When someone says something absurd, just say, "I don't believe that." It's powerful.

@dabidibup

Жыл бұрын

That’s illegal now in Canada

@charvaka9526

Ай бұрын

Alternatively, ask: how do you know?

@dorothyjohnson6743

Ай бұрын

​@dabidibup is that true?

I read this book close to a year ago... he's dead on. I was thirteen and fourteen years old when Reagan ran for president and his schtick that he banged on incessantly was: "We can cut taxes, increase defense spending, and balance the budget." Even as a pot-addled adolescent I knew this to be total horseshit: "Grown adults actually believe this shit?!"

@LAinLA86

4 жыл бұрын

"Grown Republicans actually believe this shit?!?" There FIFY

@tommyodonovan3883

3 жыл бұрын

Reagan was a nationalist, untill he was shot...R was never the same after THAT. See the RNC debates between Reagan and Bush Sr, they were quite brutal with Pops Bush coming out looking the worst for wear.

@angelicamimosa

3 жыл бұрын

Every US president says the same thing regardless of what Party they run for. Basically it’s all lies and the US is actually the biggest threat to World peace and are the actual Global terrorists! The religious Zealots run that Country and its right down Creepy!

@lisalewis4138

3 жыл бұрын

That was my thoughts exactly as a 14 year old at that time.

@peterthegreat996

3 жыл бұрын

@@LAinLA86 actually a lot of democrats believed ( and still do) in that shit . Biden did then and now still does .

I am reading this book. Once I thought people could believe anything. Now I know it. Excellent explaination of American absurdity. Well written and not in the least boring. Just so densely packed with information I can only absorb a chapter at a time.

Watching reality television and believing it is real. Astounding

@whalesong999

4 жыл бұрын

Best origin I can see in our post war entertainment on tv were the wrestling matches featuring characters like Gorgeous George. Some lapped that up as being real conflict, others could see it was mostly scripted and planned. Now, our "reality television" looks to be just that with a hint of the unexpected thrown in for spice. I saw only a short glimpse of 'The Apprentice' that revealed the host to be a demeaning. punitive, and self aggrandizing person who had no real respect for his guests.

@tedcarter4258

3 жыл бұрын

So true So sad.

@carolcisko6768

3 жыл бұрын

Connie Paetsch .. this man is brilliant

@50_Pence

3 жыл бұрын

Have you seen a clock work orange?

@kellnola

2 жыл бұрын

Almost all of them present human beings as authoritarian. Most people, if placed into a group with strangers, would form some democratic council, not elect a tyrant, AS THEY ALWAYS DO IN THOSE SHOWS (because they're scripted to)

FANTASYLAND WE CALL IT THE LARGEST LUNATIC ASYLUM .

@charliemorris2338

4 жыл бұрын

India has no madhouses and these folks are considered divine!

@Xxxyyyeee

3 жыл бұрын

You’re right, the left lives in delusions and lies.

@Geambasu169

3 жыл бұрын

Sanitarium

@matimus100

2 жыл бұрын

More like The Greatest Story ever Told

I just finished reading this book and I highly recommend it.

@Anonymous-yw1cv

6 жыл бұрын

Good liberal, self brainwash some more, because that's "being educated".

@JDMark25

6 жыл бұрын

If would bother to read it, the book is not politically biased.

@Anonymous-yw1cv

6 жыл бұрын

Dunno if the book is biased, but he chickened out and said "leftist bullshit" for the camera, so I wrote him off.

@tommyboy1653

3 жыл бұрын

@@Anonymous-yw1cv He definitely cherry picks topics and rambles on like Chomsky and tells you nothing.

@joeanthony7759

3 жыл бұрын

@@Anonymous-yw1cv So what....there’s always been bull*** coming from all sides....Anderson emphasizes many times that he’s alluding to ALL Americans’ tendencies to make it or lose it, be stable or go nuts, since the country was “born.” We’re pretty obviously living in the culmination of that. Most of us found out “the hard way” that yes, there are limits and boundaries to consider and that no, there is no Utopia to be had. Who cares if this assessment came from a liberal or conservative, a theist or an atheist. It’s still in the ball-park.

As a fringe dweller I find this very interesting. I refer to my being a fringe dweller? I am a life long musician, anti war, anti corporate, tree hugger, pot smoker, mushroom taker, agnostic! I avoided hum drum work, I avoided being tied down yet I managed to make a decent living and passable retirement by being???? My sister descibes me as a free spirit but that, coming from her, isn't a compliment. You could say i tried to control the reality I wanted from life not the reality of conventional wisdom.

@gregvondare

3 жыл бұрын

Good on ya, Russ. You took the path less travelled. And you had a life. Brilliant.

