In this episode, Dr. Stephen Hicks (@SRCHicks) and I continue our conversation about the fruits of radical Marxism.

He elaborates on the danger of prioritizing the collective over the individual and explains the process through which individuals adopt their worldviews.

Dr. Stephen Hicks is a professor of Philosophy at Rockford University, the executive director of the Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship, and a senior scholar for The Atlas Society.

I discuss his book, Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault, to conclude this episode. Thanks for listening. Go out and own the future.

What to listen for:

  • How did colonialism impact countries like Zimbabwe or Botswana? 02:27
  • In what ways does Marxism appear in contemporary activists’ appeals? How do people adopt their worldviews? 5:28
  • Is there a difference between Marxism and Socialism? 12:28
  • Is there harm in prioritizing the collective? 12:56
  • Where might racist rhetoric lead us? 23:22
  • Discussion of Dr. Stephen Hicks’s book Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault 28:22


Reference materials:

For more content by Dr. Stephen Hicks

Open College Podcast—Free Speech; Why The Philosophy Matters

Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault

Thank you for being a dedicated listener. Without you–we would not be here.

I would love to hear from you–WhatsApp me at +1-202-922-0220 Here you can ask question about anything that happened on the show. I look forward to hearing from you.

Until next time…

Be a change maker, take responsibility, own the future.

Thank you for listening, and as always you can find me at:

WhatsApp: +1-202-922-0220

LucasSkrobot.com

Tiktok

LinkedIn

Instagram

 

Transcript:

[00:00:00.030]

But if you’re in a situation where your parent or your parents aren’t working but they are living on a government check from welfare well then you are not being raised in a capitalist household. You are being raised in a socialist household. Socialism says people receive their income from the state. If you are going to a school that is a government run school not a private school then you are in a part of the story part of the subculture that is socialism because socialism says the Government should be running the schools and children should be going to the schools.

[00:00:46.050]

If you have lots of regulations that say you are not allowed to start a business because of this regulation that regulation some other regulation sometimes it’s a zoning regulation sometimes it’s an occupational licensing regulation that then you’re living in a system where it’s the government that’s saying what work you can and cannot do.

[00:01:08.010]

You’re not a free market entrepreneur able to just start your own business. So on all of those counts the actual best descriptor is that you are in a socialist some economy or some system right within a broader liberal democratic system. And that’s why you’re poor. Exactly because you were born into that dysfunctional socialist experiment within the United States.

[00:01:36.120]

Welcome back to Lucas Crow my show. I’m Lucas cravat and this is where we uncover purpose. Relentlessly pursue truth and own the future. Today we are in to part two of an episode with Dr. Stephen Hicks who wrote explaining postmodernism. And as I said in the first episode it is I really believe a very important book to understand.

[00:01:59.730]

The meta narrative and the arc that the framework of what we’re seeing happening in society today and really brings an understanding of of the chess move that’s happening so we’re not just looking at the detail but we’re able to see the big picture so if you haven’t listened to the previous episode go back and listen to that before finishing this. Dr. Stephen Hicks this this conversation has been so great.

[00:02:30.740]

We just ended talking about Botswana and Zimbabwe and how one adopted Marxist ideology German Marxist ideology in the other adopted just kept on with the British rule of law. Now my question is and this is a brief question and I don’t want to spend a whole lot of time on it. But isn’t isn’t the argument that well the the African people or the Chinese or the Hong Kong people they could have gotten there on their own. We don’t need your help. We didn’t need your help.

[00:03:04.680]

You just stole from us. Well I would say maybe I say human beings are human beings everywhere and I’m open to the idea that yes in fact people can get there on their own.

