The ConverSAYtion
The ConverSAYtion is simply a couple of middle aged men sharing company and conversation. Psych and K take their time sorting through so much to say about society, culture, relationships, education, finance, technology, health, and more. Inspired to find engaging ways to entertain and enrich the lives of their listeners is their primary pursuit. Join them as they invest themselves in providing value to their audience. Welcome to The ConverSAYtion.
The ConverSAYtion
Dark Traits: A 20 Year Study on Raising Society Wrong
What creates selfishness, spite, and manipulation in human beings? Is it genetics, upbringing, or something larger at play? A groundbreaking 20-year study spanning 183 countries and all 50 US states reveals a profound truth: the societies we live in directly shape our personality traits.
This fascinating conversation explores how having your basic needs met creates the foundation for generosity and compassion. When survival is uncertain or you witness others breaking rules without consequences, self-preservation becomes the natural response. The hosts dive deep into whether perfect equality is possible or even desirable, questioning if our constant striving for more might be both our greatest flaw and our most essential driver of progress.
The discussion takes an intriguing turn when examining modern politics and media, suggesting that manufactured conflict may deliberately keep citizens engaged and distracted while powerful interests pull strings from behind the scenes. From corporate influence on news reporting to pharmaceutical advertising, the podcast raises challenging questions about who shapes our information landscape and why.
Want to understand what drives human darkness and whether we can create societies that bring out our best qualities? Listen now and join the conversation about how the rules we live by ultimately shape who we become.
you don't gotta do it if you don't want to. You don't gotta do it if you don't want to. You don't gotta do it if you don't want to, it's just a suggestion.
Speaker 2:If this falls down, if we just send sound waves, if that falls down one day, dude, you're in the sheet you're not.
Speaker 1:That's not going anywhere. Out of all this nonsense that's gonna going to be left, left the last, the last man standing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I hope so.
Speaker 1:We could have a 7.4 on the Richter scale and maybe yeah, the worst that will happen to this thing is we'll find out if it's in tune or not. It's California. Hey, welcome back to the conversation podcast. This is our 50th episode today 5-0. So congratulations to 49 other episodes that nobody really watched. Congratulations to you, thank you, thank you. As somebody who has had experience with people not viewing their content, I appreciate it. I got a little something special. So today, today for the 50th, we've got a bottle of, uh, lamarca prosecco. This is a good mid-shelf uh bottle. It's an italian wine. Um, I think this one's drier than they usually are, if I remember right. But uh, yeah, we're gonna refresh the palette, really refresh the palette. We're gonna crack into this guy and we're gonna start. I think it's my turn to go first today. Is that accurate?
Speaker 2:I, I hope you, I hope you do, I think you'll be at an advantage. I know you warned me about the, the intellect, and uh, I've got some heady stuff today, the, uh, the, the amount of cerebral energy that it was going to take for me to combat your real ideas real talk.
Speaker 1:I'm not screwing around today, I'm not. I didn't. I didn't make up an article about you, which has just been my tradition, which I really enjoy doing. Uh, I didn't do that today. Cheers, so 50 episodes that's good, yeah, that's good. It's dry, it's dry, yeah, it's dry. Oh, I like that. Yeah, much better than the alcohol-removed wine. I bought two bottles of that because it was a five cent deal.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this is better. The wife and I tried to have the second bottle and made like a steak dinner. Okay, because I was training for a Spartan and I wasn't drinking for like six weeks and, dude, it was so bad, I mean we could not drink the bottle.
Speaker 2:Did you try it in that steak sauce that you had made? Yeah, no, no no you didn't try to make turn it into the. No, I did not.
Speaker 1:I did not turn it into the borderlands. No, we tried to drink it with. I just made like new york's, like I like grilled new york's, all right, and I had tasted bad, like both of us. The wife was like, hey, this is kind of vinegary, I'm, yeah, I think that's kind of how it tastes, but we couldn't drink it. We couldn't drink it.
Speaker 2:We went to Root Beer's A little sarsaparilla yeah.