Excellent conversation ! 👍👍👍🇺🇸

The Soviet Union defeated fascism. 70% of Hitler's armies fought in the east. Brian Fenwick

@matimus100

2 жыл бұрын

All Sponsored by Supernatural beliefs

@mweskamppp

2 жыл бұрын

That is mostly correct. The soviets got some support from the US and some fighting in africa and such. With the D-Day the germans were already defeated. The USA just wanted to get a piece of the cake - the british were somehow there as well, kept alive during the years before the end by US deliveries and 3 mio dead indians.

@AbbeyRoadkill1

2 жыл бұрын

The Soviet Union defeated Hitler's Germany, they certainly did not defeat fascism. How could they have when they themselves are the modern day fascists of 2022.

Love Kurt Anderson and this book. Can't believe nobody mentioned that the first audience question came from John McWhorter!

“We are acting ungodly” because being religious makes you profoundly LESS tolerant of of peoples beliefs. Ask an atheist.

@thethirdman225

2 жыл бұрын

You don't have to be an atheist to know that. I'm not an atheist - I'm an unbeliever but I find atheists pretty intolerant, though no worse than the religious types.

@neilsiebenthal9254

2 жыл бұрын

@@thethirdman225 you should Check out talk Heathen and the atheist experience. They're what most atheist are actually like. You'll notice a big difference between them and what theist say atheist are like. It's even funnier when the theist callers are just completely rude, vulgar and telling them they're bad people..

@thethirdman225

2 жыл бұрын

@@neilsiebenthal9254 I disagree. Atheism is as much a religion as anything other. Atheists will tell you that science explains everything - ergo: it's a faith-based argument, even if atheism is more rational and realistic (faith in science). I don't even enter such debates. I'm not someone who has decided after a number of years he doesn't believe. I just never believed, even as a child. That's it. I don't have to give reasons or explanations and I'm not interested in anyone else's explanations.

@matimus100

2 жыл бұрын

Your all religious you just don't know it. Because the system is created for you. You have only two small freedoms left in our world. The 1st Amendment and Liberty Wake up world fast praying or karma doesn't save innocent women and children's lives anywhere in the world 🌎 Adults getting paid to lie to innocent children is disgraceful.

@matimus100

2 жыл бұрын

@@thethirdman225 Biden The Queen Putin and so on are all religious nut bag's Nature smashes all Supernatural beliefs. Be proud of who you are

I would add to this list the fact that critical thought is not being taught in schools. We need to teach kids to be skeptical and highly critical if the information presented to them.

@glennthompson1971

Жыл бұрын

Except republicans do not want people to think. They want them to be uneducated and easily brainwashed. So they undermine education & science.

Thank you, excellent and thoughtful discussion. I guess the wheel of life will keep turning. Most of the world looks on in some sort of amazement........but now has stopped being interested and are going back to their own futures. What an enormous contrast to the emerging Asian nations - and thank goodness for One Belt/One Road.

Charles Dickens in his book 'Martin Chuzzlewit' is another very interesting outsiders view of the 'peculiarity' of the American grifter and grifted inclination. It's a very interesting, and uncomfortably accurate insight that being an insider is hard to see. When the book reached America it was not well liked by many. A too truthful mirror? Very likely.

@gregvondare

3 жыл бұрын

Actually, "Huckleberry Finn" contains all you need to know about the American character in all its glory and horror.

@ms.carlson3904

2 жыл бұрын

I admire you for reading Charles Dickens.

@aaronmatzkin7966

Жыл бұрын

"Bunk" by Kevin Young

Excellent read!!!❤️❤️❤️

Some people get to study their whole lives, others have to work

America went from the land of invention.innovation and personnel wealth building economy to a service economy.Today we all live in servitude. A polite word for slavery.

@boutchie06

6 жыл бұрын

The women's movement was hijacked by large corporations who encouraged us to become wage slaves and climb the corporate ladder. Why weren't women encouraged to save money and create thier own businesses.

@rudra62

6 жыл бұрын

We will NEVER gain wealth by having a service economy without invention, innovation, and making something that someone else will buy.

@Anonymous-yw1cv

6 жыл бұрын

Economically you are corporate slaves, socially you are postmodernist slaves.

@z0mgwhut

6 жыл бұрын

So? That ain't shit compared to Trump defending Neo-Nazi's and White Nationalists on Live Television. We can /all/ agree to being a clown car. We elected a racist, Nazi sympathizing, old fucker suffering from early onset dementia. The /point/ I was making is that you shouldn't be using 'fake' in front of "alien/communist" because it implies he is neither of those things. You're not actually insulting him by writing it in that way. As far as being blocked... can't say that I care either way my man. The odds of us ever talking beyond this comment thread is slim to none unless you start stalking me (pls don't do that, you would be so damn bored).