[00:03:20.080]

We do know that in the United States some people make choices they’re going to rise themselves or raise themselves out of poverty some people don’t. Some people were born into wealth decide to fritter it away. Some people decide to invest it and become even even wealthier. So there’s nothing that holds back anybody in South America or Sub-Saharan Africa or Southeast Asia from getting their act together and rising up and doing so and there are lots of examples historically of cultures who have done done exactly that. But I think it does seem to be fairly clear that in many cases cultures have improved because they imported ideas from institutions from outside of themselves or in some cases they had ideas forced upon them and that led them down a path that maybe initially they grudgingly accepted those ideas but then they did they did improve. So so I think example of this would be Japan after World War 2. Now it’s true that in the century prior to World War 2 Japan did make some steps toward modernizing itself but it is true that the dominant culture in the lead up to World War 2 was militaristic still highly feudal still highly authoritarian still highly hierarchical and what had to happen was you know the Japanese lost the war and the Americans came in and basically said you’re not going to do any of that stuff anymore you’re going to have a democratic republican institution and you’re going to have open markets or we’re going to get rid of utilize feudalism so it was at the point of a gun but the Japanese more or less grudgingly adopted those forced upon them institutions and then went on to become one of the world’s great success stories. So there’s no one path necessary.

[00:05:28.960]

So going back to Botswana and in Zimbabwe you mentioned the word Marxism and radical Marxism and going back to the beginning of our conversation we were talking about objective truth. You’re talking about advantage versus privilege. We’re talking about I’m leveling at homonyms and essentially playing with this rhetoric saying that you know we are we are just a subdivision of the community that we are a part of we’re not individuals. It just confuses me. If there has been you know like in Zimbabwe evidence that that doesn’t turn out so well why today and what is the historical background of Marx. Because right Marxism is the Boo Boo’s regime versus the proletariat. How did that like how does that have anything to do with what we’re seeing today where we’re talking about inequality or privilege or minorities or taking care of the environment or equal rights for all animals. How how does that even connect and why why should we even be worried. I mean you sound like really really great ideas really great things.

[00:06:52.830]

Yes well that a good psychological question. So we have a lot to talk about Marxism in particular and neo marxism.

[00:07:03.030]

There’s lots of sub versions of Marxism and so on and Marxism is not the whole story it’s just a dominant part of the story given the influence that it’s had over the last hundred and seventy years now. But what we do know is you know about human psychology is that a lot of people are semi active intellectually but also have a significant amount of laziness that when they are in their teen years and maturing and groping toward an identity and forming their mature views about the world people will think about things and they will come to adopt a world view that seems to have a lot of answers. And by the time they finish with their formal schooling and start working and start forming a family they stop thinking about those issues very deeply. So whatever worldview happens to have made an impression on their teenage mind that more or less is the one that they will stick with over their lives. And it’s not just political ideologies we also know that this is true of religious ideology. A lot of people there will be born into a religion it kind of makes sense. It’s got explanations for a large number of things they’ll think about certain number of things but they really start thinking seriously about religion by the time they get on with the rest of their life.

[00:08:34.380]

Teenage years are more super important for development and understanding ideas and setting a direction for their life so that that would point to a really big importance on the education system.

[00:08:49.890]

Yes yes for sure. So the teen years I’m sorry you cut out for a moment so forgive me if I missed part of what you just you just said. But yes absolutely.

[00:08:59.070]