Speaker 1:So jump right into it. My 50th episode article just came out. This is a 20-year study, massive study. Okay, this article is called Dark Personality Traits Thrive in Societies with Corruption and Inequality Global Studies Shows. Now this study, which I'll just read a little bit here. Read the title one more time. The title is Dark Personality Traits Thrive in Societies with Corruption and Inequality.
Speaker 1:Okay, personality traits thrive in societies with corruption and inequality. Okay, so a new global study shows that people in societies characterized by corruption, inequality, poverty and violence are more likely to develop aversive or dark personality characteristics, such as selfishness or spitefulness. It's also a matter of the society. So, oh, wait, why are some people more inclined to cheat, manipulate or harm others and their own gain, or for their own gain?
Speaker 1:A new comprehensive study with data from nearly 2 million people across 183 countries and all 50 us states points to the an important answer. It also matter. It is also a matter of the society in which one grows up in. So the study was just published in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and it examined how adverse social conditions, such as high corruption, inequality, poverty and violence, are linked to what they call the dark factor of personality. This is an essence of aversive or dark personality traits, such as narcissism, psychopathy and sadism. The uh one of the people who conducted the study, um ingo zettler, a professor at sodas I'm not sure what that is, sod, sodis and the Department of Psychology, we'll look up that but he said quote in societies where rules are broken without consequences and where the conditions for many citizens are bad, individuals perceive and learn that one should actually think of oneself first. So what do you think about this study?
Speaker 2:I think it makes sense, I think they're, I think their conclusions are are are valid. What? What methods did they use to capture two million people? Is this, is this like a survey?
Speaker 1:so they, so it was. They did it with a come see by combining a personality questionnaire with objective data on countries and all the US states. Social conditions assessed approximately 20 years previous. The researchers found a clear and albeit moderate relation. Talk about how the very narrow difference between the different regions or countries creates massive long-term effects. This is a 20-year study.
Speaker 2:That's a long time to be studying something that you probably you had to come up with your hypothesis first. They ask the question and a lot of times when you ask the question you kind of think you know what the answer is, or you kind of think you know what it might be, and it would strike me that you know they probably spent 20 years working on that to confirm their own suspicions.
Speaker 1:Well, that's what science is basically you think of an idea and you hope you're right. Yeah, but yes, so the study shows that countries such as indonesia and mexico, or us states such as louisiana and nevada, have higher dark factor levels than countries such as denmark and new zealand or states such as utah and vermont, which have a better societal conditions in terms of lower corruption, inequality, poverty and violence they're skating on some thin ice there, revealing those findings, I suppose because they're throwing regions, states under the bus and whole countries, cultures of people that live there.
Speaker 2:I mean, you could take subsections and subregions of our own state, which is massive, and find that to be true, as well, california is basically three states itself and, yeah, regionally. So I think California is bigger than some countries, many countries.
Speaker 1:I think that's why they chose to do the study with a bunch of countries and then all 50 states individually, because we have such a massive divergence in culture here in the US. So in conclusion for this article, the same guy, Ingo Zettler, says Our findings substantiate that personality is not just something we are born with, but also shaped by the society we grew up and live in. This means that reforms that reduce corruption and inequality not only create better living conditions just now, they may also contribute to mitigating adversive personality levels among the citizens in the future, seemed seemed to be almost contradictive in in the way that they're they're presented. So so the first one we talks about was this one University or collaboration between.
Speaker 1:It was so simple. Three, three individuals worked on this study. Okay, this article only has one of them. Uh, ingo zeller sounds like he was the uh, okay, so it could be three.
Speaker 2:Three people from three different it could be.