@z0mgwhut

6 жыл бұрын

Lol, go for it dipshit.

I'm a generation X'er and the sixties was the sigil often waved as the birth of new-age thinking inspiring the eighties children through the nineties. Whereby freedom of thought and sexuality was key to a person's emotional maturity. I totally agree with Claudermiller's statement that there was not an "I don't care attitude" amongst the left because they were clearly the ones protesting for the Vietnam war to end. They gave up lives to face the evils of McCarthyite policy which was a typical right-wing/gain votes with lies idiocracy. Their quoted plan to dumb down the public. But I think what everyone is missing is the non-coincidental relation between the rise of the religious right and the ensuing challenge of global warming. When I was a junior-6 or 7 yrs old I made a lunchtime buddy at school. She was ethnically Indian(sub-continent) with Hindu culture. I liked that. It was exotic. Anywho...I had observed the gradual loss of snow from winter and in my mind at least it definitely had something to do with the sudden rise in car ownership and industry. Especially having recently heard the UN report by Prof. Hansen. So I'm sitting there eating and I have asked my (former) friend-"What do you think of this climate change?" She simply said " We can't do anything. Only God can change the weather." I replied simply with the word "God?!". To which she responded with a scowl and said: "We aren't talking about this anymore." I won't go into the repercussions of me questioning "Gods" authority on this issue because it is simply evil and designed by her Christian evangelical out of school friend. I basically got witnessed. Pretty much ruined my life. However, that is not my point. In the seventies, Texaco circulated a letter amongst oil companies stating the danger there was with a policy of continuing to burn fossil fuels. The majority if not all of the employees at home and abroad were god-fearing Christians. Ever since then the parents have been telling their kids that only God controls the weather all the while knowing that it's their actions which were causing the problem. All those associated with big oil have been covering up the problem with suggestion and emotional bribery. It is one and the same thing. It is simply the biggest conspiracy of all time(I am not a conspiracy nut but on this issue, I have way too much-connected information to ignore it) and all the supposedly spiritually pure humans have been going along with it based on the idea that they will be saved having each been told so but left short of the numbers involved. ergo millions of others are going to be fighting for food and water but a child doesn't need to hear that and thus ignorance abounds and the child never hears the truth. They just have to carry the belief in God to believe they are safe and not a threat to the coverup. It's not insane. It's an evil incarnate.

@55:30 Answer: Mental Compartmentalization It comes along w/ being told ad nauseam all one's life that slave-traders pretty much invented freedom.

@PORRRIDGE_GUN

3 жыл бұрын

Surely slave owners? The Brits traded the slaves for cotton and sugar. Britain was the slave trader.

@Illlium

2 жыл бұрын

I don't really get being all uppity about American slavery. It's not like they landed on a beach in Africa, took out a net, and started catching negros like butterflies for a new summer collection. These people were bought and sold, which is unfortunate, but not that incredible when you think about it - Africa's food problems are not a new phenomenon, they just had too many people for the available food and no military technology to try any serious conquest, so they started trading with their only real resource - people.

Halway through this interview, it seems like discussion for discussion sake. Great minds talk alike... Cheers.

Teaching media literacy in elementary school through college would be good.

Jeffery , it is so nice that you guys up I Aspen are so incredibly tolerant and accepting of people of all walks of life .... yes SO accepting and tolerant. Oh and polite and cordial as well and of course with no condescending or contemptuous slanted demeanor that many aspire to but few obtain. Oh what an Exceptional talk only attainable by someone of your statue, I salute you and your guest...

@justinpursley9698

Жыл бұрын

Tolerance comes in many forms. It is one thing (and obvious) to be tolerant to someone who is born gay and not hurting anyone. It is another thing to be tolerant of a person who is bigoted towards gay people because a book filled with talking snakes and other magic told him to. Likewise, there is a difference between being tolerant towards someone who is something of a germophobe and someone who is antivax and whose kids now have polio.

I appreciate this man's intellectualism, his vocabulary, his research, his point. It's good to hear someone address this topic in full. I have to say, though, that I can't finish the vid. His inability to form a sentence, commit to it, and FINISH it has rendered me annoyed. As hell. Not less so because I want to hear it. But his speech pattern has got to go.

@shane_rm1025

4 жыл бұрын

Must be why he's an author not a lecturer

@Illlium

2 жыл бұрын

Speaking off the cuff about important issues should not come very easily. Now I think about it that's probably the main problem of Americans, they instinctively feel that if someone can speak with conviction that means they know what they're talking about - another sad symptom of deep religiosity. Unbeknownst to them they just keep picking the person that has the best speaking skills instead of someone that has merit. Case in point - Donald Trump.