Teen years particularly for beings like us and we are big brained human a big brained species and just an enormous amount that we have to learn because we don’t operate on an instinct or automatic behaviors the way most other animal species do. So you know what happens in those teen years when our brains reach mature size and hopefully we’re born in a comfortable enough circumstance where we can spend a lot of time absorbing lots of music and lots of movies and reading lots of books and having lots of conversations that really is a decisive decade. But the other thing I want to say on the on the psychology to go back to is this is not the only and perhaps not even importantly people who stop thinking seriously by the time they are 20 or so is people who become more intellectual they become teachers and lawyers and journalists and professors and so forth. And another thing that we do know is that people when they come across a world view that seems to have a lot of explanations to them and it has a normative component it’s got a sense of what’s right and wrong about it and what’s important and noble and beautiful that those things also push our buttons very deeply and people make commitments to a world view with a normative component. And one thing that can happen is and it happens unfortunately with a lot of people as people make a commitment to a world view. And at that point no matter what new evidence comes along and no matter what new arguments come along they are never open to changing their minds about anything important in that world or two and that’s true of intellectuals. Now part of this is a matter of professional standing. So I might know if I’m a young professor write a book or two or some articles in my in my early 30s you know so I went in I got my Ph.D. by the time I was in my late 20s I’m establishing my career and I’m getting some books and articles out but now my public reputation is tied to the positions that I took in those books and for the rest of my career it’s a matter of protecting my babies right so to speak and we really are like mothers protecting our our babies. So the idea and this is an enormous act of courage and intellectual responsibility and honesty if I I’m now in forty five do a serious rethinking of my younger work and I have read more data and counter arguments and so on for me to say you know I’ve got some fundamental things wrong I need to rethink everything through. Which is exactly what intellectuals should be doing. That’s a very high bar and only few intellectuals will actually rise to it. So if you have a large number of intellectuals who young in their career are attracted to an ideology like Marxism that’s only one of many they will remain Marxist and just become more sophisticated in their elaborations and after the fact justifications of more of the Marcus world view or the rest of their careers do you see a difference between Marxism and socialism Marxism is a species of socialism socialism is the broader label that says the social takes priority over the individual everything should be collectively organized and collectively done.

[00:12:50.290]

Marxism is one theory about the right way to do that.

[00:12:56.560]

  1. And so help me out here. I still don’t necessarily see the issues like OK people think that the collective should be prioritized. What’s what’s the harm in that. I mean we have we have the Nordic countries we have you know Sweden we have Norway. And these are always pointed to as great countries that are that are you know using socialism today you know. And what’s happening in America you know it seems like really great things we’re focusing on gender or focusing on minorities.

[00:13:31.300]

Why is there why is there an issue prioritizing the collective over the individual. Well yeah I do think Sweden is a great country. Norway is is a great country. But what made them great was not socialism. What made Sweden enormously wealthy over the course of the 20th century was that it was largely a free market liberal society that respected individuality a lot. Let people create business was open to world markets and engaged in Democratic Republican political institutions all of which are individualistic. Everybody gets a vote. Everybody can think for themselves everybody can participate in the process. And so you in effect have a free market of political ideas. And Sweden was largely free market in its economic structure as well. As a result of that Sweden became enormously wealthy and then in the last couple of generations because of the enormous amount of wealth it started to engage in a lot more redistribution so it started to move in a more collectivist direction. Norway is a similar situation but Norway also had the advantage of sitting on huge piles of oil and so it was able then to bring in a huge amount of wealth from the world markets. Again that’s a product of capitalism and it still had a culture that was largely individualistic. Do your own thing as a Norwegian with respect to your political ideas your religious ideas or pursue your own thing. So it was largely an individualistic culture that became enormously wealthy and then start to engage in large amounts of redistribution. My view actually right now and I’m not an expert on this. So to take this as an educated immature view is that right now Sweden is a more capitalist more individualistic nation than the United States hands on controls and on the amount of redistribution there there’s more of that going on in the United States right now than in Sweden.

[00:15:41.480]

But that would take a significant amount of social science to sort it out.

[00:15:46.990]

So yeah right now in the United States while the United States does have some very strong entrepreneurial liberal capitalist roots it also has a huge amount of of of socialism large pockets of socialism. My view is if you go into the poorest neighborhoods in the United States the reason why they are poor is precisely that those are socialist enclaves within a broader liberal democratic society. So if you look at the large percentage of people who live in the poorest of the poor neighborhoods they live on welfare they are wards of the state they get government welfare checks they all go to government run schools and they are forced to go to those schools they’re not allowed to send their kids to schools that might be two blocks away but those blocks are in a different zone district than they are not allowed to send their children to those schools and in fact mothers and fathers that tried to do that are often arrested and fined right for doing so. So that is that an argument memory is also a one more point in these on plagues. They’re not allowed to start their own businesses. There are barriers to entry if I want to start a barber shop or a daycare I’m not allowed to do so due to all kinds of regulations that are put upon me. So what you have is the opposite of any sort of free market capitalism keeping people poor.

[00:17:20.420]

So isn’t that the very argument that there is systematic racism and oppression going on in these communities.

