dare you have a life a life yeah um people with their lives yeah so so you know I'm not I'm not speaking about it from any kind of like you know I'm an expert in this I understand what you're saying yeah but I think what's interesting about this is the philosophical implications and so like like when I warm up I like to warm up with another body to Slow Roll you know I like to just because then I have an opponent if if you're practicing something over and over again the problem with that is there's no corrective mechanism you could be doing

17:00the technique incorrectly and then when you actually go to execute it you've had a body memory for that technique that hasn't that that's been that's taken you away from your goal do you mean with striking do you you mean Shadow Boxing well you use the example Shadow Boxing like so you're saying with Shadow Boxing that you you need another body in order for it to be effective no I'm saying that like so let's say that you shadow box a hammer punch right okay so stuff that doesn't work like Kata things like double knife hands or even if you if you even if you if you uh shadow box Jabs and crosses and uppercuts and stuff even if you do that if you could not be doing it correctly and then you'd be practicing the wrong thing over and over again right and that will take you away from your goal that's why you need you have to have some kind of a resisting opponent resisting

17:50opponents are the corrective mechanisms for everything and just as the they're the corrective mechanisms in the physical domain they're the corrective mechanisms in the C itive and intellectual domains as well that that's why prayer is so Insidious it's because people think that they're they're doing something that's in their own well-being they're doing something that's good but they're just talking to themselves MH but there is some aspects and I would agree with I I don't know if I I don't like labels I have a real hard time with labels even labels for things that I think are are good things like I I think that some people get a lot out of prayer and not necessarily because they're praying to a non-existent deity or they really truly believe that if they wish for a new car it's going to come to them but I think that the mind when focused on positive

18:44thinking and and and focused on love and focused on the the tenants of Christianity like of go Godly behavior and compassion and all these different things and look you truly are looking out for your fellow man and wanting to be a good person all those things I think there is Merit in that I think you can you can you can certainly find benefit in that as a tool for mental management I mean does that mean there's a guy in the clouds with a harp and all that jazz of course not but I think that it's in a sense like like taiichi I mean if if a guy thinks that he's going to take taiichi only and get into the UFC uh it's hilarious he's going to get up but if a guy in the UFC like Conor McGregor for instance who's so concentrated on movement M really gets involved in taiichi I think he would probably get at least some benefit out of it because in that slow moving this like rhythmic pattern what

19:41you're doing is you're exercising your body in an unusual way and expanding the possibilities of of your your interactions with opponents expanding what your body can and can't do I think yoga does that I think there's a lot of different things that do that okay so we need that there about 20 really interesting things that you just said I think we need to kind of unpack those a little bit like so if you talk about you so take a look at prayer and what people think that they're doing and then let's this is why you're the perfect person to talk to this about uh then compare that to a martial art that's right like taichi is a good example okay so people think that they're going towards a certain end winning fights it's certainly I don't know about now anymore there some people that teach taiichi and even practice taii that are just doing it for their health yeah my dad is one

20:35of those people so he is zero Ambitions to win a fight with anybody he's in his late 70s so if somebody says that I have no problem with that at all and I think it's true and certainly Mo motion would be better than non-motion and the problem is exactly the same problem with religion when people are making objective claims they're making claims about the nature of reality and I want to know what's true mhm and we don't even the problem is that people every time you talk about faith or religion or what have you people shut down or they have barriers we don't need to talk about that all we need to do is talk about Jiu-Jitsu that's why this is so perfect because with jiu-jitsu you can figure things out yourself with you can figure out what works right the pinky Blitz green you can figure out what doesn't work you can figure out what you're capable of if if I tap you

21:25if if you tap me out 20 times I'm under no illusions that the 21st time I mean I could get lucky you know like I could get lucky against Rory I could get lucky against Matt thoron it's always possible I could get it's highly unlikely but I could get lucky the problem is that if you look at the way that people engage these rituals in their lives what these people are doing is it they think it's taking them towards an end it's exactly identical to Fantasy based martial arts they think it's taking them towards end it's not right I think also a parallel like in fantasy based martial arts the benefits of it like I was like I said I did Taekwondo for a long time and uh I got really good at it and I competed a lot and uh I was essentially an a cult I mean Taekwondo uh although it's a beneficial cult and it helped me a lot and it in a lot of ways it made me the person that I am today because in

22:25training and doing really difficult things and competing and overcoming nerves and fear and all that stuff there's a lot of benefit in it but then um I had a distorted perception of reality because of it and that distorted perception of reality was shattered once I started boxing exactly and I realized like oh my God I was getting just punched in the face I didn't know I thought I knew how to fight when really I just knew how to do Taekwondo right and then I had to learn all the other aspects of martial arts like one of the most sobering moments of my life was when I I trained at Carlson Gracie's in um on on Hawthorne in Hollywood in 1996 and this is before vtor bord made his debut in the UFC and uh I you know I had this long extensive history of competing in Taekwondo tournaments and I had kickbox and uh i' done quite a bit of uh boxing training and uh I wrestled

23:19in high school I thought I was a pretty good martial artist and I just got mauled like I had never exercised like I had had no idea what I was doing and I just remember the feeling of helplessness and the guy who one of the a bunch of people mauled me but one of the guys that mauled me on never forget as this Brazilian kid who was a purple belt who was basically my size he wasn't any bigger than me and he wasn't like some Super Mario Spar black belt guy he was just some guy who just beat the out of me I mean almost disdainfully and he was a nice guy but I mean when he was training he was training really hard and he didn't give me any slack I was I was just getting wrecked and I remember thinking wow what a stupid illusion I was under yeah and and and so in a sense I think it's I mean I guess that's a question we could talk about but I know is it incumbent upon us to help people out of

24:10these traditional martial arts like I did I had a very similar experience I trained in stick and knife fighting for years that's why my hands have all these Cuts yeah screa that's why my hands have all these cuts and are all M real knives real knives and sticks yeah I did the stuff with the dog brothers and Dan Medina was my coach for years I got a black belt and stick and knife fighting and and you know they give out black belts and stick and knife fighting okay well I mean if you're in a place where the bullets are all gone and no one knows how to make a gun well bows and arrows haven't been invented that's where I was going to go with this where I was going to go with this is I I uh so I thought I was a like you I thought I was a pretty good Marshal artist right and then uh I fought a guy fought actually Greg Jackson with sticks and just beat the out of me and I mean

24:57I had a stick and I've been training with a stick for like years at that point and it was just a huge wakeup call for me you guys fought like in a competition we fought in like a a fight fight and and I he had only on a fight fight like you were mad at each other no well like a you know like a part his arm to the submission I mean we were like I was not so it was a competition well no it was at met at his old place and this is when I started training with him and we I think we put on like very light hockey gear you know and I was just going to beat the out of him you I was just going to yeah well that was my goal cuz he said he basic this was before I learned about aliveness training and and you know resisting see that's aliveness yeah so that's like Matt Thorton's Meme and and and it's a combination of that's a whole other discussion it's like um timing energy in

25:46motion resisting opponents ways to figure out what's true and what works and I uh this gets back to our discussion about Shadow Boxing and about training other ways I had Tred with a stick and I had learn all these kind basically these Kata things but I also trained against a willing opponent like when you watch these stick demos the key to to look for is what the UK does the feeder you know it's not what the guy does UK the I think this the Japanese word for like the guy who's feeding in you know like I'm going to go like this I do this and then the people most of the people are listening to this it's like probably 90% even though a lot are watching it so what what you're demonstrating for those who listening is like there's um these live these drills that you do where someone will pretend to throw a punch other person will step aside and and do their Counterattack and

26:38it looks awesome so the UK guy is a guy we in ta window we used to call it the one steps yeah the one steps yeah and and it's it's a great example of a fantasy based martial art because it makes you think it brings you further from reality it makes you think you can do something that you simply cannot do so what you need to do in those circumstances is you need to watch the feeder the person who's giving the reverse punch it's like a punch that comes off of your I'm trying to be conscious your now a punch that comes off of your ribs and goes out and they almost never hit somebody like if if you watch the Steven Seagal when he got his black belt is a famous black and white video that's out there Jamie can link to it I guess uh it looks awesome but it's it's all choreographed right a keido yeah so all so the the key deliverable I think in this one of those

27:30in this conversation is that whether it's Shadow Boxing or whether it's Kata or whether it's taking a knife and doing a drill when I used to do those train with sticks I was really really good but I always knew the angle so it was fantasy based if you took the angle out of it I would just get beaten to death I mean be someone what do you mean by angle so like in derobio screa there are 12 angles it goes 90 it goes like 75° 75 Dees the other way baseball reverse baseball swing stab overhand stab attack to the knees attack to the other knees so when you do when you do those when you train you you know guys just do the numbers one two three and you know you get so good at it I mean it's pretty crazy I can show you stuff here you know it's like if if I know the angle it looks awesome right I've seen guys do it it looks pretty badass it's but it's it's it's fantasy

28:24based martial arts because the opponent isn't resisting right you have to have a resisting opponent but here's the deliverable for this conversation I think is that if you train in a certain way absent a corrective mechanism but you think that corrective mechanism is an actual corrective mechanism in other words you think you're training in a way that will bring you closer to reality but you're becoming further from reality what that does is that take that that that's just a that's devastating because you need that corrective mechanism you need to bring your thought in alignment with reality and that was the great thing about the UFC's is because now we have all these people and we can see what works so think about the guys you know I I listened to uh your show with Eddie Bravo or I think and he said you know he was just practicing the the the rear naked on his leg well that's not

29:18going to work because there's no corrective mechanism because I don't think you understand what he's saying well maybe I wasn't he was exercising his squeeze on his leg he still does it and it's because one of the things about jiu-jitsu about finishing a technique is how hard can you squeeze how long can you squeeze so what Eddie does is he'll do this like well if we're watching TV together he'll do it he puts his knee up if we're watching fights he'll put his knee up like this and he'll rear naked choke his own knee and just squeeze it and what he's doing is he's working on his squeeze and it's not thinking that that's going to make him get to that position where he can squeeze someone better or against a live resisting opponent he's it's an exercise okay so that's cool so if if the idea then is that we'll work on your squeeze then that's different from thinking that that

30:05if if I if I if I train what if you you practice think about like practicing Shadow Boxing and your to use your example and your hook is always you know wide or you stand here and then when you get into a fight you deal with a resisting opponent and you do that so you would have train you would have gone down a path to make you worse in the action but that's assuming that you're doing it incorrectly if you train correct and you learn the techniques correctly and then you apply them in your Shadow Boxing correctly it's going to benefit you okay so that's the question the the question is and and I mean the the the great thing about this conversation is that we can test this stuff right I mean this is the ultimate we have we have people we have so for that we need to look at the the only big word I think we need here today is pedagogy like the Training Method it's a

30:53big word for Training Method we don't even need pedagogy just say Training Method so we look at the Training Method and what I think you would need for that is well here I guess here's my question to you would it be better in your mind to train Shadow Boxing or to do some light boxing with guys with your focus mid over there guys holding up Focus mitts at the same speed that you were Shadow Boxing this is where I think the conversation is going a it's not that it's better all those things have their merits Shadow Boxing has its Merit yoga has its Merit yoga is not going to teach you how to be a better fighter but if you learn all the techniques of Jiu-Jitsu and you incorporate yoga into your training it will likely elevate your Jiu-Jitsu there's I have absolutely no question that that's true and I think that that goes along with Shadow Boxing if you're especially if you're a striker

31:47if you're a striker and you don't shadow box I think you're doing yourself a disservice I think there is a benefit to uh visualization and to movement and to there's there's things that happen when you throw combinations in the air um as far as your dexterity especially with kicking and your ability to uh even do combinations without any resistance or without anybody um uh trying to counter you there's there's benefit in stringing together those reps those repetitions yeah I yeah okay so I think there is a benefit of that and I think so sometimes if I if I go in to straight BL and there's nobody on the mat there's nobody to roll with sometimes what I'll do is I'll just go through the motions like I'll do rolls or I'll do go over my back shoulder or I'll just you know fall down um there's mer there's Merit to that in that um I think I already know how to do

32:46it I mean I'm sure sure that I could improve on it without any question at all the so like your your example of yoga is a really good one I think it's certainly true that you can use muscles in yoga that you don't in another activity and I think that that those have benefits to MMA in fact I'm sure they have benefits to a lot of other things so so not just the flexibility aspect and the body maintenance there's a lot of good things to it yeah I I don't do it myself I I I probably should but if I would I'd just spend that hour and doing Jiu-Jitsu to be blunt with you but I think that you can get things out of yoga and get things out of these other activities but have to be conscious about the reason why you're doing these things and the way to get better ultimately like yeah so you could shadow box at a certain level um and again I guess I think we can think about

33:40it in terms of the layup example again it's not necessarily the L the ball is the corrective mechanism with the layup the person is the corrective mechanism in the fight and as long as somebody knows what they're doing and they're training in a certain way it's not necessarily that Shadow Boxing will take one away from one's goal if it's being practiced correctly I think Kata would take one away from one's goal but I think that the whole project like if you think about and that's why I think the Shadow Boxing is such a good example of this what is it that that okay so when someone shadow boxes the the point is to warm up that accomplishes that you could do that with squats too right someone or you know you could do that anyone of number of you're looking at me like you're lost no no no okay it be cool we're fine I'm just listening that was all in your head man yeah it's probably it's

34:37probably I got I got that look like what are you talking about no no I'm just listening yeah well if you think I'm if you think I'm off track let let me know uh you you might be a little off track um in that I think you think there's very little benefit in a lot of these activities that I think uh aren't primary activities I think yeah if you wanted to break it down to what is the only see there's a just this broad range of things you can you could do to improve all sorts of athletic Endeavors like there's a lot of people that don't believe you should do any strength and conditioning training you should just do technique and you should just do sparring there's a lot of people that go that route and then there's other people that think that's absolutely foolish you should primary like especially once you learn the skills you should if you're competing you should focus primarily on