@SwedishMeatball972

2 жыл бұрын

@@Illlium Speaking off the cuff about issues you've thought thoroughly enough to write a book and schedule an appearance for a speech about shouldn't be strained, either. You just needed to come onto a comment over three years old to make a stupid comment about Americans and Trump? YOU are the idiot in this crowd, dude.

@Illlium

2 жыл бұрын

@@SwedishMeatball972 Found the American

@SwedishMeatball972

2 жыл бұрын

@@Illlium yeah...again...casting shallow stereotypes on YT as your only enjoyment in life doesn't remotely make you better than me. It makes you a stereotyping, shallow, ignorant, myopic, petulant troll who thinks because you're "not American" that you're better than ANYONE. Found the double-digit IQ.

I think Kurt Anderson has some insightful things to say, but I think his assessment needs some tweaking. As we cast our gaze back to the 1960s, I think history is going to label the counter culture movement not as liberal, but as libertarian. Just think about the hallmarks of the classic 1960s hippie. A deep seeded resentment of "the man," strong resistance to foreign wars (Vietnam at the time) and the acceptance of alternative lifestyles such as recreational drug use. Every one of these pillars is lockstep with libertarian ideology. As the boomers have gotten older, we can clearly see these libertarian mindset embedded in their cultural DNA. There is little to no class solidarity among them. There is an intense emphasis on individual "freedom" over collective progress/sacrifice. Boomers are the first generation in American history to their consumption levels continue to increase as they progress in to their elderly years. Just look at the Presidents of the 1960s, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson. A left leading republican and 2 democrats responsible to the creation of our welfare state; you have to ask...who were the boomers rebelling against? When understood as a libertarian movement, the boomers current political leanings make a lot more sense. Trumps bread and butter were silent majority / boomer whites. We need to stop thinking of the boomers as sellouts; they were never on the side of American liberalism to begin with.

@youtubezcy

3 жыл бұрын

The most sensible policies libertarians hold are the liberal ones. But individually most libertarians are delusional and when they vote it's for the nationalist. They only have the luxury of espousing contrarian views from within a liberal environment.

@kimjohnson4278

2 жыл бұрын

Speaking as a boomer, I can say you're full of shit.

@NoWay1969

2 жыл бұрын

This is a very interesting take and sounds plausible to me. I grew up watching the "hippies" become "yuppies." They were all anti-war until they got too old to draft, though.

@RevivalOfBuzzBuzz

2 жыл бұрын

So in other words, opposition to the crimes against humanity in Viet Nam was opposition to progress, and "acceptance of alternative lifestyles" is a bad sign too. Just taking note of the establishment left's increasingly fascist character in 2020. 28 M here. Fuck you, Jacob. I think you'll find there is more diverse resistance to you and your ilk than you realize.

@RevivalOfBuzzBuzz

2 жыл бұрын

@Ajit Adonis Manilal Yes, I do consider comments by someone who actually lived through the period to be more thought provoking, intellectually stimulating and compelling than a mini-essay about how opposition to the U.S. atrocities in Viet Nam was opposition to #progress™.

Everyone needs to believe in something. I believe ill have a scotch on the rocks

@Longtack55

3 жыл бұрын

Good one Ken.

@garyhickman6897

2 жыл бұрын

CHEERS !!!!!!!!

@FactStorm

2 жыл бұрын

In that case I'll join you then :)

@brianjennings7644

2 жыл бұрын

I believe I'd make the best King ever.. .. and, Scotch is good, yes..

@NoWay1969

2 жыл бұрын

🥃🧊build your faith upon the rocks🧊🥃

If the book is anything like this presentation, I'm impressed by its vacuity. I'm now regularly amazed by how dull the thinking is today among our elites. "The experts who know things" works as both shorthand for the bias broadly shared among them and a measure of the self-delusion. Kurt Anderson gives his educated Liberal audience exactly what they already believe.

If a large group of us had an inkeling of what we are missing and how much is a psychological construct with little attachment to what is real, we could establish new paradigms of how we function and deal with the new!

@cognitivedissonance8406

5 жыл бұрын

Michael McDaniel Support the death of humanity Do the right thing

Stay grounded and have an open mind. The truth is. There is no truth

One point of disagreement I have is the claim that the internet is largely responsible for the misinformation that we see. Other industrialized nations also have the internet, and they are not experiencing ignorance and belief in outlandish ideas to nearly the same degree as Americans are. Kurt Andersen only quickly mentioned that the internet is international but then never followed up on that. Europe, Canada, and Australia all have the internet and social media and yet they are not experiencing American stupidity. Also, I don't agree that social media or the internet necessarily leads to tribalism. If people don't have these things then their circle of relations is greatly reduced. They are only influenced by people close to them and don't have easy access to opinions from people in different parts of the world.

@Longtack55

3 жыл бұрын

Whatever the medium, there will always be people who are conned.