[00:17:29.230]

Well it’s. It is systematic and there is I think a racial component but it’s not only in those racial groups right.

[00:17:39.530]

It’s any poor group. And so there are white poor groups there are brown poor groups are black or groups and so forth. And in the poorer neighborhoods they are subject to the same forces. And you’re saying oh this is coming from but I do think there is a disproportionate element and part of that is going to be due to the nature of the cultures that are involved.

[00:18:00.850]

I do think each culture bears some responsibility for their their situation but there also are of course racist elements that are contributing factors.

[00:18:11.560]

And you’re saying that this is is a byproduct in the system of the Socialist Left ideology not of what’s considered more of the capitalistic right ideology.

[00:18:26.070]

No. No exactly right. So if you are like if you are in a situation and we could talk about the drug war which would be another aspect of this.

[00:18:37.130]

But if you’re in a situation where your parent or your parents aren’t working but they are living on a government check from welfare well then you are not being raised in a capitalist household you are being raised in a socialist household. Socialism says people receive their income from the state. If you are going to a school that is a government run school not a private school then you are in a part of the story part of the subculture that is socialism because socialism says the Government should be running the schools and children should be going to the schools.

[00:19:23.150]

If you have lots of regulations that say you are not allowed to start a business because of this regulation that regulation some other regulation sometimes it’s a zoning regulation sometimes it’s an occupational licensing regulation that then you’re living in a system where it’s the government that’s saying what work you can and cannot do.

[00:19:45.140]

You’re not a free market entrepreneur able to just start your own business. So on all of those counts the actual best descriptor is that you are in a socialist some economy or some system right within a broader liberal democratic system. And that’s why you’re poor. Exactly. Because you were born into that dysfunctional socialist experiment within the United States. I mean the people who are successful are the ones who get out of those neighborhoods and go elsewhere.

[00:20:18.470]

I mean I know we’re we’re out of time and I want to be respectful of your time. So many things that I could ask you one about you know Harvard trying to outlaw homeschooling saying that they’re brainwashing people kids. I’d love to ask you about these these it’s happening right now in America with widespread protest and even people rioting you frame that it’s rioting against U.S. capitalistic systems that have enslaved them. But it sounds like that there has been such a strong communication and narrative that’s been leveled by the Socialist Left that they’re like they’re they flip the script to say like actually your your oppression is not these socialistic systems we’re actually ones helping you it’s actually you know that’s his party over there yes.

[00:21:17.670]  0

No that’s exactly right yeah. The flipping the script is is good. A good metaphor. Earlier you use the chess playing analogy that’s also good.

[00:21:28.160]

There is a strategy there. It’s not just ideological blinders there are other power control elements as well. So maybe we should do is plan to have another conversation in six months or so that the home homeschooling issue. No you’re absolutely right. I think that’s disgusting. Right. A professor at Harvard who is most associated with that instead just a terrible argument that she was making but that I think is is an example of a certain kind of snobbish elitist zone and paternalism from a person who is in a position of authority coming up. Exactly right with an ideology and a set of policy recommendations that is just going to devastate another generation of poor people because she absolutely knows that the government schools in all of these poor neighborhoods are absolutely a disaster. Absolutely a disaster. There’s just no excuse whatsoever for the state of those schools and yet where we have people who are systematically opposed to school vouchers charter schools allowing private schools to come in a lot allowing poor people in those neighborhoods to start their own entrepreneurial schools allowing parents to take charge of their own education. They are opposed to every single possible remedy to getting those people out of poverty. You might say ideological ignorance and ideological blinders goes a large way but I don’t think that explains the whole story. I think there is a huge moral failure on the part of these people to do it to look seriously at the data. Look seriously at the alternative. So that certainly could be a whole other conversation.