35:26strength and condition CU really it's just about burning your body out and reaching an incredibly high level of cardio so that when you compete you know all these techniques already you will now have a gas tank that's Superior to your opponents and that will lead to Victory like there's a lot of modalities and there's a lot of schools of thought can we talk about that for a sec can we talk about that for a sec sure so it's interesting to me I see guys who come in who uh who are just super strong and I think to a certain extent we need to be careful because strength and again I'm not speaking from experience so much I'm speaking just conceptually I think there's a tendency for strong guys or big guys to over rely upon their strength and their size small man Jiu-Jitsu is the best Jiu-Jitsu why I tell people if they're thinking about learning Jiu-Jitsu learn from a little

36:15person because little guys you know like a hoer Gracie or even Eddie Bravo before he started lifting weights Eddie's quite a bit bigger now but Eddie was always like you know 150 lbs 140 lb so when he was rolling he always be rolling with big guys and you had to rely on perfect technique yeah whereas a guy like Frank Mir who's a very large man has a lot of physical strength and they rely on that yeah and I think well you tell me what you think do do you think that if somebody goes in strong and they focus on that often that that can come at the expense of learning techniques yes it can but here's the problem the concept of strength and condition conditioning a lot of people think oh well you're doing squats and deadlifts yeah um a good example is a guy I've had on this podcast before his name is Nick kerson he trains HAF dos sanjos he trains uh rousan panikov who's a f famous boxer a

37:04lot of world-class athletes Joe Schilling who's uh Glory t-shirt I'm wearing one of their best fighters excellent kickboxer world champion what he's doing is his strength and conditioning program he he trained under Mar marinovich and Nick does a lot of plyometric exercises a lot of sprinting a lot of box jumps and all these really unorthodox techniques and the idea is to improve your ability to execute things improve your ability to close the distance in your improve your ability to get out of the way improve your ability to maintain a high workload through the rounds you know like if you can only throw uh let's say 50 kicks in a real before you get exhausted and if you can improve that through streng strength and conditioning make it 75 or 80 you're going to have a significant advantage over the pace that you can push on your opponent and that is in his opinion and

37:58many other people's opinion and this is this is a a really open debate right now in the world of martial arts cuz it has not been solved because it relies on so many variables it relies on the athlete themselves their mental fortitude their dedication to their Craft um how good is their technique in the first place before they embark on a Tren strength and conditioning program there's so many variables I think to unbox all this um and to make it a little bit easier for people that are going what the are they talking about what we're saying is there's a lot of people that have distorted ideas about reality itself and a method for exposing that kind of thinking which is like this sort of dogmatic religious thinking which is is ultimately accepted by all the people around you but never never critically judged yeah a really good method is Jiu-Jitsu and the the meaning the reason

38:59why Jiu-Jitsu is such a good method is because Jiu-Jitsu is one of the few martial arts that you could practice at any age and you could apply Tech and you could also watch those techniques being applied by other people when you know JJ like yesterday I went to the Eddie Bravo Invitational which was at the orphan theater in downtown LA some of the best Jiu-Jitsu fighters in the world were going at it uh and it was really amazing to watch it was awesome and it was a crowd filled with thousands of people who are fans of Jiu-Jitsu and practitioners so it was a really educated crowd and what was cool about that is we all understood like when a guy got to a position like oh whoa whoa and you know the crowd would cheer when someone would get out of a heel hook or they would cheer when a guy would uh be able to uh tap a guy with a rear naked choke and we were watching all these

39:47things play out so there was lessons for me as a someone who's not competing is sitting in the audience because I've spent so much time doing Jiu-Jitsu I was watching this sort of these interactions take place in a very logical truth it's a truth seeking Community exactly exactly I mean when the techniques work the techniques work and the by the way what's interesting is Brazilian jiu-jitsu as it was first created or first sort of established came from Japanese Jiu-Jitsu and Elio Gracie and Carlos Gracie who were probably two of the most important people ever in the history of martial arts they they sort of manipulated those techniques and improved upon them and made the art more about the submissions than it was about the stand up and the the bringing the fight to the ground and in doing so they established a series of techniques and you know we we refer to those techniques

40:43as the basics there are some people in that world that think that the basics are all you need and they don't accept the new techniques and it's really fascinating because that's essentially how Jiu-Jitsu became effective in the first place is because the new techniques that were established by Carlos and ILO Gracie and all these different movements like the guard like learning how to do triangles off your back and all these different things which people had no idea in the early UFC's like when hoist Gracie Tapped Out Dan s everybody was like what the is he doing he's got his legs wrapped around his neck and his arm what is this and then Dan's about to go out and he Taps and everybody's like whoa this is crazy well those were in our world completely new techniques well there's a lot of new techniques that are constantly being established Now by these young Innovative practitioners

41:32that some of the old guard are ignoring and the the real question is is that smart do you just need the basics and it's it's a hot debate right now but again this hot debate can be proven that's exactly what I was going to say that's exactly right and if as a result of this being proven somebody doesn't change their mind so the core piece that the what's really important is belief revision right critical thinking is all about I made a mistake I was wrong I thought this you know what I I I made a mistake and so if they don't do that then they're somehow deficient in that attitudinal disposition of critical rationality you know they but it would seem to me if it could be demonstrated people who want to seek the truth in this case they want to win against a resisting opponent some some would some would accept the data but many haven't and my good friend Eddie Bravo is a

42:28perfect example of that I went with Eddie to Brazil in 2003 and he competed in the world championships and he beat um Gustavo Dantes who was a world champion at the time he tapped him in his first fight and then after that he fought hoer Gracie who is one of the greatest Brazilian jiu-jitsu competitors of all time hoer Gracie is a national hero they Clos the other mats off they put a spotlight on the main event and they thought they thought that hoer was going to wreck this young kid who wasn't even a black belt time Eddie was a brown belt okay and Eddie with his unorthodox techniques that people had laughed at tapped toer Gracie in front of everybody and he got him with a triangle but he got him the setup was his rubber guard setup he has all these crazy guard setups and you know his game has advanced Lighty years since then but the point being that people mocked him for

43:15that it didn't help that he went to his next fight he fought Leo Vieira and he popped his rib early in the fight and got dominated in that fight and almost got tapped but he there was also a giant emotional let down cuz he couldn't believe he just tapped toer Gracie and now now he's moving on and he's fighting Leo Vieira who's a another monster Brazilian jiu-jitsu artist but here's the point for the longest time people there was two schools of thought there was the the old guard that just did not accept him they openly mocked him and you know they really criticized his whole movement and his his techniques what Champions is he produce all this this doesn't really work on real Fighters until he had a rematch with hoer many years later and just wrecked him I mean it was it was worse than the first time because hoer didn't tap but he got his knee destroyed I mean if you

44:02watch that video H hoer just deals with the fact that his knee is getting ripped apart while Eddie is mangling it but it was never a moment where Eddie was in trouble he dictated the entire match and we played the fight on uh on the TV on on the podcast and had Eddie explain what he was doing and even when it looked like hoer was improving the position Eddie was like no I let him do that so I could do this and then I'll then I would adjust and he's like explain I I pulled him back on top of me because I knew if I did that I would be able to move his arm higher up on my shoulder then I rolled him back over onto his back and then I can get deeper in on on you know when when he was explaining that it was even more humiliating because you got this guy H gracer who's a multiple time world champion who just did not learn these new techniques feels like got these old

44:52techniques and that's it so this is the application of EX right and if you don't learn it and if you're not willing to revise your beliefs and if you're not looking if you're not willing to test this and accept the conclusion yeah you know you might think something's Common Sense common sense is irrelevant which's relevant is what works yeah with these new techniques that are constantly being innovated they're constantly changing like it's almost impossible to stay up on all of it unless it's a monster part of your life and you're absorbing them every day like the leg lock game is this new element that over the last like few years has really come into play in a major way thanks to a bunch of guys John Doner Eddie cumins Gary tonin who won the Eddie Bravo in Invitational yesterday these like really highlevel practitioners and instructors are constantly adding new improvements to

45:42approaches and techniques so it's all applicable it's all you can watch it happen in real time and even as someone who's not competing like me sitting in the audience I understand the positions and the movements so when I see all this new stuff and I see all these new approaches it's like wow this game just continues to grow and evolve yeah and what what amazes me is when I watch kids classes kids are doing the craziest stuff I mean they really have stood on the shoulders of giants and they're doing stuff that's just so Advanced and I look at that now and I think wow it's like speed would be the great thing H how quickly these techniques and this game has been advanced in a very very short period of time there has literally been in my lifetime a revolution in the martial arts yeah it really has I I've been saying this for a while but I'll say it again the UFC has changed martial arts

46:32so radically that there's been more Improvement since 1993 there's been more Evolution than there are there have been in the last 10,000 years that's that's real that's 100% true you go back and watch martial arts from 1993 and you watch the UFC today it's a completely different realm right it's fascinating the difference is of course when you talk about Jiu-Jitsu being applicable all it it's applicable inside Jiu-Jitsu the problem is when you get someone who's a really good wrestler who's an awesome kickboxer and you can't use your Jiu-Jitsu you're still going to get up like a guy like Chuck Liddell who you're not going to take down and he's going to knock you dead he's a great wrestler you mean he's a perfect anti- Jiu-Jitsu guy okay but even even that look at that I gave five things that work boxing and wrestling were two of the five they train against resisting

47:21opponents right uh so it's no surprise then and maybe sometimes but he comes from a Kempo background you know I mean you you you listed that as one of the martial arts that don't really work but that's the martial art that Chuck Liddell learned for striking under John Hackleman yeah okay so I mean that's another example people can like I I saw I can't so you're much more vers in the specifics than I am but I saw a a gunner Nelson fight in which he did a I think it was a uh back roundhouse to someone's head and back roundhouse H kick he did a no he did a I thought he did a roundhouse to someone's the back someone's head head okay he trained in traditional karate for years huh yes yeah he's a brown belt in karate yeah and so it's not that these techniques can't be integrated or that they don't work part of the problem is that they're sold as systems you know it's like

48:11instead of picking in choosing so if everybody trained against resisting opponents it's not clear to me that there would be any styles styles would fade away right but then that highlights the problem that we brought up earlier that you really can't resist you can't train 100% resisting with kickboxing if you want to be a healthy member of society you're going to get brain damage I mean I I I'm pretty sure I have brain damage and I stopped really getting hit in the head when I was 22 yeah I mean I really haven't been hit in the head that much since then but I'm for sure something's up in there yeah I I was watching a guy hit the pads about a brown belt a couple weeks ago and I just thought to myself I mean he the whole thing was moving and I thought to myself like wow like if that guy ever hit me oh yeah I mean that would be it I it would just be over and I and I watch

48:59people kick the heavy bag sometimes have you ever seen Melvin manof kick the pads Jesus Christ pull up Melvin manhoff trains with uh um I forget his uh trainer's name Mike Mike's Jim in uh I forget how to say his last passer passinger I forget how to say it because he's they're do they're uh Dutch they're from Holland but uh there's a video there's a bunch of videos of Melvin but Melvin kicking the pads with him it just it's goddamn terrifying yeah cuz he's a super athlete and he's training with this really aggressive Muay Tha trainer or kickboxing trainer Mike's Jim is famous for like guys like bhari and and um and manof that are just ferocious aggressive competitors and manhoff is particularly famous for having just unbelievable knockout power he knocked out Mark hunt he weighed 185 lbs he knocked out Mark hunt when Mark hunt was probably 300 lb yeah and so

49:57imagine some of those guys or people in their lineage fighting here it is what fighting these guys who do katas this is not pads though you got to focus paths see see if you can find one with him yeah that says that's just um my see if if you could find um Melvin manh that's him though that's Melvin but they're just sparring there which most of the time they they go hard but uh they usually don't go too hard to the head that's the Holland style so imagine those guys fighting these guys who are in make belie land oh yeah fantasy fantasy land right we've we've played videos many times and recently one where here's Hills Melvin see you get some volume on that Jamie dude sounds not sned for some reason but you get the picture of it he's a Destroyer that switch kick to to the body good Lord when you watch this guy in real life it's even more stunning because you

51:05you really can feel the impact when he's kicking the paths yeah so the other thing about that is that guy knows what he can do and he can't do and a lot of these young kids they see a movie with a guy who's beating up Five Guys with knives and bats and stuff it's total makeb beleve land yeah and it immerses people in a culture of makeb belief yeah I agree no I couldn't agree more and uh I was in that culture yeah IO I used to teach it I taught it at Boston University it's like a huge part of my life and uh the wakeup call that I got uh was it was a really stunning thing to just to to and it was it's it was a long progression it wasn't just one wakeup call it was like one wakeup call and then another one and then deeper and deeper and deeper and then the UFC comes along you're like oh you know oh this is this and then get this understanding like I live my life under

51:59this uh illusion yeah a and the other thing that's interesting to me about that is those are culturally reinforced right there are these rituals there's the Bowing the master there other people they're your friends that you come to do these things with all of that reinforces the delusion it's it's very similar to to uh to religions the way that religions focus with the difference being that people in religions people who have faith they think they're are better better people as a consequence of them having faith whereas very few people in the delusional martial arts think that they think they're good Fighters but oh the techniques are too dangerous to test or we you know we can't we can't do this it's if I we did this we' kill you uh but those cultures of delusion keep people trapped in thinking about things that remove them from reality yeah there there's

52:51definitely some of that but I think there's some good to the idea of respect expecting a dojo as a place where you when you walk into it like one of the thing stupid but true when I was a kid I used to have the keys to uh the the the it was a dojang because it was Taekwondo is the Korean word I even when no one was there I would bow when I would walk in when I would go to work out in the middle of the night like I would go there I had keys so I would I would Train sometimes I'd show up at midnight I'd go there and lock the door and go in myself and then but when I stepped in the training area I would always bow and I was like almost like an OCD thing like I wouldn't not do it because I in my mind when I like I had been trained and taught that when I entered that room I had to Bow and even when there's no one there man I'm by myself and I always bowed like one time my girlfriend