Speaker 1:It could be, but so so it just seems to me like they are talking about two different things, because how do I present this? So so the first. The first statement argues that you know, if you have low, low, low, if you have low levels of of corruption and and a quality, and there was something else in here that hold on a second, give me a second here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure, To me, it makes sense because, in order to and I've understood this for quite some time and definitely have I have two subjects here that I can experiment on daily with my own children, and I've pretty much always known that, in order to have the ability to be upstanding, to be generous, to be giving, to be compassionate, to have enough self-worth and enough self-esteem and enough self-confidence to think outside yourself and to be generous with your, your time and your resources, you have to have everything about you in order and taken care of. And if your cup is got that much in it, what do you have? To give or offer other people? And with with my boys, I definitely try to make sure that well, I know that they are taken care of, but also try to give them examples of what it means to give and to be generous and to offer to other people, and they, they take that, they see how that's modeled, they practice that. However, our situation would be much different if we were uh, you know, if I was struggling, paycheck to paycheck, single parent, inner city, oakland, and you know we were barely making it and I don't get to spend a lot of time with them and to coach them and to, to parent them. Things would be so much different.
Speaker 2:Because if you one, if an individual's needs aren't met, then yes, you have to be selfish. And selfish isn't necessarily a bad word. I know it's thought of as being this thing that has a derogatory. You know the meaning behind selfish. We immediately our minds go straight to that's bad, that's wrong. How dare you. But you know what? Something as simple as brushing your hair or brushing your teeth, that's a selfish act. You're doing it for selves, you're doing it for you. It doesn't aid anybody else, but it's still necessary.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and, yes, we're animals and if we're not selfish we can't survive. Uh, that's just the nature of you know, being an animal. Uh, so you are. You were talking about macro managing what this article is talking about. You know the family unit, the, the, the, you know the mic, the micro elements. Uh, you're raising your kids and the way that you feel proper and and your personal ability to do so has other factors that are engaged in that this article, or this study, is talking about things on a macro scale.
Speaker 1:So the statement that I wanted to read that I missed, I read the wrong one. The first time is in societies where rules are broken without consequences and where the conditions for many citizens are bad, individuals perceive and learn that one should actually oh, I read that Think of oneself first. That's it Okay. So that's the two statements that I feel are contradictory or not contradictory.
Speaker 1:I think that it's funny in this country we have we have two organizations pushing for what they think are two totally different things, and this one here where it argues that societies where rules are broken down without consequences creates this dark situation.
Speaker 1:You get in things where now they're arguing that things like lowering standards for prosecution and defunding police and those kinds of those kinds of things actually actually are shown to have negative effects. If we're just letting people do whatever they want anarchy, basically, and there's no consequences that leads to this, to this dark output, and then, at the end, when they talk about how reforming and Creating, creating higher levels of living conditions and inequality, the other side of the coin is pushing strongly for this. So I think that it's funny to me, because I've always argued that our political system has two groups of people who both want what's best for this country and maybe, by definition, the world, but they have different. They have, they have differences of how to go about doing it and in that sense, we have to create a divisive environment so that we you can't follow them, because my idea is right, so we have to hate the other side, but this study seems to indicate that we both have half of the solution.
Speaker 2:So just a remark on everything else, I think your description of the two parties that are currently kind of playing this tug-of-war game we're talking about Republicans and Democrats.
Speaker 2:With our country. I think you're giving them too much credit. I think the way you were describing our leaders and our politicians really truly thinking and believing that what they are doing is best and right for the country I think we might be a generation past some of them. I am a little bit more pessimistic. My point of view is a little bit more dark. I think all of them are almost essentially on the same team and they're really looking out for themselves, and I think the same themes in the study are present in our leadership and that's leading to some of the corruption.
Speaker 1:Of course, but our leaders? They're driving societal points to an extent, but they're not necessarily a part of society as this study sees it.
Speaker 2:No, we're talking about but they are members of society. They're people, yeah, they're humans, but they're humans, but they're at of society, they're people, yeah, but they're humans, but they're at a separated and almost elevated status.
Speaker 1:We're talking about the core of people and what drives a large community like the state of Nevada to exhibit signs of collectively moving in a direction, and I think that I mean, obviously, when they say Nevada, they mean Vegas.
Speaker 2:Reno's pretty good, yeah, reno's pretty good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was pretty good. Shout out, shout out. But the uh, you know the, the corruption, all these things that that that region creates, and you know the darker parts of humanity. It's the people who live there get sucked into that and they had no choice but to absorb some of those dark tendencies in order to survive. But then you go to a place like Utah, which, by and large, has one culture group that is very regimented, is very ruled and structured.