[00:23:23.630]

So I have one last closing question and I’ll let you go. You know on CNN Van Jones to paraphrase said it’s not the KKK that we need to be worried about but it’s the the Hillary Clinton Library woman and that you know that every white person has a virus inside their brain that can be activated at any time and then you you also write in your book and I believe Marcus that that said this that liberating tolerance would mean tolerance of movements from the right or we would mean intolerance of movements from the right and tolerance of movements from the left. And we mentioned flipping scripts. We mentioned this you know this this framework of chess playing and strategy and when I hear a statement like this that that is blatantly saying that my kids are racist just because they’re white. That seems like a racist statement to make. But if anyone were to say that I would be racist. So why is this. Where does this rhetoric lead. And have we seen evidence of this rhetoric in the past and what’s if this bears into fruition.

[00:24:41.300]

Where does it end up. Yeah.

[00:24:45.200]

Well the racial issues are one. One set of issues. But but you’re right. There are people who believe that everyone is a is a racist.

[00:24:56.060]

And so you know that’s a long legacy of human history racial thinking that again only a liberal individualist and mostly capitalist countries have done a good job at countering in the in the modern world. There is exactly a sexist version of it that all men are basically by nature sexist pigs. And so you have the exact same script running through on sexual rounds you have you have a wealth version of it that to anybody who’s born into into money or economic advantage is by nature a bad person and suspect and that only virtue and dignity resides with people who are poor and so forth. So whether you’re talking about economic issues or sex and gender issues or race issues and of course there are other variations on it it is the same general script. And I think you know I’m a philosopher by training so I think the important thing is to try to go up that one level of abstraction and to realize that there are issues about cognition. Can we in fact grasp facts or not no matter what our skin color is no matter what our our gender is or we have these discussions. Is it the case that wealth is created human nature or human identity and who I am is a self creation or am I just a passive vehicle through which other forces grow and so on. So those philosophical issues do need to be engaged and it’s from that perspective that all of their particular skirmishes that we’re talking about the right to the understanding of racism and sexism and poverty and post-colonial history and so forth all of those grimaces and need to be a need to be engage the real battle is that philosophical battle and we do have three or four major frameworks that are out there right now in our generation that are in in collision. So that’s where the real fight is.

[00:27:04.210]

Dr. Steven hex I mean this was just one of the best conversations and I really appreciate you taking the time to speak to me and to my audience. Everyone please get his book Under or explaining post modernism. Where can they find where can they find you. How can they follow your work.

[00:27:27.970]

Well thanks for the plug of my my book and it really was a fun conversation explaining postmodernism is is available at Amazon and all the usual places and there’s quite a few translations that are out there including Arabic that went out there since I know you are in Dubai. So it can be gotten in transit nation and it’s in the e-book form as well for people who are interested in following me and my work. I have my Web site Steven Hicks dot org. And then I also do at thinks board which is a new platform livestream lectures two or three times a month. So Steven Hicks dot org or go to things spot and get signed up there.

[00:28:13.870]

Those are all possibilities. Wonderful thanks for having me on. Thank you so much for being here.

[00:28:18.320]

It was a pleasure for me to wow that is all four hour episode with Dr. Stephen Hicks please. I mean when I read this book my my eyes were opened to the chest moves. I have been seen making in a new way. Right there are frameworks there are strategies that are being played at much higher levels much higher abstractions as as you said that you know I think I could kind of tell that something was going on I could kind of put language too but when I read his book it it lays out really historically how these thoughts how these ideas came to be and the line by line progression all the way into the how how Marxism and the the bourgeoisie versus the proletariat got flipped into it because they said wait wait a minute capitalism actually does work we’re not going to be able to establish ah ah ah utopia AI ideologies due to the failings of socialism in the USSR and other places of China everywhere that we’ve seen it happen. And so they said OK we need to alter our language because clearly this isn’t working that the poor are just getting into the middle class and they’re not protesting they’re just you know becoming wealthy. And so what they did was they said OK well it’s not about being rich and poor it’s about inequality. It’s not about you know the ruling class and the working class. It’s about minorities. And the they began to deconstruct all this language they did deconstruct everything that we hold true that we can test that we can no empirical data reason. And he said it’s no longer about reason that reason doesn’t exist that you know you can’t even perceive the world and any perception of the world isn’t even true because it’s just through your eye just through your senses and how can you trust that what’s inside what’s outside. None of that is actually knowable what is knowable well well will is knowable. You know if you’re just driven by I will what what else is knowable Well if you’re passionate if you’re really passionate and then they also said you know your rationality. And so instead of basing things on unreason on empirical data they they undermine all the language to say well we’re not you’re not actually an individual you were just the digital and then the actually write out and and Dr. Hicks writes about this in the book and it’s stunning that someone actually would would write this on to paper and that there would be organizations today that are actively pushing this forward into society but they write that you know that the individual is just there to serve the state. And if the state determines that that individual digital is no longer needed then they can be done be done away with because they’re no longer serving and that is what we saw in in the socialistic national socialism of Nazi Germany with millions of slaves. Millions of Jews being sent to the gas chamber. That is what we saw with the Google dogs in Russia where they they rounded up all the intellectuals and then all those people who overthrew the intellectuals they were later rounded up as well and they just kept on coming from person after person and no one stood up and no one said anything that’s is what we saw in in the killing fields of Cambodia where they took anyone who’s educated anyone that had a degree anyone who had teacher anyone had glasses that could read they took them in mass genocide in this.