53:42my girlfriend was a freak in high school she wanted to in the in the gym and I was like we can't can't do it I'm like I won't do it we can't do it here and she's like come on I'm like nope W you not happening that was a lost opportunity for you not really the out of her I her all the time we were like little rabbits but but it was there was the one place where I wouldn't do it I was like we can't we can't do it here like this is this is sacred ground for me so I guess here's my problem with that besides the Lost opportunity but it wasn't a lost opportunity for me it was an execution of discipline of my mind like I it was very hard for a 17-year-old boy to not have sex with this hot I think she was 16 16-year-old girl who wanted a bang in this karate or taekwondo gym it's like for me it was like that this this what what martial arts meant to me at the

54:36time was it was the first thing that I had ever done that made me feel like I wasn't a loser so my whole life I'd been insecure and we had moved around a lot when I was a kid I didn't really have a whole lot of friends and I never felt like I fit in and I always felt you know I didn't know my dad and you know my stepdad was a little distant there was all this stuff going on right there was all these things that just didn't feel right didn't didn't make me feel good and then this one thing came along that made me feel good this one thing came along that I had gotten really proficient at really quickly and was absolutely obsessed with and I was doing it all day all day and there was that was my whole focus of my life other than the girl no I'm sure I wasn't good at that uh I'm sure I was probably terrible but point being like I wasn't willing to sacrifice that like the ideals it's

55:24interesting isn't it yeah yeah today you were you the same today do you think I mean do you have that notion of sacred with regard to these things I don't have that notion of sacred when it comes to like a space but I do in terms of like my approach to things like like if I if I'm focused on something like I don't allow myself to get distracted if something is is is is critical something's like really important to focus on and I decide this is what I'm doing now now I'm doing this you know and so when like if I may I don't be overly personal but like your marriage you decided to do it you're focusing on it to so it's taking kind of marriage is a contract okay relationships yes like the way you engage with someone like if you care about someone here's a good way not just relationships as far as like sexual relationships but friendships if you care about someone and you you

56:16really enjoy being with them and they're one of the most important people in your life like when you interact with them I think you should interact with them under that provision or with that thought in mind with that with that intention with what I I missed you intention that you care about them very deeply these are important people in your life authentically you want to authentically like you don't you don't never want like I don't I would never like like really good friends I would never yell at them and um you know call them a piece of I never want you in my life or say say crazy things to people that sometimes people say to each other hurtful things yeah you know it doesn't mean don't be critical doesn't mean don't correct someone if you see them doing something you see your friend doing something stupid but I don't think that's a good example

57:03I think um cuz marriage is not something that like it's like something you're trying to do you know marriage is like or even relationships friendships are just there those are those are their interactions relationships are it's different like it should be fun and enjoyable and all that good stuff what I'm talking about is a discipline yeah what I was trying to tease out from you is that when you were you had this idea of the dojo being a sacred Place yeah and you talked about what that meant to you and I'm curious if there's anything that you hold sacred now um that's a good question like that no not no I've definitely changed my ideas about what that even was at the time I think what that was that need for that Sacred Space and this like intense concentration and purity of that environment was really like my my ticket out my ticket out of this life that was

58:06really unfulfilling maybe to manhood yeah that definitely to sovereignty personal sovereignty to um to realize that um it's not that I it's not that I'm was a loser it's just that I wasn't a winner and I had to figure out how to be one it wasn't wasn't all my failures what I was is now and all those failures and all those mistakes and bad feelings that I had those are really just lessons and that now that I have this new focus and this new thing and has shown massive positive results I will honor that and that's what it was to me the the new Focus being what martial arts fighting competing Taekwondo so that space the dojo the dojang represented a sacred place for me cuz represented this new ticket and I wasn't about to cash that in for some holla you know what I'm saying like that that was my thoughts M now my um I mean if there's anything I would think that the world

59:10like life itself is that environment life itself is that that dojang life itself is that thing so you don't ever want to you don't want to steal you don't want to commit crimes against people you don't want to do things to hurt people all those those those those terrible things that we see out in the world if the world was your dojang if the world was your your church if the world was your sacred place you would never want to commit bad acts in your sacred place that that's lovely I I wish we could figure out a way to to help people adopt those values you know I I wish we could come up with some way to especially when we see what's going on in the Middle East and we see what's going on in the world we see the way we're treating our environment our climate I wish there were some way to make that real and palatable to people so that we would start being more

60:10authentic and more sincere with someone and and I think what what you said about it's it's not about criticism the way I look at it I think it's about forthright speech you can be forthright in your speech with somebody and not be be be an not a jerk I think those kinds of relationships for me Aristotle talks about that too but for me I think that the most meaningful relationships are those people with whom I can be authentic and be myself and be real and those are kind of I don't like the word sacred though it's I guess that's the one kind of nitpick I have cuz you attach that to religion well because I attach it to the inability to revise something right I I attach it to the utmost most respect yeah so if we replaced a sacred for respect I think we'd be on but this this is just noises it's one of the things that I don't like about labels like I like intent and

61:08intent like my my idea of sacred is not like God like it's not like a some it's not a deity this unnamed unknown word that's been passed down from person to person it's based on personal experience it's based on a real thing so when I say sacred like my love my love for my children is sacred right you know like I say it in that way I don't you I don't say it like in terms of like Harps and the clouds and all that kind of jazz and when we were talking about um like don't be an to people you care about like doesn't mean it certainly doesn't mean I'm some sort of a perfect person certain doesn't mean that I have been an and then sometimes when you're responding to someone else being or someone being ridiculous you can be an because you don't have the patience for it anymore because you don't have the uh at the moment you don't have the temperament to mat yeah what yeah could be maturity it

61:59could be you're overwhelmed there's a lot of variables so like if someone hears this and says you know oh well man I've been an lately maybe I'm a bad person like no it's just recognizing those moments where you probably could have handled something better and then continuing to improve and then also this idea this this is a really important one cuz people have this idea that somehow I'm 30 years old I shouldn't be doing this anymore I'm years old I should have learned by now that's all throw that away toss that aside you like these ideas of numbers that people have in their head that by a certain age you should stop you are alive and if you are alive and if you are thinking all those numbers that you keep attaching well you know when Einstein was 30 he shut the up stop doing that that that is a waste of your time and stop saying to yourself I should be better by now I'm

62:53such a total nonh helping thought what you need to think of is life you're living you're alive right now and if you've made a mistake and you're still continuing to learn and grow that's all just data yeah and I think part bundled with that is gratitude you know we gratitude's giant we we don't say a prayer in my household but we go around every night we have seven people living with us and we say what we're grateful for and what you run in a commune what are you doing uh we have it's a long we have a it's a long story have a woman from China there we have it's Jesus Christ what she do um wink wink sex slaves in from boat she doesn't do we have another woman who lives car container my buddy lives in the garage over there pay no attention to the banging um no but I you know we go around we talk about what they're grateful for everyone's grateful and I

63:44think that there's something it's a it's an opportunity to be authentic at that time but it's also like I think verbalizing those things are important so it's not just the negative oh I shouldn't be doing this but it's the positive look is a general is a general rule of thumb if you ever have any doubts about it just be kind to people it also it's uh it's great when you reinforce it with your friends like verbalizing it like uh I'm I'm a big fan of tell I tell my friends I love them all the time like me and my like my wife jokes around about it like she goes I don't know any men that tell their friends they love them all the time but all my friends do we all tell each other we love each other you know I love you brother and we hang up the phone I'm do it with all my friends and you know we're always hugging and always saying I appreciate you you know I think it's

64:28really important like I have a very tight-knit group of friends that I care about very much and they're all very they're very motivated and they're healthy and they you know they're not without flaw but they're they're they got going on and and it empowers me yeah you so here's why here's why that's important because you got the tattoos you got the build you've been in the ring you're friends with whomever whoever you're friends with and I think that whether you like it or not you're in a position particularly with young people to look up to you and that is exactly the kind of behavior that we want to see modeled it's not emotionally immature for a guy to cry at a tragic event it's I tell my friends I love them I tell you know people I tell my buddy over there I'm incredibly grateful for the opportunity to stay his house Etc and I think that that kind of we live in

65:19a culture that's suppressed these particularly males this ability for for men to communicate in an authentic way also to experience emotion like this idea of what somehow or another being stoic yeah is has virtue to it especially in the form the face of tragedy or even Joy like I sometime I could cry more for happy moments sometimes than I do for sad moments but I I I'll cry all I'll cry at cartoons man I almost cried like a ton of times I'm not crying at cartoons but yeah yeah it's interesting I think that that Journey from you as a 17-year-old to now I I mean there's some really core lessons for people out there struggling with maybe issues of sexuality or issues of feeling they hate the world or they're not good enough or they they their self-esteem issues or they and I think that they acceptance yeah acceptance and you know that's what we all want we all want to be loved and

66:20look here so I'm I'm I'm 49 it's like I'd much rather be people say about me hey you know Pete's a really good guy then Pete's a really smart guy it's like I want I want to you know I want to embody those virtues but but more than that I I think that um the story that you told there it it's it's something that's accessible to people and it's a type of thing that we need to do we need to figure out how to move our culture towards these more Humane ways of dealing with people and my own opinion is that we don't need superstitions to do that you're a perfect example of that right we we don't need people making objective claims about reincarnating in times through bodies like the doy Lama or wait a minute you don't think the doy Lama is a reincarnated Saint are you serious you got you got nervous there for a moment I thought you going believe that like wow this is going to be a long

67:17conversation dude don't you see my Buddha it's right there bro I got another Buddha right there see that's the funny thing if like I'll call on that in class and everybody will freak out whereas if I say Jesus walking on water and I de but if you start talking about Buddhism people are like you know how could you say that how dare you Lama is so cool he's friends with Steven Seagal Yeah well yeah actually saw them years ago together doing their little thing there all gets connected yeah right no I I um I had a psychedelic trip that I saw a bunch of golden Buddhas that's what all about no DMT Oh wow was that that literally that guy like in that position but there was fractals like millions of them infinite numbers of them it was very strange um so that's what that that little bo this guy made it for me I wish I remembered this homeboy's name I'll find it somewhere I'll throw it up on uh

68:12Instagram I think it's on my Instagram picture right I don't know I'll find it but um yeah all of those things all those things are not necessary it's uh I think we are necessary like all these uh the the false beliefs and all the the thing what they are is like scaffolding I feel like they're scaffolding for like Evolution and I think that that's ultimately the benefit that religion does provide is in in these insane beliefs in the sky gods and all these different things and we show reverence to these uh these deities and they have these rules that we must follow otherwise we'll be punished in those rules there becomes order and in that order becomes society and that's that's something that people always like to fall back on like we are a judeo-christian founded society and our judeo-christian ethics like I saw some woman who was arguing about Muslim

69:03terrorists and that was like one of the big things that this is this this country was founded on judeo-christian ethics so what monkeys were founded on eating bananas and we're not monkeys anymore you know it's like it's such a stupid like just because something's founded on something that's illogical doesn't mean you should have reverence for that illogical thing it's perfectly stated that's part of the problem I think with once we make ideas sacred yes and it's they become much more difficult if not impossible to revise like George Bush saying which is actually I invite your viewers to or listeners to listen to this uh he's prayed about the war in Iraq he knows what God wants him to do so the moment you do that it becomes irrev visible I used have a bit about that where George Bush was like you know uh that he's prayed about the world in Iraq and you

69:51know God bless the troops imagine if he said instead of that we have found Satan he is in Afghanistan and we were moving tanks into that area everybody would like whoa what the did you just say that's the that's the draw that's the line that we draw like you're not allow say he played he prayed to Vishnu or something no but I mean you're not allowed to say that you know the devil yeah you're not allowed to say the devil's real like you never hear the president bring up the devil they'll bring up God God blessed the troops God they'll never say Satan is at work and Satan is in the the hearts and minds of these uh these enemies they never say that because it's so Preposterous that we're slowly as Evolution as thinking evolves and changes I know evolution is the wrong word for there but as it improves and expands we are no longer accepting the idea of Satan like

70:46culturally culturally Satan was an accepted thing hundreds of years ago it was parallel like like if you looked at the mentions of Satan and the mentions of God they were right up there together you're blaming Satan on the bad things and you're praising God for the good things that's no longer the case now we just cling to these absurd Notions of this one that's watching us all the time and you got to sort of peripherally mention it and casually reference it without going into detail and you're allowed to do that because it makes people think well you're on the same page as me you're a God-fearing fairing Christian man like myself I'm a God-fearing Christian man myself as well God bless you God bless you as well you know but if you go Satan is looking out for you Satan is watching you right now Satan is just letting the air out of your tires like you go well that guy's a

71:34idiot you know like we've moved past Satan yeah but we haven't moved past God God exactly right or the idea of God even I mean if there is some all- knowing entity that is controlling everything and and is filled with love and has a grand plan for the universe they have yet to show themselves so this is all just a concept in an idea with no basis in fact and as we have found more facts about the nature of reality and the world itself it seems more and more Preposterous with every day every day that scientists come up with these new equations that show the the way the universe could have possibly be been formed and the every day that these guys at the CERN laboratory the the the Large Hadron Collider are discovering these what were at one time theoretical particles showing them to be true and their calculations to be correct we're have we have a deeper and

72:34deeper understanding of the universe but we think now we love to think that right now that we're filled with knowledge and we love to look at ourselves now and look at the past as well they didn't know back then but we know now but if we looked in the past they would have the same ideas they would look back at those poor monkey people with the bananas and they go those dummies they didn't even know houses yet we will one day look back at 2015 like what a bunch of fools what a bunch of ridiculous people that were still they they had this incredibly complicated society and this wonderful access to information but yet they were still Shackled down by ideology and killing each other over religion and ancient superstitions that that dictated their behaviors like what a weird time to be in they they will look at they'll look at us now in 2015 they'll say what

73:26a strange time this this adolescent period of of of Enlightenment where they're they're still they're still concentrating on stupid and the president of the United States can openly talk about God and every and no no one goes what is God what are you saying like what are you saying do you think Jesus came back from the dead what do you think do you think someone walked on water do you believe in a literal translation are you an Old Testament guy or a new testament guy well the New Testament no the New Testament was made by Constantine who was a Roman Emperor who wasn't even Christian he didn't even believe it he was he was he was he was he became a Christian on his deathbed like that's when he became a Christian like all these people that are like really into the New Testament and like I'll talk about Old Testament and people get mad at me on Twitter they'll send me this