10:00 Great point. Need the dynamic polarity.

OK, it sounds very interesting, and like it hits the American eccentricity nail on the head. But, I kind of feel the way so many people are coming out with clever books that spin an amusing experience are like re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. That is, what do I need to know this for? I seems true from what I have read at Amazon and in the reviews, but does it talk about what this means and how understanding this might help us change it, or figure out what to do about it?

The tendency of Americans to believe whatever the hell they want and the facts be damned is the fatal flaw of America. This country is going to crack up and sooner rather than later but probably not until the 2030s.

@Anonymous-yw1cv

6 жыл бұрын

It is growing with the postmodernist "counter-enlightenment" movement. The left pioneered this (Derrida, Foucault, etc), and it really took off in the 90s. Trump now uses the weapon they created, and could not control. America is gone this century, replaced by China. Probably USG default by 2030.

@zachgates7491

3 жыл бұрын

@@Anonymous-yw1cv China is a 93 percent homogeneous country, much as the USA was in the 1950s. Possible that “diversity” has something to do with a coming crack-up? Or aren’t you allowed to ask that question?

How can you believe anything when the basis of that information rests on acquiring capital not health like Monsanto GMO.

Andersen's thesis makes sense. However, how to correct things remains a mystery. And the nation that has gone haywire has the ability to destroy us all. That is also part of American exceptionalism.

I've been to Aspen, and it sure isn't where I would go to find empirical truth, but good talk anyway.

America: "A mad bull, lost its way."

i know mainly through the internet. to be honest i have noticed. madness is the status quo it would seem. i've not been in the states for years. but in the past 3-4 years, madness has taken hold, true madness. i can tell. i can tell.

Good insight.

"America is the country of the grifted and the grifter." Bingo.

@iliveinthekingdomofpain7692

3 жыл бұрын

America is: you do your thing and I do mine. Do not interfere with me and I do not interfere with you. If the wires cross and the circuit trips, we need to learn to reset the breaker and then go our own ways. I do not judge, unless I am threatened by your judgement. Interfere with me, but do not touch me, above all: do not seek to harm me through my family, because if you do then you will die.The black muslim power structure that he threatened killed Malcolm X for one thought distilled succinctly into one sentence: “ “Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone puts his hand on you, send him to the cemetery.” -Malcolm X Indeed, they sent him to the cemetary, but those who ordered the assassination and those who actually pulled the trigger were all quietly eliminated, with ‘extreme prejudice’. All with the exception of Louis Farrakhan are dead and his time is on the horizon.

@kayem3824

3 жыл бұрын

Aaa aaaa eeee

@99baji99

3 жыл бұрын

"You're either a Duper or a Dupee." ~ Frank Reynolds

@RevivalOfBuzzBuzz

2 жыл бұрын

@@iliveinthekingdomofpain7692 That's not what America is, but it's what it should be. People like Kurt Andersen would have us forced to believe whatever he considers "rational", under threat of professional and social alienation in the 21st-century cult that is scientism.

@leekelly1718

2 жыл бұрын

Religion formed when they met.

Read the American Chapter in Charles Dickens' "Martin Chuzzlewit" if you would like to discover an impressions of a visitor to America from the middle of the 19th century which chimes with Kurt Andersen's analysis to a remarkable degree.

Already on page 12 of the book...the premise is very legit.

"...The wealthy, therefore, would be outvoted in a democratic system and government would be overrun by the majority of working people. To prevent the working class from attaining political power and expropriating the property and wealth of the rich (“an agrarian law”), we have to “wisely” ensure that government “protect the minority” of the rich against the majority of the poor.” ~ James Madison, 1787 while debating the constitution.

Very interesting

I would be more convinced by the thesis if it helped me understand how Americans can tolerate incarceration rates, guns, wealth inequality, unending wars, torture... Yes, many Americans believe crazy things but they also seem able to ignore the suffering they cause each other.

I immigrated from England where drug commercials are banned... Imagine an evening without drug commercials.....

This will go over big at the Aspen Institute. No elites there, just sensible common folk.

I wonder if reading John Rawls might better inform him and lead to a more successful book?

I believe that our gullible culture has alot to do with marketing.

@JerrySmith-ih9rd

Жыл бұрын

Good point. The two are interchangeable on that account.

Truth is an opinion based on the perceived conditions combined with prejudice to form a conscientious hypothesis of cause and effect which the perceiver relies on as a constant of the moment. The question why is the path to the truth. Also, in a dynamic environment truth is not constant. It's this kind of thinking that got us to the MOON and harnessed the power of the atom. I suspect that in America today most people won't understand these words.

@fmanh

6 жыл бұрын

Old Wisdom I give you high points for deepitys.

@Dorian_sapiens

6 жыл бұрын

Bonus points for condescension.