[00:32:21.090]

This is what we see time in time and time and time and time again and I think this is it is so important.

[00:32:33.010]

Do to have a world view to be able to see the world clearly to understand where do these frameworks lead us. What do these frameworks lend us to to understand even. I mean I was you know blown away when when he was talking about how there are these on caves in America that are operating on socialism which is the welfare system and that that is the thing that’s actually oppressing that is the thing that is keeping minorities and poor people essentially under under the weight of you know owned and wrapped into being a member of the state and that the only way out of it is being blocked because of legislation rather than having a free open market of capitalism a free open market where people can disagree on ideas without there being leveled attacks and ad homonyms where were the thing about capitalism is we’re not looking at the color of your skin but we the market cares about what you can deliver and if you can solve the pain and I believe that every person every person is born with a unique creative ability to be able to do that unique creative ability to be able to solve issues and it doesn’t matter where you were born it doesn’t matter who your parents were it doesn’t matter what your your generational race is that you you as an individual have agency to effect change in your life and it starts small.

[00:34:14.310]

It starts by cleaning your room. And it starts by clearing the fog on things in your life. And I’ve in the past week I’ve gotten I’ve had so many conversations so much pushback on some of these things as well. You know you’re being awfully insensitive and my answers are quite the opposite. It’s quite the opposite. It’s I’m I’m you know when you see when you see people talking about defunding the police and tearing down the police structure and the system that is in place to protect people and and weaving these narratives saying that well they’re actually just setup to enslave people. But then you look at the empirical data and it shows otherwise. My thought is if you took away those systems who going to be hurt is Karen and Rick out there in suburbia going to be hurt. No it’s going to be the the the the poor in inner cities that are going to be hurt the most. That’s who’s going to be hurt. So if you want to talk about caring for people I think these are important important truths important empirical data that we need to be talking about. We need to be talking about that you know and and this is what what Stephen Hicks writes about it in the beginning of his book. What are the roots of all this. The roots of all this thought was that there was rationalism. And they said well I have beliefs that don’t align with these rational ideas. So I’m going to do away with the rationalism and I’m going to exalt my emotions. I’m going to go exalt my feelings I mean exalt my experience rather than empirical rational data. And when we do that when we dismiss the truth for for the sake of people’s feelings we only hurt their feelings. We only hurt their feelings. That’s all we’re gonna do. I believe that we need to sit with people and be empathetic. I believe we need to mourn with those who mourn I believe we need to you know you know sit. We do need to do that. We do need to be empathetic. We do need to be loving and and that’s the radical middle that I think we need to find ourselves in and then you know we need to speak the truth in love. We need to love our emotions we need to let people have emotions. We need to let people grieve.

[00:36:54.330]

We need to have that that emotional creativity and then we need to embrace truth and that is what we talk about here. We talk about embracing truth. We talk about pursuing truth.