74:16hate text you understand what the difference is between the Old Testament and the New Testament cuz the New Testament is utter horseshit it's created by a bishop and a Emperor that's a fact that's like established religious fact like everyone knows where it came from and not only that it was written hundreds of years after the death of Jesus so what are you talking about because if you're talking about the old stuff you got to go deep what go to the Dead Sea Scrolls go go go to the go to the the most ridiculous aspects of that and tell me you basing your life on that because that's even more Preposterous they found them in clay pots in Kumon written on animal skins these people people thought the world was flat and the sun was 17 miles away and we're going to they did they really did and we're going to we're going to this is how we're going to live our lives this is it this is all the

75:04facts we need the Large Hadron Collider CERN you know Steven Hawkins quantum physics Neil degrass Tyson those dudes with their telescopes no we're going to base it on leather skins and and and and charcoal ink right like really that's that's the that's the conversation we're having when we're talking about ideological religions that was a thing of beauty by the way oh thanks that was a thing of beauty what what it is I mean and and people think well you're an atheist you're an you're what do you believe in I had a guy yell at me at a comedy club once because I did this bit about scientology I do this bit about scientology about watching a Scientology documentary with my mom who made me go to Catholic school and how my mom thinks Scientology is Rel ridiculous I'm like what the exact and this guy is like yo what do you believe in what do you believe in like what do I

75:56have to believe in something do I have to believe I believe in everything that's been proven I believe that this is made out of wood and I I when I'm proven wrong right change your mind that's back to the Jiu-Jitsu thing again but when you also think about it what an unbelievable arrogance to think that you know the will of the creator of the universe you know what he wants you to do you know where he wants you to put your genitals I mean like you said in philosophy it's called the problem of induction or looking at the past the past past resembling the past and we will look back there's absolutely no question in my mind that you're correct and we will say wow we believe this this was how could we possibly have believed this but what's interesting to me is we know that that will happen like we know that that will happen and it's an opportunity for us to reflect and say

76:40wow are we being arrogant right now are are we thinking we know things are we pretending to know things when we don't know them and I think I think that a lot of that God talk is a type of arrogance I think it's a type of people I don't know wanting to assert how moral they are so they reap advantages like the president or I mean I think it's a very complicated social and even political problem but it's also a type of arrogance it is definitely a type of arrogance and it's also a way that people establish the moral High Ground yeah they establish a dominant social position over you and people love to do that they love to do that with their Pious attitude what they're doing is by by them accepting these Rel religious tenants they are somehow are superior to you and some people don't do that you know I shared a hunting camp with this guy I don't need to name his name he's a

77:34wonderful guy who's an elk Hunter and this guy would get up in the morning every day before everybody and we got up early you know we would leave the camp by 6:00 a.m. so this guy was up I would get up to take a shower at like 5:00 a.m. and this dude was up reading the Bible and he never talked about it and he he never talked about like God or Jesus or or any of the rule but to him it was uh a way that he explored these ideas and how he related to the world and in application this guy was a fantastic human being absolutely he was a wonderful guy like he was he was kind and it was like when you had conversations with him he was generous and he was very friendly and he was curious and he would you know ask like these really um introspective questions like he was a good guy and I think that's what matters I think it matters less whether or not someone is an

78:27atheist or not or Hindu and I think what matters is how we treat other people I think what matters is if we're kind to people if we listen to people if we do our best to engage them honestly and authentically and often we get too caught up in well what is someone's Rel especially now with the Republicans going bizar berserk with this whole Muslim thing I mean it's just disgraceful well you know what did you see that video is a fantastic video that's just been put out recently I think by some guys in Holland um where they were um CU it's in another language oh the Bible yeah I saw that they put they put a cover of uh they put the quran's cover on the Bible and they read passages to people on the street and they asked them what do they think about this and you know they were like well you know this is ridiculous and this is outrageous and it was all from the Bible

79:16yeah like like hilarious hilarious that a lot of people don't know is in the Bible and but when you even bring this up people already you're questioning their beliefs they start foaming at the mouth and fuming and the I can feel my phone get heavy from hate tweets right now just uh uh it's just coming in you're questioning my view of reality and it makes me uncomfortable when I go to work right it but isn't that the exact same issue with someone doing a Fantasy based martial arts oh 100% I've had conversations with people where they are furious at me because I don't believe in their death touch i' I've had to the people they like you know you are arrogant and your belief in martial arts and you're in a position of uh of influence because of your you know you work for the UFC and and what you're doing is you're you're up because you're you're not telling the

80:07truth about certain stop right you stop abandon it but you but you if you're like me who like I said I was martial arts and the the dojang was so sacred to me I wouldn't even have sex with my girlfriend there that represents like such an important part part of their life it's just so lucky for me that it happened during my formative period where I was exposed to reality at a young age where I had to accept it I was like ah Jesus you know I I had to accept that these techniques don't really work all the time some of them work but you have to learn all the other stuff for them to work at all yeah I I wonder about again so few few people have written about this I wonder about the experience that you had of that and I had of that we were in the same boat realizing over time that these things just didn't work and we had wasted our time and I wonder how similar that is to

81:01someone's escape from a faith you know like 100% people that have escaped from Cults like I've had folks on that have uh used to be in Cults uh Kurt mezer is a perfect example is a hilarious standup comedian a friend of mine and you know he was in um Jehovah's Witness is that what he yeah I think so and um he uh you know he won't accept any stupid now he like he's like no like when it comes to the regressive and some of these ideologies where you have to look at something in a certain way and you can't look at in any other way it's like a dogma and he's like no no no I've seen this before I know what this is what you're doing is you're you're saying you have to think a certain way that's that's bull like it can be discussed like you you can discuss certain aspects of people's behavior or gender identity or gender pronouns in fact not only can it be discussed but it

81:54has to be discussed we we have to have Arenas and a lot of people have been writing about this lately I wrote about in my book and I tweeted about it I if we have if we're not allowed an opportunity to have a conversation then extremists will step in with the answers like Trump is a great example that so we have to create spaces talking about spaces this probably another uh offshoot of the conversation the regressive left right we need to create opportunities for people to for sincere inquirers to engage things and right now we don't have that and again I I can bring it back to Jiu-Jitsu I mean you could just think about what would happen if you know this is a technique you do this blah blah blah blah it's sacred we don't question it then You' never get to the truth you deny people the opportunities that they need to figure out things for themselves yeah 100% 100% and uh I think

82:47martial arts is an excellent vehicle for that the one of the things that was just explained to me when I was really young that really did sink in my uh instructor uh was a uh disciple of General CH hung Yi who was the founder of Taekwondo he was you know he taught it to troops and he was like one of the guys like really uh honed the techniques for uh maximum power and efficiency and leverage and he um they had this idea that martial arts was a vehicle for developing human potential and uh I read that when I was like 15 and I've always used that phrase because I think that's a a such a massive what do yeah what do you mean by such a massive what well it's it's it's so clear when you when you understand that when you go through life life is filled with questions adversity puzzles different things you have to figure out the questions you have to ask of yourself um examining

83:51your own behavior objective reasoning there's all these different variabl Ables that come into play when it comes to life and I think those are highlighted in the realm of martial arts because if you can land a kick and you knock someone out then that that happened that worked you were in the ultimate like especially the Ultimate Fighting Championship is a perfect example of that but there there's no higher level of problem solving than problem solving with dire physical consequences because your emotions are on the line your fears your anxiety there's so there's so many fight or flight mechanisms in place there's self-doubt there's you know how much discipline did you truly execute in training did you give everything you had did you reach your full potential most people go through life without even coming close to their full potential and they live life in this this weird fog of

84:50uncertainty and of regret and of of of just this feeling that they're not accomplishing what they want to that they're not achieving their full potential and that martial arts is a vehicle for developing potential because through the very difficult training and through pushing yourself when you don't think you can and through this overwhelming uh desire for Comfort where you don't want to get out of bed where you you don't want to do the training where you would rather just blow it off and don't go to class by forcing yourself to do that it it engages the muscles of discipline the inner muscles yeah yeah and it also you understand about accomplishing goals and about about reality facing things so that is just so important so again it's Jiu-Jitsu right so when you deat somebody like if you you you work really hard and you tap someone out you get a a sense of you get a little I I'll speak

85:49for myself I I feel good like wow like I worked for this I tried hard you know like sure I work on my baseball bat choke now and I feel pretty good so that activity your hard work brought you to a point in which you would tap somebody out and as a consequence of that you feel self-esteem what we have done is we have inverted the system we tried to teach self-esteem absent any accomplishments that's not the way it works self-esteem is a byproduct of hard work of something that you have done as a direct result of an accomplishment so every every few years they give Americans they give kids all around the world a test I read this in U Martin gross's the conspiracy of ignorance many years ago excuse me and the the test is like hey all these people in the world you know Koreans the industrialized world the Japanese Germans Etc they took this how do you think you did in

86:45relation to them Americans consistently score in the bottom quartile in terms of their math and science how well they did in in comparatively but they score extraordinarily High number one almost always in terms of self-esteem we have taught the wrong things we've focused on the wrong things our school systems have been oriented toward the wrong things and and I think again you can just bring that back to Jiu-Jitsu and look at it look at that you don't you you couldn't possibly you could teach someone all the self they they walk in they get a white belt you teach them to feel good about themselves do this do this do this but does it work yeah yeah no it's you could get a lot of the lessons for martial arts out of a lot of difficult Endeavors you know I just don't think you get the problem solving aspect at the it's such an a high level like some people find that in

87:35rock climbing because it's scary and in and in accomplishing that and then getting through that you you you learn about yourself you learn about your ability to overcome adversity and yeah to face your fears but I just think that martial arts it is a more intense version of it because there's all connected to combat and to this the physical challenge of overcoming another human being and it's one of our biggest fears one of our biggest fears other than falling off of a mountain is uh being dominated by another human being getting your ass kicked in Conflict where we have this long history of War I mean I was talking to I heard that podcast Joo yeah the seal guy yeah that's a great podcast he's an awesome guy but we were talking about the conversation that I had with my friend Duncan Trussell where I said that and we it was kind of a revelation for the both

88:25of us like human history is a history of the wars that's when we talk about human history it's like the stuff that happened in between the wars and you know some inventions but it's mostly the wars that's most of the history you know where whether it's World War I or World War II or Vietnam or you know there's all these different conflicts that that happen and those are the bulk of our history when we when we consider the eras in the past when we consider the the the ages of the different things that happened we consider like genas Khan and Napoleon Alexander the Great and all these different things that happen we're considering War yeah I'll I'll go off in a little tangent if you don't mind it makes me think I've been thinking L talking to my buddy over there about life in the universe and this thing called the fmy Paradox where is everybody and I wonder if that the

89:15fmy Paradox being um the amount of life that must be out there yeah you know like why haven't we been contacted yet I I consider that to be just an extraordinarily interesting question yeah but I wonder if what you just said that our history has been a history of War I I I wonder if inherent in every species that has evolved they've had this a similar history of War you know because they've been subject to different evolutionary mechanisms and pressures and such you know like different atmospheres or what have you but I wonder if it's conflict over resources conflict over you know whatever maybe they have another gender or something I wonder if that's just intrinsic in the nature of life I think it is I think what's intrinsic in the nature of life is that sort of problem solving and that nature wants to find the best method of achieving a goal and so the methods that are ineffective die

90:12off and that's why 90% of the living species that have been on this planet are extinct they no longer exist because they weren't effective enough to be to keep reproducing and you can say no a lot of them because people wipe them out people are evil and people are horrible people are the dominant species it's it's it's what species do I mean many animals have wiped out animals you know there's there's a real issue right now with wild pigs and ground nesting Birds because wild pigs being an invasive species they're dealing with these birds that nest on the ground that didn't have these animals hunting them and or they shouldn't even say hunting they they're eating their eggs um so that's just an ineffective way adap or yeah it's an ineffective way to take care of your eggs can't leave them on the ground in a place where these pigs are rooting up everything and eating

91:03everything in front of them so and if they go ahead no it's okay no if they don't adapt then there'll be no more species absolutely and you know people say oh it's so evil it's so awful would you want a world filled with only the spotted owl no okay well if the spotted owl dies off is cuz it sucked all right I'm sorry I'm not saying we should should killed a spotted owl but the didn't make it okay and the other owls are still here and Eagles are still here and got by the way you wouldn't want a world filled with all Eagles either and there's a competition between Eagles and salmon if the eagles eat all the salmon we're going to be pissed at the Eagles you know I mean if the Eagles make the St the salmon extinct we're going to be like what the Eagles right you know it's funny so you're talking about this and uh in the back of my head I mean you're you're

91:48absolutely right in the back of my head I'm thinking wow like the so we're having a conversation right you and are talking like if I started to talk about that some of that stuff in class that's when you get the whole trigger warning safe spes and stuff again like people freak out but look this is really important I mean you're talking about species you're talking about survival you're talking about taking care of the planet and you know how do we weigh the concerns of the spotted owl against the loggers I mean you're talking about some really important things and the recourse to oh I'm offended or I can't think but makes me upset makes me think that maybe you soon universities won't be the I mean we'll have to have these discussions out of the universities which would really be it's great for you in your show it said but it's terrible for the society it's

92:32terrible for the University it's terrible universities in a sense have ceased to have these sorts of conversations when you watch those children scream at that professor at Yale and then you find out that that guy was disciplined and like what were they fired are they Ste down they resigned yeah I think they resigned yeah we're you but I think I think Liberals are eating themselves I think the left is literally regressive there's a difference well yeah that's a good point because liberals in terms of like social change and progress and you know acceptance of various different people I think it's wonderful it's great but I think that this regressive left with this very rigid ideology of what you can and can't say and the the behaviors in which they they engage in enforcing these things uh I I think it's preposterous and I think that ultimately what's going to happen is you're not