@stormwatcher59

6 жыл бұрын

So, it's the belief that makes it true?

@alexweschler9470

6 жыл бұрын

Old Wisdom lmao this guy

@cognitivedissonance8406

5 жыл бұрын

Support the death of humanity Do the right thing

I highly disagree with his point that ring wingers are more likely to be anti-truth and not willing to listen to facts than left-wingers. While I realize this is not empirical data, on my college campus I have a far easier time arguing with and having disagreements with people who generally lean right than those who lean left. From the experience I have had, those who are to the left typically get emotional and irrational far quicker than even the most radical people I have met on the right.

@David-ng7cr

Жыл бұрын

You are so wrong

@JaneAtwellRobinson1825NY

Жыл бұрын

Triggered lol

@williamjameslehy1341

Ай бұрын

100% incorrect.

Thomas Paine Age of Reason.

That's John McWhorter asking the question

My recall of this phenomenon is sitting at home with my mom listening to right wing talk radio,and asking my mom “how can this guy just lie “ without someone calling him. On it!

Was that John McWhorter asking the first question? Very similar voice.

They make the perfect yin and yang together

This guy is out there and full of it

How naive we were just four years ago. What they discuss had only just emerged to the surface of our culture. We didn't know what was coming.

I remember a common retort of fellow liberals "Well, that's your reality." In response to any negative observation.

Fantasyland is great!

Read the book Fantasyland.

Sounds like an interesting book, however, I think much of this boils down to Americans consistent and growing wish for "simple solutions" to complex issues. Examples of this include: white wealthy male privilege, obsession with sports, religion, short term money making schemes, and an eagerness to jump to using war as a "quick solution" to many problems. This also explains the "anti-intellectual" thinking that allows con men like Trump to rise to power.

@willrobinson1229

5 жыл бұрын

'Tis a gift to be simple...a very American sentiment. Simplicity and purity of thought over complexity and sophistication.

There is an old saying which I believe is an Americanism "" If you want to keep your friends never discuss religion or politics " perhaps social media allows too much sharing, lol

One of our problems is that religions have gone crazy, so you need to distiguish between relatively sound religious ideas and crazily barbaric medieval ones becaue trying to stop the extremism might be possible but trying to get rid of religion is just unreal. and we are not at a point in time when we can dream of unreal goals. New religious extremism seems to have gone global, the Orthodox Russians apparently being an ever bigger influence in the new puritanical turn in Russia,, so puritanical that homosexuals get done to death. The protestants groups are becoming out and out crazy and Catholics too, just read "REgain" the catholic sect, "the Legion of Christ's" "awareness site", to see how crazy Rome has become. Rome supports The Legion of Christ., It does not do for their extreme brain washing tendencies. The young people who get caught up with this group get brainwashed, that does not only mean that the information they receive is controlled, it also means, they get asked to deny themselves,to say that before they entered the group they did things for mean motives they had not had, who knows what is in the depth of their hearts or at rock bottom? so as to make them despise their upbringing and take up the rule of the group. Denying oneself is part of brainwashing techniques as is pain, and denying ones old self causes psychic pain as does the extremely critical atmosphere recruits are subjected to, under the understanding that any niceness about their character or what they do, will make them fall into the sin of pride, as inflicting pain in order to make people want to find relief from pain by falling in with their torturers ideas is also part of brainwashing, I wonder if such extreme methods of reducing pride are really done in order to inflict pain and a wish for relief from pain in their recruits. The trouble with this site is that it is very Catholic and so its most shocking content can change. In Catholicism the puritanical part of Catholicism that in my childhood was that of un-eduucated South American countries, is taking over the faith. There is a North American bishop, I think the Boston one, who encourages older people to talk of Catholicism in the sixties, so I am not the only one who feels this religions is taking a bad now. The religions have been thinking how to catch more public to judge from the rise of extreme members of each religion, which I suppose is due to an increase in the ability of these to pull people into extreme stances, They have all become more puritan and they ask their followers to vote for the right, so they have become a great source as voters as well as because they are becoming cruely puritanical. The only way to understand them all getting more puritanical and better at selling themselves and selling more "outre" iway out, ideas the world over, is to think they copy each others ideas on how to do so and so we need to spy on their propaganda efforts get so much better at refuting them. One thing they d and accept the crazier idea of religion though the Suffis who use extatict states are the most reasonable part of Islam.

At 55:20 The answer is, there is a huge difference between religion as a belief system, and religion as a team to belong to.

@gartner101

6 жыл бұрын

Ming Mongo Religion is about certainty that we are right and they are wrong and going to Hell. It has bigotry and divisiveness built in. A religious society is an intolerant society.

Facts matter. The truth matters more!