[00:37:09.730]

We talk about testing our ideas because as Dr. Hicks pointed out with Botswana in Zimbabwe they they both went to different ideas and end up in drastically different places where today those in Zimbabwe he said are have are eight times more wealthy eight times more wealthy than those in Zimbabwe.

[00:37:37.200]

And when we begin to realize and it’s is shocking you know like you said it’s those that when you’re in high school it’s lenders in those developmental years where you’re sitting in your thinking that that’s when it’s formed.

[00:37:49.980]

And so maybe you’re in your 20s maybe in your 30s.

[00:37:52.650]

I don’t know where you are right now in life but I’d like to say that it’s not too late it’s not too late to begin to look over our esteemed or logical belief systems and to look over the data points to look over and say Okay why do I believe this. What do I believe. Is this true. I’m going to test this idea and I’m going to see where it ends up in my life. I’m going to look at other people who have adopted these same ideologies these same ideas and see where it’s ended them up in their life.

[00:38:22.390]

And as Dr. Hicks said you know so so many times intellectuals will write their manifestos therapy HD. At their books in their early 20s or late 20s or early 30s and then they’ll spend their life defending their books defending their ideas and they become. They can become calcified rather than accepting new data rather than realizing that I could have been wrong as that humble pie. I don’t want to do that. I do. You know it’s it’s it’s it’s humbling to go back and like okay maybe that that idea definitely wasn’t articulated right here. That idea I’ve grown and matured even in my book into the discipline to stop drifting. I look back on that book which I wrote six years ago five years ago six years ago and I say I think I would say that a little differently and that’s embarrassing to do but rather than merely standing by our ideas and refusing to grow that is a bad way to live. And as Dr. Hicks said there there are some people who in their teens they develop their worldview and then they continue on. And then there’s some intellectuals who are playing chess and strategy at the highest level making sure that their ideologies and indoctrination are being placed into kids into teenagers into children to shape and form the worldview that they want to bring about. That the systems and the quote unquote utopia that they have bought into. And it is it is dangerous. It is dangerous. But guess what. You and I we have agency in our life we have agency in the world it doesn’t matter what country you were born in it doesn’t matter whether you’re in North Korea or whether you’re in France or whether you’re in Jeddah or out of it. It doesn’t matter whether you’re in Dubai or New York City you have individual agency. You are a powerful individual that can make choices for your life no matter what system you’re in no matter what system you’re in. When I was in North Korea it was one of the darkest the most oppressive place that I have ever have ever been but without a doubt there are people there who are choosing to have agency with their life to take control over what they can control and make their their worlds a beautiful and lovely place. And that’s important it’s important to remember that there is beauty and that there is truth in the world around us. There is beauty and there is truth in you as an individual as your friend as your family as your neighbor. There is beauty in that individual who ever they are. Whatever their creed whatever their race whatever their gender whatever their age and that is something that is worthy to focus our attention on it’s something that is worthy to put our set our minds on on noble things and things that are good and pleasing and beautiful that is worthy to put our meditation on and to give our lives to thank you so much for being with me. Please please get his book. I don’t think I’ve for sure not within the last couple of years read a book that I feel is so good. I’ve been I’ve been telling every person I’ve been texting with. I’ve been saying you have to read this book. You have to read this book. You have to read this book and I really hope that you go out and get the book that there’s translations in Arabic. There’s translations in many different languages. It is an excellent book. I got the the book on audible to listen to. And it’s actually quite short to wait seven hours to listen to and it’s entertaining it’s educational. It’s story driven and it just it opened up so many things that I. I had I didn’t know and so many things I was able to connect the dots.

[00:42:38.440]

That is all for this two part episode with Dr. Hicks. I am so glad that you choose to spend your time here means so much to me. If you have any questions I would love to answer them. Can What’s App me a plus 1 2 0 2 9 2 2 0 2 2 0 and I will answer your question or even answer your question right here on the show. That is all please tell your friends. Message this. Share these two episodes with your friends to help them see and help them have a framework by which they can more clearly see and understand what is going on in the world today.

[00:43:22.600]

I’m the Lucas Skrobot. You are a change maker. Go out and pursue truth pursue truth and own the future.