93:27going to have these kind of structures these these these places where people go and you're going to be learning things online yeah and it it's going to be a lot worse before it gets better and the hard thing is that many of your listeners are not in Academia and when we tell these stories people they think this guy's just making this well you are an Academia so explain it from a firstperson perspective um so I give give you an example okay so I had a an individual in class and the individual was not even part of the class now right in the syllabus I put in this entire class as a trigger warning like the whole thing A to Z you had to write that I put it in uh they so here's you wrote trigger warning yeah right in the syllabus the whole thing I love the fact you even use trigger warning trigger warning is so stupid right in the whole thing well see here's what happens cuz I was actually

94:17just brought up in charges again and if you don't do that then you know people can say well you didn't warn me well actually I did I warned you the first day it's in it's not only is in the syllabus I say Sy it's bold in caps in the syllabus and increased font so everybody knows entire class is a trigger warning yep yep the whole thing the whole thing okay and you know when I I went to the dean or whatever and he's questioning me about things and I'm like and I said you know hey it's in the thing and he said well can you see how people could be offended by this stuff and I'm like of course people could be offended by everything they be offended by anything I talk we were talking about the woman who's offended because Darth Vader was black that's on N MSNBC that Dave ruin tweeted today which is one of the dumbest things I've ever seen in my life she's saying that Star

95:02Wars is racist because Darth Vader's black meanwhile Darth Vader's not black they took the mask off you dumb right it's a white guy under there idiot I'm I'm not going to say I can Trump that but let me give you a couple examples Luke Skywalker's his son too and that's another white guy you idiot so here's one so this woman is in the class and I give a class at the end of the the end of the class she says I've never seen so many microaggressions in I think it was class uh knowledge values and rationality we use Sam Harris's book the moral landscape in that class and we talk about well we talk about heavy things you know we talked about Isis we talked about cultural relativism we talked about is there a way to make a crosscultural j i mean you know we're talking about things that frankly people in college should be talking about because they vote they're citizens in a

95:50democracy and they need to engage these issues and College professors are petrified they're just and and in a sense I understand that because it's a theft of one's time my case I don't care because I have no opportunity I was told Point Blank that you'll never get promoted you could publish 10 books from Harvard and we won't promote you so once I found that out I said well I can talk about whatever I want so why did they tell you that well let me finish the story so so so um so it was really interesting to me so she she gets up and she said I've never been so microG the guy's you know racist this is someone that again was not even parting not even in the in the class okay and you know I I thought wow like what my first I was like is this person totally insane or did I say something that was really horrible what were the microaggressions that she was citing oh

96:40well I focused in on the racist part so I said well what what did I say what did I say because if I said something that was racist I really do want to know because I don't want to be that kind of person so that's their belief revision thing again right okay so she said you used the example of Star Trek in a class and you were shocked when the woman in when when she she pointed to the woman she didn't know and she was right I was shocked I was genuinely I was almost flabbergasted that she never heard of Star Trek like I understand not watching it but she never heard of it and then I Ed the examp the example of Marilyn Manson right she said that you assumed that that she participated in white culture so that's racist okay now I so yeah so for her marn Manson is white culture yeah okay so CU he's a white guy so now we can really drill down on this and think about this we need to find a

97:33forum black fans of Marilyn Manson I'm sure it's out there go to Reddit sure Reddit has a forum so now we can really unpack this Insanity okay so so she she tells people that everybody should file a complaint against me and I said okay well you know well let's if you you look anybody is free free to file a complaint you have the number I said would you like we'll put it all right on the board you want to have a conversation with me she said no you're too far gone you're too far gone because you like start or you mentioned star track too far well I don't know see that's the thing it's like the horse and Allison run Wonderland it runs off furiously in all directions the whole thing fasinating thing that people do though they say well I can't discuss it with you you're too far gone that's a symptom that's a symptom of space safe spaces trigger warnings Satan's in your mind P Goan I

98:20cannot speak to you I will not get infected by your horrible ideas which come from Satan you are too far gone sir repent repent Peter so so here's so I mean this say this is just is very Sim simar it's very similar on the left to what you saying so here's what's interesting so was she black by the way because it'd be awesome if she was white no she was his she was uh Hispanic damn it so one of the things that that she was or maybe not I don't know she said her name was like she rolled or RS I don't remember what um how dare you racist and the first thing my name ISO Montoya the first thing I said to her is my literally when she told me her name I said I'm sorry if I can't pronounce that Ricardo mban okay so here's what's interesting about that okay so obviously she's been inculcated she is incapable and I don't want to Pi pick on her because in a sense she's just a

99:19victim right she's a victim of this malicious ideology that's running acoss Ross campuses now but people like that are not capable of engaging in entertaining ideas because they have this the university protects them they can say they've been aggressed they can they can say they've been kind of violated if you will like cognitively intellectually violated but what's really interesting about that two things one she thinks that she can arbitrate everybody else's reality so she thinks I can understand if I say something and he's offended by it or I say you know Taekwondo and some but she thinks that the regressive thinks that they arbitrate people's reality and they know what other people should be offended by which is amazing but here's the really interesting part I love Star Trek I'll show you my my daughter in a sec off screen I love Star Trek I'm a big Cleon no but she's

100:16Asian is that with Star Trek it has everything to do with it has every it has everything the pause was emphasis it has emphasis it has everything to do it because the woman the woman I was shocked hadn't heard of Star Trek was Asian you said she was no who hadn't heard of Star Trek it's a different woman no yeah there were two women one was the woman who said she's never been so offended in her whole life and the other one when she's when I met she said she said she didn't heard hadn't heard of it because it was white culture so okay two different people so I have yeah I have an articul there's a woman in the class I use a Star Trek example she hasn't heard of it I'm stuned like I can't believe it and I use a Marilyn Manson example she hasn't heard of it I'm shocked then the other woman the regressive oh the one who's watching yeah the one who's watching the

101:02regressive leftist says you're a racist you some something I don't remember exact words okay now I understand I was so confused I thought you were talking about the all these interactions I thought the woman who's the regressive also hadn't heard about Star Trek yeah then that's that's a problem with my articulation not your understanding just apologize so uh okay so what what really what was really interesting to me about that is that she identified that person on the basis of her race mhm not me she was assuming she made when you're a hammer everything looks like a nail when you're a regressive leftist every single thing you think of is race gender oppression intersectionality which is paretic I have never heard intersectionality anytime you you sectional what does that anytime you hear someone use that word you can automatically assume they Reg aggressive leftist and the next thing

101:54out of your mouth their moue will be some kind of smear campaign there's a hilarious video of Steven Crowder going up to people and asking them what their preferred gender pronouns are you you I I almost retweeted that but I thought you know what I got brief right now I you get in trouble I know that but that's what it is they they have really infested the highest levels of Academia and it's funny these diversity offices they report directly to the president like they they are offices in search of tasks but back to this example so she was the one who identified the person on the basis of their race she identified me on the basis of their race of your race yeah right because somehow somehow there's there's this thing called White culture she knows what it is she's offended on someone else's behalf I'm a white cisgendered heterosexual do you use cisgendered use that term uh well

102:48we're okay are you being forced to use that term Is that real okay it's not a question of being how's that work it's not it's not a question of being forced to use it but but but that's not a real term like that's not in any diction the whole thing is the whole thing is nonsense but cisgender is hilarious and the idea being that you shouldn't have to say transgender because transgender should be normal it's normal to to want to be transgender it's like it's it's so normal that by saying transgender you're making it abnormal so we should say cisgender for people who aren't transgender meaning if you are a male and you identify as being a male you are a cisgendered male that's right you're male like we we're adding all here's the thing about like adding all this extra to Define things that are already defined by the original word we don't need you're doing it to

103:41prop up transgender like that's the idea to make it so it's even we'll put CIS with regular gender trans with right so now so okay that was another great explanation so now why do these people do this well that's a long story but one value that's responsible for that is radical egalitarianism everything has to be radical everybody has to be equal yes interesting though how you know then they have these diversity initiatives and diversity requirements we need more faculty of color and I actually think that that's that can be a good thing in some circumstances uh so but what they mean is they mean diversity in the most narrow bigoted kind of a way they mean it in terms of skin color they don't mean in terms of ideological diversity they're not out there hiring you know uh Republicans and and Libertarians or conservatives but the other thing that's interesting is that you know I think it

104:34was it was on Sam's podcast with Douglas Murray he said we're going to be talking about pronouns of the big thing now we're going to be talking about pronouns while these people are sne sneaking nukes in our cities it is a failure to morally triage it is a it is a systemwide failure that's that's trickled down to individuals within the system to make it almost impossible for them to make Discerning judgments about things and so we have this consequence now of an entire generation of students who's being trained not only to suspend moral judgments but to think they're better people of as being a result and it's also beautiful that this is all coming from Academia because if you think about what a university is in Academia like a lot of people that are in Academia went to college went on a grad school got their m of their PHD started teaching never entered the real

105:25world stayed in the sheltered environment and now they're dictating this sort of behavior and thinking they it's like it's like a dojo in which they never it's the everybody's training with everybody else in the dojo right exactly I told you it's all martial arts the whole thing can be seen through that lens and then the this radical ideology coming in this area and wanting to redefine reality Absol in this area they're not they're not going out into the real world and experiencing the Congo and all these crazy up parts of the world and understanding like you're dealing with like an inherent problem with the human race like you can't redefine it by changing pronouns and cisgender it really is the most Insidious form of cultural myopia like they think they have latched onto some Timeless they're just making up they think they've latched onto some universal truth about reality and now

106:21they have this moral and and I think that the the moral underlying moral impulses that they have are pretty good ones you know you you don't treat people differently on the basis of their race and gend you be basically a cool person you don't be a dick in other words I think that those are they're being dick and enforcing it they're not enforcing it with kindness and compassion and understanding and trying to promote this like positive thing no they're shaming and doxing and attacking so that's the other piece that we need to understand here the other piece is the tactics and the techniques and these people have really done a number on me or they've attempted to they they mistake me for someone who gives a I really don't care but the the other thing is these people are just the most mean-spirited nasty vituperative vituperative damn you ever heard that one no Google Google that

107:11Google that V how you spell it v t u p r i t i t i v e vup it means like you know a nasty name calling son of a I'm going to call someone that one day wow V ative I like it there you go bitter abuse there you go o I like it that's a good one bitter abusive Rupa I like it but it's the you can these people are also characterized by the strategies they use with when they're engaging people the smear tactics if you say anything if you question or you challenge you're racist you're a bigot you're a homophobe but what that does is that shuts down the conversation that's the end of the conversation so they have marginal it really is not only they marginalize you it's this rise of the victim culture like every like victims are esteem now every victim I think I can find parallels in what I was talking about again with with martial arts is that like the dojo to me was

108:11sacred because this was something that was transforming me and changing me from a loser to someone who had like a possible outcome that was positive potential to path out I think a lot of these people they come from environments where maybe their parents were up or racist or dumb or they didn't like their life or they've been raped or some kind of physical trauma yes that's a good point um had horrible experiences with bad people or you know and you know maybe abused in high school bullied with and now they found some culture where they're being not just accepted but the it's it's invigorating to them like and we're going to change this world and we're going to make things awesome for people and we're going to you know we're going to make ask people what their preferred gender pronouns are this is so important we really need to get on this and they're they're they're living in this

109:06environment and again you're dealing with like really young people like like I was when I was young and I was looking at this this stage of my life as this transformative Journey that I was on and I was wholeheartedly dedicated to it maybe that's what they're doing you know this is their transformative Journey yeah I I think that's right and but they're imposing it on others yeah they're imposing it they're they're using the mechanisms of the university to impose those things I think that's right but the very things that we need reason and rationality are liberatory they can liberate us they can emancipate us you know again Jiu-Jitsu is like that you can test ideas you can you know it's like it's a son of a to have a guy I had a guy on him he's like 300 lb and he's like knee riding me and then skull riding me I mean it's just not very pleasant experience those

109:54both sound very gay knee riding and skull riding that's a microaggression it is a microaggression um so I wanted to get back to that that protest because I don't think we completely finished it I was going to finish the thought okay well give me the which protest this woman that was saying all the stuff about you that you know you're racist and that you're like yeah okay so you know I used the word hurtful before so one of the reasons that's really hurtful to me is because my daughter's Asian right and now is the age of Twitter and that's like saying I'm not racist I have black friends no M no it's different I know you're kidding but but but just think about just think about it for a second you know like my daughter grows up and this person in my class oh you know he's like hates Asians or whatever I wasn't even thinking of Asians I was like a guy who like Star Trek right so

110:43so you know those things tend to have a life of their own and then it's like oh bagoan he's the guy who hates Asians right he's the guy whereas no I'm just the guy who and this is the earlier point I was going to make the very thing that these regressives one of the things that they don't understand perhaps the most important is that reason is liberatory we can emancipate ourselves through reason and rationality but the only way to do that the way that reason acts as a lubricant is in Social discourse like we need to be able to have conversations it's non-negotiable free speech is not a negotiation and so these people they want to disinvite people if they don't agree with them as opposed to having you know an alternative speaker for their point of view or debate I'm not a fan of debates but you know or debate but what they want to do is they want to shut

111:37down the discourse but let's take that at a deeper level and take a look at that part of the problem with that is is that I firmly believe and I think I have evidence for this overwhelming evidence actually this a pedigree long pedigree in Western intellectual thought we can derive our values we can sit down and I can talk to you and we can figure out looking at the black statue there Hendrick there we we can figure out why we shouldn't discriminate against people on the basis of their skin color but the only way that we can do that it's not M it doesn't come from a wand is is that you need to be able to ask questions right so we can figure things out in discourse in dialogue that's how we figure things out and these people want to shut down discourse but if they do that then they become their own enemies they're the worst type of ideologue because they have beliefs but they