@user-jn5ux1ct4r

6 жыл бұрын

Connie Paetsch who’s truth? Your’s? Mine? I think you may have this reversed.

@Longtack55

3 жыл бұрын

@@user-jn5ux1ct4r Facts are true/truth.

It does seem to me that suspicion of GMOs in food is justified given the that their presence is not legally required to be disclosed (in the US where I and many others reside) and as far as I can tell, the US government doesn't regulate them at all (due to very successful industry lobbying). This means that the public is expected to take the word of distributors that "nothing is wrong with GMOs" pretty much on faith (just as there is "nothing wrong" with chemical additives to food; making organic foods the sole province of "new age space cadets" according to old stereotypes). Then we have the question of whether it is in the public interest for a handful of corporations to patent a large fraction of the food supply; and minimal information about any supposed benefits to the consumer (who is not the direct customer). In any case, the lack of transparency assuredly exacerbates public suspicion, regardless of whether one believes that lizard people from another star system secretly rule the world. PS: There is a distinction to be made between religious belief and sectarianism. One can believe that one is divinely commanded to love one's neighbor as oneself and still believe that eradication of supposedly false beliefs and practices (by any means necessary) is a moral duty. Indeed, it is logically completely consistent for religious and nonreligious people alike to believe the latter.

Hard to have a stage-discussion on understanding reality better with a “believer”, even a smart, open-minded one....

Andersen and I are about the same age and we remember the 60s differently. You can create your own truth and Esalen institute and the like were not the mainstream of the culture. They were on the fringe. Those movements had a bigger impact on the privileged, and on the coasts, and among researchers looking for evidence of their influence, but the vast majority of the country had no idea any of that was happening. It had no impact on ELECTIONS and the power structure of the country in the way that "create your own reality" people have now.

Americans have a great sense of humour. They can laugh at everything.

What is the basic meaning of democracy? Government by the people Full Definition of democracy: Government by the people especially : rule of the majority. b : a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections.

America: One big hustle.

Also "Bunk" by Kevin Young

Interesting

I find it interesting that the audience seems to need to have little laughs throughout. Even if things are quite serious.

@phillyphil1513

2 жыл бұрын

#NERVOUSLAUGHTER

It's just a ride.......(BH)

So it sounds like this discussion is exploring the various way the technic of critical thinking has broken down over the last 50 years or so.... it might be in the book but the methodology of mass education would seem to be a good place to explore these subjects...

It's interesting how the Christian interviewer does not see himself as part of the problem rather than the solution.

@Longtack55

3 жыл бұрын

That would be like firing himself. You are right of course. I'm looking forward to the day when a TV evangelist stands up and says "Sorry folks, it's ALL crap."

America isn't the only country being lied to by its elites or with religious fundamentalism. A majority of americans said that they are aware that their country is on the wrong path.

Interesting stuff...but Morris Berman has been talking/writing about this stuff for decades.

@joycetreadwell9542

6 жыл бұрын

Teodoro Della Flora ur ra chelj

I’m writing this partway through the book as well as the video so who knows? I’m 73 and I very much lived through all of this and also the 50’s. What I got out of the 60’s was 2 pronged. First was the political rebellion and the anti-war movement mixed in with the very important feminist movement. No fantasy in these things. Rational actually. Then there was the new attitude towards sexual freedom. Extremely important and still going on. My first remembered TV experience was watching the McCarthy hearings. Then there was the music, dominated on the East Coast by the folk influenced Bob Dylan, Joanie Mitchell etc. Quite rational and politely oriented. Yes we all took acid and went a bit nuts but I don’t remember indulging myself in the anything goes stuff. Ibtwas as I say quite political and that was rational and mostly not at all religious. Then we also were into exploring new ideas and other spiritual paths as in meditation. Science has now studied meditators and finds that there are great benefits. i could go on and on. BTW as a New Yorker I can assure you that Donald Trump was always about the most hated human being in that city. Finally, it seems to me that the people who support him were not and still are not the counter-cultural people I have always engaged with been but rather the less intellectually inclined ,who are not intellectually curious and his appeal is to their fears and their irrational racism and stupid religious beliefs. An intelligent person cannot even bear to listen to such idiots with their shallow thing as Limbaugh and Conway

@Longtack55

3 жыл бұрын

Hello Kathleen. Yes, Trumps only sector he won in was under-educated white men. I'm 67 and still a Joni Mitchell fan.

@myleshagar9722

2 жыл бұрын

Canada was full of draft dodgers, not antiwar at all, as time has shown.

Earl Nightingale was the minister of Trump's, as a child. That explains a lot of how he can be so positive in the withering storm of negative press.

Support the death of humanity Do the right thing

Are we still the author of our own lives? Present day events may beg to differ that we are not.

A Genius and a Dingus appear on stage. Drum roll please!!!