112:32haven't derived those beliefs so then those beliefs are then sacred right yes yes yes and the only way they're they're taking away the one thing that we need to figure to figure stuff out it's like they're in Jiu-Jitsu they're taking away the resisting opponent in this case they're taking away the dialectic the dialogue Free Speech open inquiry the ability to say things on campuses without being smeared as a racist or a homophobe or a bigot right you're 100% right you're 100% right mean you couldn't be more right about that aspect of this whole dilemma that they are trying to stop the debate because I think part of them knows what they're doing is ridiculous just like the the chiong master that wants to shoot you across the room the question they they kind of know they've got to know they they they've seen the U the question right so that is what I've really been

113:24thinking about do they know that their ideologies are bankrupt do they know I mean and and again I'm thinking about guys at the top like re Aon green Glenn Glenn Greenwald Jen from The Young Turks like when you have to make up and lie it makes me think that you're not genuine about your beliefs that you're not authentic like I just mentioned to someone the other day I have no problem talking to someone who tells me with total sincerity hey you know what I believe there was a talking snake like I can have a conversation with that guy he's sincere that woman that person is sincere they're you know they're saying this is what I believe but the regressives you can't it's almost imposs the one thing you need you you can't have a conversation because if you ask a question you're you're smeared you you become a whole smear campaign so I mean it's incredibly frustrating

114:23on an individual level but then when they have institutional support of this stuff then when they have woven their tentacles into Academia into you know very high positions and it's across the United States western Europe and again remember there is a hierarchy of things you can't talk about you know there is and and if you you want to figure something if you can figure out the relationship I mean this would be epic you figure out why I love my freedom of language with you here on the show you figure out why feminists are in bed with islamists and then we got something because this to me is one of the most bizarre fascinating disturbing grotesque I mean if there were ever a group who actively I mean you know it's even worse than the foreign Baltic states in the Soviet Union who the only military Alliance in history their primary objective was to attack

115:21themselves this is even worse than that I mean these people you could not possibly find a group of people who are more antithetical to than the most rudimentary feminist values than the islamists it is not possible never has it existed but yet these people are in bed with each other and it happens over and over again I mean this whole situation where you're laughing at it's awesome I mean it's it's just it's the Poetry of the bizarre yeah it is it's it's it's it's some bizarre Folly it's very strange it's it's very strange but it's they're brown and you you can't bad about brown people you can openly mock Christians yeah that that's right you you can you can mock Christians there's something about a skin color that's that trumps other things think about that for a second these people the only people who care this isn't my line I read this somewhere but the only people who care

116:20about race are racists and and regressive leftists these people are look the the regressive left really are the new racists they're really looking at everything in terms of race and sex and I think there's a lot of sexism there's a lot of sexism in the regressive left because they don't really like men and there's a lot of anti- masculine ideology that gets perpetrated on people the point where you're thinking like you're supposed to be more uh soft gendered gender is supposed to be a fluid thing like you're not supposed to be overtly masculine that's nonsense how come you you can be overtly feminine once you become transgender how come how come you if a woman wants to wear like a push-up bra have her tits poking out and a short skirt and high heels and a lot of makeup and do her hair up that girl is giving into the patriarchy but if a transgender does it you go girl if a transgender man

117:12all of a sudden adopts those traditionally feminine views it's hypocrisy but it's even worse than hypocrisy because if it just stopped there it would be something but it's this idea that these people they think that they can dictate to other people how they should live yeah when you see a guy who's a powerlifter okay some big giant like you know that M That Game of Thrones oh the mountain guy yeah the mountain guy I met that guy this well I didn't say hi to him I saw him he was at the UFC this past weekend he a gigantic man he's huge he's a cool thing with Conor McGregor too yeah it's awesome he obviously likes being huge he enjoys picking up and moving it around he breaking records what do I give a why would I care he seems like a nice guy like the idea that this and even if he's an well here's the thing is but he's he doesn't seem to be and that my point is

118:04like there's no he's he's not doing anything terrible like but you would look at that and and decide that this person living their life in this way is negative that he's masculine and he's a part of the problem and rape culture and all this he's just picking big up and moving it around and flexing like who cares F the most innocuous thing right that one could do why is it why is it because he's overtly masculine why is that bad like what if he just would put the same amount of energy into swimming and this guy just likeed to swim across the ocean would you freak out about that no it's like it's it's this feeling that this guy is becoming this thing that you find oppressive even if he's not doing anything yeah so so take so they're ideologues we got that and they subscribe to ideas that are just not in accordance with reality and I think and I'm not using the term

118:58regressive here I think General liberals in general tend to believe that if we can change social systems somehow and and and I I think that there's a lot of Truth in this uh Stephen P step Pinker kind of uh in the blank slate deconstructs some of these ideas but liberals kind of think if you could only change the institutions and Society then things would by definition be more fair and more equal we're all born blank slates and you know it's all of these disparities and inequalities come about as a result of uh problems within the system dispar you know inequalities within the system and there's look you unless you're really an idog on the right you would be hardpressed to say you know why why shouldn't we try to do our best to create systems of justice that are more fair I'm a big fan of John R absolutely you know any reasonable person would say that but these people

119:52they don't believe in differences they think that they're they're nonbi the differences between men and women are not biological they think that they're cultural artifacts they think that you know and I don't know if you want to get the whole race thing but the race thing is another thing but they think that race is only skin deep they're it's a social construct you know rather than saying well why did Jewish women get TASC syndrome whyer black guy black people get more CLE cell anemia um but again you know I I noticed my hesitancy in discussing these things because I know that anytime you bring this up this is an opportunity for people to smear you tell you you're a bigot a racist a homophobe and and oh and and it's also the Pinnacle of identity politics where the things that I say are discredited or they look at me because I'm I'm situated in the body that I am for the sexuality

120:45I had no choice over whatsoever and they use that as an opportunity to discredit my speech I I mean the whole thing is just it's it is literally if you could say well let's let's make a list of all the things that we can write down to make it impossible to solve our problems these people they have the list I mean they have the gold standard for the list yeah it's it's a very good point I mean I think one of the most important aspects of this is what you said about silencing debate and that debate and discussion is the only way we figure things out and I don't know I met you today I know you because of your work I know you because of your associations with friends of mine like Sam Harris but I I I don't know your thinking until I talk to you and when I talk to you I go oh okay I see how he sees that or he sees things in a different way and it's hard for people to do that because we

121:37have this rigid set of ideas that we have in our head and we would like to reinforce those on everybody because it makes life simpler well if you think the way I think and I think the way you think it's perfect right so that's when we bring Jiu-Jitsu in again right so that's why the problem is when we have hang out with people who only believe like we do it's it's called a filter bubble uh and it's a book about it called the big sort we tend to be more confident in the beliefs that we have right but what we should be doing is we should be going to different gyms right you should be going to your buddy 10th Planet you should be going and checking out different things because you need to test these ideas to see if they work in the same way we should be listening to ideas it's a problem if you're a liberal and you only listen to Liberal stuff or an atheist and you only listen you

122:26really need to listen to challenge and engage Yourself by opening yourself up to these experiences and starting with the possibility that you could be wrong so if you're a black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu and you walk into someone's school and the blue belts are routinely tapping you you got to do some thinking yeah you got to be honest with yourself and it doesn't matter how much time you've put into it it doesn't matter what your commitment is what matters is what works yeah that's it that's it and that is a beautiful thing about highlevel problem solving in martial arts that if it works it works and it's it's hard to do that when it comes to ideas like compassion and Justice and getting along and how you should treat people and how people should be accepted and you know there's there's things about diversity and about equality that I think we all agree with I mean I think

123:22you shouldn't be judged by your sexuality or what you look like or where you were born or you know fill in the blank nationalism seems to be kind of silly to me I think you should judge people on how you behave and how you interact with each other and like do I enjoy talking to this person and guess what you might enjoy talking to me but somebody else might think I'm a they might not like talking to me and that's their prerogative too they can you don't have to just because you like Peter bosan just because you and enjoy people doesn't mean I have to enjoy them you know I have friends that have friends I can't stand you know and I'll be around like oh Christ why you hanging around with this guy he gives me headaches I got to get out of here yeah and the older that's okay too the yeah the the older I get the the more I I just want to spend my time with

124:07people I really want to spend and not obligations can't fix people I've tried so hard to get along with people that are unmotivated or lazy or they have constant problems in their life they don't look at themselves objectively and you talk to them about things that happen in their life and they have a Myriad of excuses it's overwhelming and that you if you have those people in your life they will overwhelm you with their issues and you will never get anything done and so my take is try until you can't try and then get the out of there yeah yeah and you you're already doing what you're doing and is that you're modeling those behaviors you know when my I just talking to my buddy the other day he's he's upset that all the aggressives are attacking him and I just said just publish everybody yeah that's the currency in Academia like what do you care like just publish and explain your

124:58thoughts in a way that will inspire debate and Inspire thought explain your thoughts in a blog in a way where people can read it and and like it and and share it with friends and that's one of the beautiful things about today is that you have this ability that's never literally unparalleled access to other human beings it's never been like this where you could just write something thing you put it on Facebook you could be a uh Carpenter in Kansas and you write something beautiful on Facebook and it'll be shared across the world within minutes yeah I'll add one more thing to that and don't treat people if you've been treated negatively by people don't stoop to that it's hard right it's hard for people yeah my me my mentor is somewhat of a of a non Secor but my mentor told me this really fascinating story no no the pope no the one that they just got rid of

125:55right the the cholester pope uh he he told me he was a he's 97 he's a um Survivor of um binal yeah he's a really amazing guy he's a film about his life and he went back and liberated the same concentration camp told me the story about chickens that was uh very profound in my life B basically I think he was on the study if not then but it doesn't make any difference basically they they wanted to see if they could reverse the pecking order among chickens and there's something that's a literal pecking order and that if you put chickens in a coupe seven chickens chicken one will pick chicken two chicken one will pick chickens two through seven but never be picked chicken two will not pick chicken one but we pick chick Peck chicken so the same thing all the way down chick chicken 7 gets pecked by all the chickens and pecks nobody so they wanted to see if they could reverse the pecking

126:47order and I think that this story is profound implications for all of life and so what they did was they put a little collar they put little collars on all the chickens and when the chicken raised his head as if if it was going to Peck another chicken they Zapped it now here's the question to you and I got it wrong when he asked me do you think it was easier to make chicken one chicken 7 or chicken 7 chicken one chicken 7 chicken one see that's what I said that's wrong really and here's the reasoning for that chicken 7 has been has been um PL uh not plucked pecked pecked thanks has been pecked its whole life it's it's it's all only going to get pecked it only takes one shock and I'll tell you another very quick story it only takes one shock of chicken one to make a chicken 7even instantly really yeah because it's never experienced that that's why for example in the criminal

127:42justice system harsh punishments don't work they just don't and that's borne off by overwhelming empirical evidence but I think the theoretical background for that is the chicken story that's why like my he was telling me that when his son he never yelled at his son this funny story looking at you with all the tattoos and his son wanted to get a tattoo and he slammed his hand down and he said no and he screamed and his son was so shocked it was like such a shocking thing because he had never raised his voice he'd always been chicken one you know he had always been but when you really start to think about the implications of that of what kindness will do of what of why being there's your word again vituperative nasty harsh to people the best way to change moral attitudes is through Rapport the best way to help people and if you read the the Christian books they

128:34talk about this interesting book called tactics the main thing is you know develop relationships with people they're friendly they're kind they're trustworthy you have communities with people and that gets them involved in their community and thus their faith based same thing with jiu-jitsu I have like some great guys I was just hanging out with the other day who do Jiu-Jitsu Jiu-Jitsu is also interesting just parenthetically because you have such a trust of the people you work out with I me you have a bond a buddy of mine is a prosecutor for the state and you know how you have to say hey I know this guy well he knew another guy who's also a friend of mine and they did Jiu-Jitsu together and he told the judge and the lawyer and they said they have they don't have a problem with it neither one of those people do Jiu-Jitsu right because there's no freaking way that I

129:22would let someone do Jiu-Jitsu sit on a jury with somebody else who's either the prosecutor or the defender because those people trust each other because you have to trust each other when you Jiu-Jitsu or people will break your arms they'll choke they could kill you're also a part of a very tight-knit and unusual Community absolutely and you you have this bond with each other that I don't think people will understand you're you're practicing killing each other yeah that's right yeah you're you're practicing breaking each other's arms yeah so I think that that that chicken story and I told that because often we think that the best response to be when when we're being mistreated or we perceive an injustice or unfairness is to lash out and a type of emotional maturity is just to not lash out you know maybe a really good strategy which I've adopted instead of it's certainly

130:10much easier than than attempting to do the emotional work of being kind and compassionate is to just ignore people you don't have to meet their nastiness with nastiness you just walk away well that's a good approach if you could pull it off sometimes people get pissed off to you're like this guy but I think that Al also is what I call the battery effect and it's also a good aspect of Jiu-Jitsu I think human beings have a certain amount of energy that they store up in their body because I think we have our bodies are we we have this ancient structure that's been passed on from generation to generation thousands and thousands of years of human beings and for the most part up until really recently you are constantly engaged in physical activity and conflict and your body is designed for that and I believe your body has a certain amount of requirements for the

130:59expenditure of energy and when you don't meet those requirements your battery overflows and I think that's what road rage is and I think that's with uh irrational responses and I know personally from my own experience and my own shortcomings when I have had irrational responses is because I have not maintained my body correctly and I have not taken care of that battery and then when it comes up especially when you're someone like me it's even more consequential because I've done it my whole life so my whole life has been about exploding punching kicking just all kettle bells Jiu-Jitsu it's all this and in doing that if I get it out of my system I'm tranquil right everything's calm but when I don't get out of my systems my body it's like I think this is an opportunity to go crazy do it you got all this extra you know what I mean it's like your body's like come on like it's

131:50it's bed up you've got too much juice in your battery and Jiu-Jitsu people for the most part are some of the most mellow calm and relaxed people outside of it they also have the benefit of knowing that the average person literally has no idea how to defend themselves we we know this because we have been personally humiliated as an average person going into Jiu-Jitsu and then you become a practitioner and you become fairly proficient and then you understand your limitations but you also understand much more deeply the limitations of the average person absolutely now you you you happen to have an from my perspective an encyclopedic knowledge of martial arts and lineages and people in my experience the people I've met like like uh you know um I'm trying to think of uh um John kavar would be a good example he's a very very have you ever rolled with John no he's very good like he's

132:43extraordinarily good I'm sure he is yeah he's great guy yeah he's a super good guy the the the People You Meet who are just the most dangerous deadly people they're just they got nothing to prove yeah they seem to be the nicest people to me you ever met Marcel Garcia no he's the sweetest of sweeties yeah he's just like a smiling happy assassin like when you're around him he's so nice he's just such a nice guy and yeah when you're around him my friend Eddie Bravo he's nicest guy ever yeah he's always nice yeah and then and then so I went out to a bar a little while ago and a guy had a black belt around his waist as a belt and he was playing pool and I thought to myself this guy has some issues was it dangling yeah it's like you know how you tie a belt around a ghee he was tied it around his pants like that so like like the the the two ends were dang like a black belt

133:32would be so he wanted to let everybody know that he's a black belt you know you just buy a black belt that's the other thing I tell people like like you can get a black belt from like online you buy them and then they come and then you put it on like you don't have to earn it's not like it's like a sacred forging ground of black belts fanty martial art just pay a lot of money you don't even have to do a fantasy martial art you could just be a regular guy and order a black belt I mean you literally can there was a video really recently I mean it still does happen to this day of some guy showing up at a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu school he puts on a ghee I think he had wrestling shoes on and a black belt and he showed up at this gym and he started uh working out with people and then the instructor realized immediately that this guy was not a black belt and humiliated him and

134:18punished him and tell him to take the belt off and get the out of here and he was screaming at him but see that's the beauty about Jiu-Jitsu too is you can't pretend cannot pretend yeah you can pretend in some Marshall Arts I mean there's guys that invent moves that they think like this one of my favorite videos is these guys in Harlem that there not videos there's a series of them who practice some some sort of fake Kung Fu and like one guy will uh will be like he'll throw a punch and then the other guy will go well someone does that to me what I'm going to do is I'm and they they don't say it like this they say it in a very Urban way like no no no no no that ain't going to work cuz I'm going to step over here and I'mma attack with a chicken wing and then I got a I got a monkey paw and they invent all this stuff I'm going attack your ribs from this position and then they

135:05guys also in on it because they're also practicing like oh yeah yeah yeah I see how that would work I see how that would work what's hilarious is sometimes these guys actually have fights and when they have fights it becomes like two kids in a schoolyard it becomes a brawl on the ground they wind up clawing at each other and they can't do anything there's no Kung Fu there's no monkey paw there's no attack the ribs with your knife point fingers and all this stupid but you watch these guys do it and me as a person who studied martial arts my whole life I know I don't practice Kung Fu but I know what is actually Kung Fu and what is some that someone's making up they're just practicing and making things up well they could go to even a Kung Fu Dojo and try and and and pretend that that stuff's real and the Kung Fu guy would go like what are you talking about like this you're inventing things

135:58don't you feel bad for those guys at some level yes I do I do I think that a lot of those guys if they just found the correct path would benefit greatly if they just found a real martial arts school okay so here's what I think part of it is I think that they engage and I'm really interested to hear what you think about this I think that they engage in a willingness to self deceive oh 100% yeah 100% yeah and they it's mutual it's with both people like they they you know it reinforces each other you see it in religion too though you see that in religion and God finds a way yes he does God does find a way meanwhile they leave and smoke crack and suck some dude's dick people are crazy I that's what they do they they pretend they pretend and they love to one of the things that people love about Christians like Christians love about Christians is like well I'm a Christian I'm a

136:49Christian too they you're saying I know yes tribalism and also I know that at least in the moment you are going to engage in some very predictable Behavior you're going to engage in you're you're a God-fearing fearing Christian man so you're going to behave like a God-fearing Christian man and you're going to say things I'm I'm I know where you're coming from you're not some weirdo Buddhist Zen dude who likes to do peyote no you're you're you're real clear you know what I mean I mean it's real clear you like country music are you Luke Bryan fan me too of course you got to pickup truck of course I got a I got a belt buckle I got a big belt buckle too you know what about your boots look at my boots I got cowboy boots you know it's like we we engage in these really predictable patterns and people find comfort in those patterns yeah and we tend to like people who are

137:35like ourselves yes yeah it's very much a tribalism thing and it's it's also very much it's it reinforces your own like if you have a a lack of willingness or ability or whatever it is to question the reality that you you have been shown that you have subscribed to if you have if you're not willing to question it and you find someone else who's also not willing to question it there's some comfort in that and if you reassure each other there's some comfort no that's absolutely right and that's why it's so important for people to be honest with themselves and how do how do we promote those values of people of self-honesty I mean how do we this way I think that's conversations I think this is the way you do it and especially a conversations like this that will be heard by more than a people yeah and that's that's the way you do it I mean I'm not saying

138:24that's what I'm doing bro I'm fixing the world but I'm saying humans talking to each other through social media through and I I wonder I'll just throw this out now I wonder if you know everyone's like oh you know what come after postmodernism whatever I wonder if this comes after postmodernism I mean I wonder if these truth-telling conversations come after postmodernism well I say I I certainly think there's a great benefit to talking to people and having people be honest and even in an uncomfortable way where when you listen to it it makes you think oh like there's lights that go on in my head when I hear someone say something maybe maybe they'll be vulnerable or maybe they'll be like introspective in almost a painful way when I hear it there's lights that go on in my head while I go wow okay I'm getting some real from this person and I'll find in

139:09myself these moments that relate to what this guy's saying and I I I try to see themselves from this point of view as opposed to a newscaster when someone is uh today in Los Ang we found out the hard way what happens when you don't obey the law there's no re reality there's no there's there's no human in there this is a a strip club DJ coming up on the main stage it's Lexus $14 comicazi order now you know what I mean it's like these are patterns that are not real that people will subscribe to and adopt and then perpetrate and and they do it over and over again in the business World hello Jim how's the family is everything good these patterns are like they protect you from having to be vulnerable and real they by by adopting these predetermined patterns of behavior that we all are comfortable with and we all know as a God-fearing Christian man well I'm a God-fearing

140:11Christian man myself so I understand where you're coming from there sir give me a handshake right now I know we're on the same page that what they're doing is they they're they're they're removing the possibility of vulnerability and of of reality and authenticity yes authenticity is the perfect word and that that makes me sad for them it really does it's it's a type of tragedy well you get sad at that I don't get sad at well I do I I get sad at cartoons well I don't get sad at cartoons but I do feel the impetus to help people like that like I do feel that it's important that that people are laboring under beliefs about reality like again fantasy based martial arts that just simply aren't true and they're wasting their time but unlike fantasy martial arts these people vote right and these people affect decisions they directly affect my life yes yes yeah

141:01especially social issues comes a real problem you know it becomes a real problem when you start blocking people's access to certain medical procedures and deciding what can and can be done based on I mean look at what was happening during the Bush Administration when it comes to when it came to stem cell research right I mean it was Shackled and stopped because everyone they're going to sell babies they're going to they're going to kill babies and just get the stem cells from the embryos and it's Satan like mean get stem cells from skin you and meanwhile the rest of the world has like Advanced and progressed the Iranians and South Koreans yeah I mean it's just we we got by religious ideology got in the way of medical Innovation yeah and it's I think I think part of this is I've been thinking about this a lot I think part of this to is way that we can at least Dent this

141:53problem is by promoting the value of honesty because if we promote the value of honesty then with that comes the willingness to revise people's beliefs like and we have to make it okay to say I don't know yeah like I'm totally cool with you sitting here and you talk about all these guys I I don't know all that stuff I think that's one of the beautiful things about this new age of information is that is impossible now clearly to know everything no one can know everything so it's okay to say I don't know now where it used to be a sign of you were poorly motivated or poorly educated or what I mean I'm not very educated I went to college for three years I barely paid attention and I only did it because I didn't want people to think I was a loser I barely made it out of high school but since that time I I've read a lot of I've watched a lot of documentaries I've had

142:43a lot of fascinating conversations with people and I've accumulated some information so am I educated not really but yeah me I'm educated on certain things about life I would say maybe not formally but you're educated but what is that you know where where is formality now when you have formal education like what's going on with your school great question not all SCH all schools all schools what is it now because that's not education you're you're you're being indoctrinated into this ridiculous ideology if you're participating in that kind of it's worse than Ed it's anti-education it's like Kata yeah it's in a lot of ways in a lot of ways it is um it is just like religion and and that's what my friend Kurt Meer was saying about the social justice Warriors he's like no no I I've seen this I grew up in a cult I know what this is you're telling me I can't think about it

143:36any other way and that's and his reaction to it is very he gets angry at it and you know and he's not like a violent guy but he's like you know he like this I know what it is this is you're you're making me think a certain way I'm not doing it yeah and in the bigger picture of things you know America has been this is a somewhat of a controversial statement but but we're not the great superpower we used to be but the one thing that we speak for yourself the one thing we've always had is we've had strong institutions and strong universities and now we're seeing those being undermined at least in the humanities in general and even a certain extent in the sciences and it it I don't know the Sciences really in what in what way see that's why I said I think CU I don't I don't really know cuz I'm not in the Sciences so I speak to that but just anecdotally from what I've heard of

144:23people but again I can't I can't speak to that you know I was thinking about but anecdotally can you come up with specific examples cuz that's where I haven't heard it interfered with except for the idea of promoting more women in science and there's somehow or another some sexism invol in science well that's what I was thinking so so here's the problem with that why are there no diversity requirements with sports teams well right like football teams how come they don't to have a certain amount of women because they want to win well also they don't want women to get killed right right so but that's different cuz it's physical okay well why why aren't they say well we need so many Puerto Ricans here or we need so many there aren't diversity requirements so here here's a word for exogenous it's like an ex I know that word okay cool cool so so because because they want to win

145:14in other words they're telling you this is important to us anytime you impose a value on a system that is that is winning is the value and that's a marketplace right that's a competition that's a free market anytime you say well you know you also need diversity then you're making it more difficult to to win a meritocracy is like that like you you want people in a system to have in in Academia I can tell you what those are you need to be Well published your Works need to be cited by others you need to have we have all these metrics they're they're pretty straightforward you either live up to the metrics or you don't but now this is why I talking about the Sciences when you try to put people in positions who are not qualified for those positions you undermine the meritocracy so when you're trying to put people if you say well there's not enough women here we need to find more

146:08women there are not enough African-American well enough it's a tricky but there there are very few African-Americans who study philosophy if you're an African-American with a PhD in philosophy man you are your gold that is awesome so an African-American with a PhD for philosophy can kind of write their own ticket yeah yeah that's CU is that a good thing because they want to promote more African-Americans get involved in philosophy and then perhaps that will sort of engage more people into pursuing that now this is now this is a really interesting conversation that we should have this is the kind of thing at this point in Academia we have to shut down the discourse because someone's going to be offended but I think that's an important question because your question is basically it's a kind of utilitarian calculus like okay let's say that we have what is first of all you have to

147:00look at the evidence regressives don't like evidence very much but we have to look at the evidence what is the evidence if there are more African-Americans in philosophy can they Mentor more African-American students Etc of course I would think that we would want that that would be a good thing that would be something that would be wonderful the question is does that mean that we would hire a candidate who does not who would not be hired if that candidate had a different skin color right like that whole thing undermines the meritocracy but the moment that you start talking about putting a diversity requirement on for example my discipline philosophy in essence I think what you're saying is it's not important your discipline isn't important because we don't do that when the outcome really matters we don't do that with brain surgery we don't do that with sports

147:52teams right so we're not looking for the best candidates what we're looking for is to bring people into these disciplines that may not have had the opportunity and that might be bad for the overall discipline yeah it might it's bad for the overall institution it's bad for the discipline but you're not find the best people but the idea is that you're trying to promote these disciplines in places where people aren't as not represented but also they don't have the same advantages they don't have privileges they privileg is another word we talk about so so they're underrepresented so we want more people in discipline in as long as look that's not bad in and of itself but we need to have a conversation about what that means see part of the problem with regressives is they look at outcomes instead of opportunities we need to construct systems to give every regardless of their skin color their

148:52ethnicity an equal opportunity and an education of the First Rate and what we're seeing instead is systems being created to orchestrate or engineer outcomes produce this many black you know African whatever it is or Hispanic whatever it is the first of all that's a bad way to think about it it's a horrible way to think about it but the other problem is in meritocracy matters we need we need to if anything should be institutionalized it should be systems that are raced blind systems that don't look think about it you could also think about it like this think about the black guy who is in philosophy who's incredibly smart and qualified I have a student of mine Matt Hernandez the kid is freaking genius like truly one in a million like much smarter than I am he's published stuff I mean the kid's awesome he's hispanic he's going to get his PhD in philosophy got a full ride a full schol

149:51scholarship the crime the shame is that when Matt gets in people would say well he just got it because he's hispanic no actually no he got who's going to say that though well no one's going to say it they're going to think it well that's the problem the problem is that we can't have a conversation to ask people if they're thinking about it because if they say yes they'll be smeared as a racist okay so then how do you address the issue with inequality inside of these marginalized communities question look this is what I think we need to do when you look at surveys of if people so I I think that these lines are primarily upon on class drawn upon class which is something else no one wants to talk about instead of race it just so happens that uh fewer African-Americans or you could frame it the other way more African-Americans are Bor born to Poverty than than white

150:45folks that's just a that's just a fact we can also talk about something that it's really interesting about criminogenic factors or risk predictors they're not what you think for people who would be violent criminals just not what you think at all uh but people try to make that a racial issue but when you look at these systems when you look at these school systems for example um I just totally lost my train of thought I started thinking about race and Jimmy Hendrick's photo back there oh sorry well you were talking about um trying to get more uh addressing the issue of inequality so so what we need to do is well we need to start thinking about opportunities well the other thing is we need to think long-term and not shortterm we need to look at the problem and be honest and there are some structural issues with our electorate and the way that we've established