Steve Bannon clean cut straight edge brother

You need to go back to a New Version of the System you had before 1980

Damn he's more right today than he was 4 years ago.

Wow, that guy who asked that question about Obama being as much a salesman as Trump may have had a point, but he’s clearly biased, using the ignorant right wing talking-points of balancing the budget and “entitlements” as a problem, probably having no idea how the monetary-system works whatsoever.

@Illlium

2 жыл бұрын

I think the guy was right, but come to think of it that's most of American president since the televisation of presidential debates. If you can make a guy like George W. Bush look credible, you call sell everything. American politicians seem to have nailed the image of the person that the people will pick, but they have no clue what policy should be instituted. It's like they're flailing in a pitch black room with a BB gun randomly pulling the trigger around for walls with legislation ideas written on them. They're so detached from their citizens it's almost hilarious. And facts, but that was already brought up during the conversation.

at 8:36 "new religions" . . . "Joseph Smith" . . . how about L. Ron Hubbard?

He says, in so many words, that the science on GMOs is as conclusive as the science on climate change. I've not been getting that impression from reviews in scientific journals?

@Illlium

2 жыл бұрын

You got any counter-examples? I'm a GMO believer, test my faith.

@ownyourgov

Жыл бұрын

@@Illlium You are asking for citations. Fair enough but your request comes years later, and there are new studies. So I'll look at it.

48:48 "I love my children. They made my life possible." Your children made your life possible? What do you mean by that? Did you misspeak?

@xrxs1020

3 жыл бұрын

When I became a father, my life changed for the better because having children demands character. Improved character makes the better things in life more likely.

@Illlium

2 жыл бұрын

Honestly I think he meant his children are his reason to live. Judging by his in-depth knowledge about how the world surrounding him works, I kind of empathize. I don't think the line "I don't want to kill myself" was a joke, he has considered it probably more than once.

How about metaphysic, parapsychology? Quantum physics?

@junglecat_rant

3 жыл бұрын

It is merely astonishing that you mention parapsychology and quantum physics in one sentence. 🤨

@RevivalOfBuzzBuzz

2 жыл бұрын

@@junglecat_rant When millions of people in all ages and walks of life have all experienced a variety of phenomena that would fit under parapsychology, I see no reason to dismiss it other than closed-minded dogma. There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

The Newhart runs strong in this one.

This discussion needs a class analysis. European politics are a balance between the power of the business class and the power of the working class. American politics are a lack of power for the working class; a lack which degrades all trust in authorities and institutions and thus a seed for all manners of kookiness. The anti-Vaccine and anti-GMO people's main argument, stated or not, is that government wouldn't tell you whether or not something was safe or not. Because the government very rarely proves it's willing to step on the toes of the relevant industries. I happen to think the anti-Vaccine/GMO people are wrong, and their views are based in pure cynicism, but why do you think Americans are so bloody cynical? They're poor and desperate. Instead of ret-conning a historical explanation for people's kookiness, maybe try to give them public institutions they can trust to improve their lives.

@jondana8380

5 жыл бұрын

Exactly right. Don't hold your breath - the US is a failed experiment in Capitalism as a political system - and the 300 million or so victims are only just beginning to smell the end coming. More bread and circuses are what is needed - because the one thing the oligarchs will NOT allow is a government of the people!!!

@snowsongvideopix8680

3 жыл бұрын

@ EmilSørensen Yes, "This discussion needs a class analysis". I agree with much of what you say, although I don't think an accurate premise can be built upon their lumping of anti-vaccine/GMO people together. They are very different, and I feel we are being gaslighted when they are lumped together by some. That being said, Emil, I do agree with several other points you make yourself, especially in regards to trust.

Love the statement all we can do is what we can do. It is what it is

Surely this was all covered in "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds" in the 1850's - modern media have just added more fertiliser (polite word) into the situation.

I didn't know any more people in the 60s who believed in whatever they felt to be true than I did in the 50s. Maybe fewer. If someone had an unusual experience in the 60s unless they were religious they tended to attribute it to whatever drug they were on at the time of the experience. The angriest people I know at this time in our history are those who listen to right wing talk radio, especially if they do so regularly. There are also some very resentful religious factions. The two behaviors usually go together. The religious who do not listen to talk radio are often very kind people.

he said "... tend to believe things that are... unproven" he did not even want to say "things that are untrue"

Also New Age is really just Matthew jumping off the pages of the bible. Sure there was plenty of New Thought going on and Hermetic currents well before even the Victorian era but they didn't seem to have quite the megachurch credulity that goes with new age, The Secret, etc. etc.

Yeah-- many people are so insecure with their own shortcomings & knowledge-gaps that respect for and trust in anyone more capable or "smarter" entitles to be incredulous.