151:38politics in this country of offices of four years and then eight years are numerable we need to have a longer term vision and a look at what this wants to be uh right now we Face a problem in that we're not adequately educating poor people in our country and the majority of those happen to be black and this is an enormous problem this is going to come back to haunt us but the solution to that problem is not diversity initiatives that's the here's the other reason why that's bad it's not even a Band-Aid it's worse it's because people then say well look this philos department this department has so many minorities things must be going well actually no they're not going well it was an artificial solution that was put in and the underlying structural inequality and economic disparity hasn't been addressed that's a great way to put it and what about all the poor people that live in

152:32West Virginia or Kentucky there families have been generations and generations or coal miners I mean just because other white people have made it into universities and made it into certain institutions you're being racist if you think that those people shouldn't get an equal shot at things as well and so the way we fix it is again this is John rw's idea public education of the First Rate however every time I would say that people would say two things they'd play identity politics you're just white you're saying that because you're white that gives them that's their ticket to discredit what I'm saying that's the that's why people they use that as an excuse to not listen to your arguments it's really it's perverted I mean it's it's it's really despicable so so so they so they use that they use that idea as an excuse so you've just said that but the other

153:21thing that it does I mean if you really start to think about what kind of a society do we want to move to what what are the limits of our institutions what what role should the meritocracy play should you disrupt that if there are racial inequalities or imbalances these are questions we have to address people in a democracy have to address this and you cannot have fear of talking about this because someone's going to call you a racist you just can't so if you want to put a proposal forward that says or an idea well I don't think you know hiring should be this way you need to have that conversation but there's one other issue there's one other the tactic that the regressive left use and that's the idea of privilege they love that word privilege oh well you know you don't even see your privilege you don't privilege is yet another thing that's used and look I I think the impetus for

154:15that is good the danger here is that because the these people are so nasty so mean-spirited and so generally insane that we discard everything that they're saying we throw the baby out with the bath water now we need to be conscious and careful that we don't do that we need to acknowledge that they're saying some important things they you know racial treatment of people on the basis of race gender sexual orientation not discriminating against someone because they they don't feel comfortable in a male body or female or a guy Mark fiser I roll with just is a gay and he has this gay j- jitu thing these things are important these things matter these things are things that we have to talk about and if I have privilege I want to be conscious of that and if I'm treating someone in a way that's unjust or if it's unkind I I I want to know about that that's not the guy I want to be you

155:08know so so how do we talk about these things how do we how do we engage these well here's how you don't talk about them you don't talk about them by constantly in people with privilege you saying you have privilege you're not or Portland State my University they had a an event where students minority students were were you know could speak about all these things but students who were I can't remember the exact phrasing not of color were invited to listen think about that they were invited to listen they have institutionalized racism that's what that is it is it certain cly racism in that sense but isn't it an opportunity for people that have been marginalized to express themselves in in a platform that maybe a lot of people that have been marginalized haven't had the opportunity ABS would isn't there room for people of a specific race to speak uh about some

156:08issues that maybe they would understand intimately that you or I wouldn't because we're white folks there's no question at all that that's true and you know what so is it bad though to have someone have the opportunity to like let's only let's allow African-Americans to speak and let's allow these white folks to listen to what they have to say and then maybe you have another conference or maybe a debate or maybe a conversation where you allow someone to have a retort so the first the first problem with that is if you frame it in terms of an opportunity then if I say yes it's bad then it be like I'm denying people an opportunity so I don't think that's the best way to frame it right excuse me uh the problem with that one pro I asked my buddy who's in app pel judge and he said one he said he thinks it's unwise or his son actually said this he didn't say this his son is a is a on

156:56the he clerks for some Supreme Court I don't even know what he but somebody he has is a lawyer board certified Etc or a pass the bar excuse me uh part of the problem is that if you do that so I was amazed that that was legal I'm not a lawyer I don't pretend to be a lawyer but he said it's actually legal the problem is that you then need to hold then white people or whoever any other group can hold and say look blacks can't speak basically so we can get in and we can talk about how great it is good luck with that yeah so you're right so you're so it's not right so you you're creating an opportunity for people who are genuine racists to undermine the whole system but the other thing is like I think it's important you can totally do that and say look we're going to have people for two hours speak about their experiences of Oppression I think that's great and I think that they should do

157:44that and I think we need to be more sensitive and I think we need to correct any structural inequality or remove biases that we have from people and I'm sure I still have some I don't I don't know of any I try to remove them I'm sure I still have them but the idea is that shouldn't people of any race then be allowed to ask people questions about those experiences shouldn't we then say oh you've had this experiences of you know gang Jiu-Jitsu again whatever it is or being black in the academy or being like you said this like I don't explain that to me explain that's to all know so you're shutting down possibilities for people who don't understand those that's the way we understand things we come to understand through asking questions like you know oh why do you do the rear CH this why oh because if you don't the guy will pull your arm off so you put in the back of his head so like we need

158:33environments that uh encourage genuine inquirers in questions and the here's the problem so the the someone could say well what if someone goes in there and starts shouting racial epat or horrible things okay well they're a bad person well they're horrible they're a vile person that's that's it should be clear to everybody and the only way that's going to be clear to everybody is if you allow open thinking and open speech and allow people to express themselves and you accumulate all that data and you get an understanding of what is okay and what's not okay what's hurtful what's not hurtful yeah and if you're constantly in environment where you don't even you know the monkey hear no evil you you can't even hear a bad idea when someone does something legitimately horrible what would the reaction be your threshold will constantly be decreasing if you're not hearing ideas right if

159:23you're not hearing ideas that run contrary or you know challenging then your threshold for what you find offensive will constantly lower so then anything will offend you I had Thaddius Russell on uh who's a great guy and he teaches at ocidental and we were talking about that um issue where there was a uh young man and a young woman who got together and they got drunk and they had sex and the girl decided that um either she decided her friends convinced her into it that she had been raped even though she had sent him a bunch of text messages saying are you coming over bring condoms told her friends I'm getting laid LOL and uh he had got to her they were both intoxicated but because he's a man he was kicked off the campus he was kicked out of school he's they're suing there a big lawsuit she stayed they both had sex there was no Force there was no there was no no lies

160:18there was no no one held anyone down no one did anything against anyone's will but they decided that he had committed sexual assault because they were both drunk and they could not consent which is insane and ready ready sexist yeah that's right it's sexist it's sexist towards men that's something it it disempowers women yes it does it also it's ridiculous because how come you are responsible for your own actions in every other realm if you drive a car and you're drunk you can't say well hey I was drunk I'm not responsible for plowing into that School Bus full of kids you can't say that but if you say hey I was drunk I'm not responsible for my consent to have sex with this man that's preposterous we all know that alcohol limits your inhibitions it lowers your inhibitions and it makes you do things that you might regret but there's a there's a big thing amongst people online that are

161:08trying to say this and pass it on regret does not equal rape people make mistakes we've all made mistakes everyone's made mist and if you drink you're going to make more mistakes that's just a fact but it doesn't doesn't mean that the person you made a mistake with is a rapist now they've also made a mistake and Maybe not maybe maybe you guys just had sex and maybe you're around a bunch of nutty people who are trying to convince you that anytime you have sex and you're drunk you've been raped and there is a lot of that going on yeah right so you can say that's a cultural problem now look at it from the view of the administrator right so from the view of the administrator students they'll ask for his job and those guys have couch jobs man they have cush job 300,000 they get parking spaces and everything I mean they have parking spaces are big parking spaces are huge yes the sign Mr Wilson

161:55sign of your spot is ready let me sweep it pull in your Tesla yeah so so H Tesla so so those guys um so so those those administrator guys as a microaggression how dare you micro aggress me so those those folks I prefer Z so yeah oh which is a funny a funny story there's a a story at us a story about at the University about this so again I have no problem calling somebody you know he who looks like a she or whatever you want to hear a couple quick stories funny stor so I had a I take attendance it's a long story why I take attendance just run with it so I get this uh this very attractive young woman comes up to me at the end of class I'm kind of discombobulated I got all this in my head and she hands me this note and so you can get out of it if you have a jury duty military orders um doctor's note uh excuse from my boss's boss the D whatever so and that

162:55way just in case I'm audited right if I'm audited I can say or if I say hey why did this person get off of this but I didn't you know do anything and then you next thing you know she's paying me I'm sleeping with who know it just it's just so much easier for me so I'm reading this note and it said would you please excuse Mr so and so from this thing and his his system is whatever it was and I'm looking at this I'm like who's who's Mr so and so and I look say who I don't I'm so you is it a friend I didn't have any idea why why she's handing me this note she said oh no I'm I'm Mr so and so and it took me a second and it took me a moment I had to like process that I didn't say anything about it I'm like oh that's great because if I do you know if people do demand something and and they'll say well look this person gave you this is not a my I'm like you have a

163:45problem with that I mean I can pull the same regressive card that they can you you you you're being homophobic you're being transphobic or whatever it is so so people have been choosing their own pronouns but the craziest thing that happened to a colleague of mine is he was told that and again I call anybody any pronoun you want you want to be called Z I got no I got biggest to worry about Z he e e please I'm problem that's I want three e that's I'll spell it out for you every time so so this person wanted to be called uh I can't remember what the days were but certain days Z he she and he made a mistake my colleague made a mistake and all hell broke loose what was the mistake he called this person something like that yeah and and she said you know okay don't do that again evidently he did that again or something I don't know so now and now oh whatever happened to people just

164:46being crazy isn't that an option is that possible you know I was watching a listening to a Radio Lab podcast and they were interviewing this guy who a guy sometimes sometimes is a girl sometimes goes back and forth and his gender is fluid and in the middle of the conversation it's like I just switched I'm a guy now I just switched I just felt it it was immediate like I'm listening to this and I'm going well this is a idiot clearly this is obviously a Nutty person that has a very loose slippery mineral oil grip on reality it's like wh just flies right of their fingers and they want you to give in this slippery reality and focus on them constantly now I'm a he now I'm a she it's another way to divert attention from anything that's going on and focus it on them and something completely trivial like that they decide they're a female they decide they're a male what

165:41what the are you talking about yeah I don't even I don't even care if if it's it's pointless people feel different different times of the day if you feel different sexually if you're you know you're pansexual or it's just you're just thinking too much and projecting you're projecting that off on other people if you really think that you become transgender cisgender and and all like it switches back and forth all throughout the day you're probably crazy was it was it you who tweeted the the link about the guy who is a six-year-old girl or 8-year old girl he's 52y old man and uh he's a father and he has decided that now he's a six-year-old girl right I love it he should be a six-year-old Fox I'm I'm going to be a fox no I'm an owl I'm an eagle I I I I I identify with trees I'm just going to stand here don't judge me so so so instead of so here's so have a hat with apples hanging from it

166:40that don't disrespect this is real so I think that's part of the problem with not being able to morally triage right it's part of the problem with not is a great way to describe it too that's a great way to describe it so so instead of saying okay look this guy whatever is going on his her life person in z or whatever fine great run with it I it's just not it's not worth my time yeah if a guy wants to be girl you go for it I think we have a problem with Mr and M and all that how about we just abandon it your name's Peter my name's Joe you make a noise that means it's like my my my issue with this whole Caitlyn Jenner thing was like you have to call her Caitlyn now it's she call her Caitlyn I've been calling this person this one noise that I make with my mouth my whole life in the Diane Sawyer interview he said he and he said Bruce I'm sticking with that you

167:33can't keep making new noises that I have to make with my face that make you feel better about yourself because if that's all it takes for you to feel better about yourself is people call you a new noise that's ridiculous if I decide tomorrow my my new name is uh Sheila I want everybody to call me Sheila well you just laugh that's a micr it is a microaggression why why Joe is a boring ass stupid name and I got stuck with that boring ass stupid name this is how boring ass stupid my dad's name is Joe my grandfather's name is Joe my grandmother's name is Josephine bunch of unoriginal uncreative in my family so what it's just a noise that you make with your face when you say Hey Joe to me and my my friend Joey is right behind me and I don't know which Joe I have to look oh no you've you've microG rested me again cuz I don't know which Joe you're referring to this is a noise that you make that

168:21represents you who gives a who is it there some noises that are feminine was some noises that are ambiguous you know like it's Pat remember that remember that show where you couldn't figure out what gender she was there's women named Shelly there's men named shell what do we do Jean there's jeans they girls and jeans are guys so confusing so you see how crazy that is it is confusing but here's what makes it worse what makes it worse is that if you make a mistake there's there's a a rule to punish you yes like right now you have you're operating freely you have no rules people in people in Acadia they're they're paranoid they're paranoid about making a mistake so of course I mean that's just the way it is I mean when when you have a bunch of people that are hyp sensitive and that are trying to enforce these ridiculous ideas on people and they're trying to pound these things down

169:17they're looking for these moments where they can solidify this there moments they can Point At You these moments why I call them green lights I call them green lights because they might not be upset they might not really be upset but they have a green light to act upset and that's their battery you know my overflow battery that's their battery I found one and they have community support because now the the victim is the highest level yeah and they're all social retards that's the other part of the problem there so and I say retards like you're not it's a politically incorrect word means slowed and that is socially to like operate this way it's it's it slows everything down it's it's awkward it's confusing it's not necessary what's necessary is friendship kindness compassion open-mindedness and those things don't exist when you are pointing fingers at people and shaming them over

170:13innocuous things like you oh you called her a she on Thursday you she's he on th like come on man that acts against their own interest that creates adversary relationships cuz then you're like oh instead of like hey man you know could you just they make them socially spoiled I mean that's what you're doing that's exactly what you're doing yeah yeah we're out of time all right cool we just hammered it out for three hours I don't think we changed a goddamn thing about the world is that a three- hour thing yes we did we just did three hours uh thank you Peter I really appreciate it if people want to find you on Twitter it's uh Peter bosan B b h o s SI i a n uh he's probably going to be fired from his job at Portland State University after this podcast so please uh you're going to open up a patreon page and ask for requests like all those social justice

171:02freaks anything else thank you thank you brother appreciate let's do this again this is a lot of fun thanks appreci all right Peter bosan ladies and gentlemen we'll be back at 2 p.m with the fighter and the kid Brian Ken and Brendan Shaw we're going to have a UFC 194 recap holla woo