Speaker 1:We're talking about Mormons. No, they don't like being called that. No more, you have to actually say Church of Latter-day Saints. Okay, yeah, that was a couple of years ago. They announced that they don't want to be called any of their vernaculars anymore. They want to be referred to as the entire thing every time you say them. So, members of the Church of the Latter-day Saints, they're all together and they're now allowing black people to join, which is kind of cool. Uh, I didn't know. Oh yeah, I wasn't invited. Yeah, well, not yet, it's in the mail. But but the thing is, you have a single, unified cultural concept and so they're on the list of the lower dark elements. Interesting, um, because they don't have. They don't have the things that create this inequality and lower lower living conditions that are associated with more of a melting pot situation, where you have people creating, creating culture groups and trying to elevate themselves and not others. So it's like a team it's like a team.
Speaker 2:So it's like a team. It's like a team, it's like a sports team, right. If, if a sports team is just loss after loss, after loss, after loss, after after loss, you know they're only going to be the. The individual athletes are only going to be able to continue to put in 100 so long before they start to get bitter and resentful and start looking out for themselves. They're going to try to put themselves on the highlight reel. They're going to try to hit the home run even though there's nobody on base, and they should probably just try to get on base so that they can take the lead when they're down by one. Play smart instead of just trying to do it all themselves and take all the glory for themselves. Sports teams can only do that. And cities, townships, they're like teams, right. And when everybody wins in that township, the tides bring up all the boats together.
Speaker 1:And when the team is at its worst, all the best people are trying to get traded.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're trying to leave, they're jumping ship. I know California, unfortunately, has been experiencing a fair amount of this lately, where many of our finest citizens and businesses are finding that they would prefer to be elsewhere as a result of things that are we talked a little bit about in and out and moving out their first location and up the Starbucks. When an area is struggling, you either have to be committed to bringing them back or you have to figure out what else are you going to do. I think this study is all about that. Basically, they concluded, the darkest parts of human beings are encouraged in these conditions are encouraged in these conditions.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if we let the animal instincts of selfishness fester and grow unimpeded, then over time it creates a culture where we're all out for ourselves, fighting each other, and it's detrimental to whatever region we're born and raised in. And it's not genetics as much as it is society driving the way that our personalities develop. And yes, like you said, it sounds logical and it feels like a no-brainer, but the study just supports it. They just spent 20 years on it. So like yes, people are leaving California because they're dissatisfied.
Speaker 2:Hopefully they're not moving to Louisiana because it sounds like that's worse. Would you say Connecticut was good? No, Utah and Vermont.
Speaker 1:Vermont Good old.
Speaker 2:Vermont. Vermont's the size of one of our cities here in California.
Speaker 1:You don't really hear too much about vermont. Uh good, but good syrup sounds like a nice place yeah syrup's good.
Speaker 1:I bet you it fucking snows its ass off in july. That's why nobody wants to live there, uh. So so, yes, it's funny. It's funny because it feels like. It feels like the solution. I mean, it's a generational thing. One generation has to enact change, and we know how that works. But it sounds like what we need to do, and this is, this is one of our. One of our uh, you know, one of the more liberal socialist concepts is we all need to create perfect equality across the board, and in a generation, we will uh have achieved utopian harmony yeah, no, you can't do that no, yeah, no, you can't do that it's impossible it happens on star quality, I mean.
Speaker 2:So yes, you can. Everybody can be equal under the law. Everybody can be equal with how they're treated by the justice system and the courts and the leadership in their towns All of that. Everybody should have an equal interaction in the way they interface with their rights and the laws that govern where they live. But to have equality, everything being equal, it means you have to have the exact same opportunities that I have to have, um you. We all have to have the same things, and that doesn't always.
Speaker 1:That doesn't always take place well, you see, you see, you see the these governmental bodies trying to achieve that, but how feasible is it? How I mean we're going back to, to, to you know a lot of factors like I'm I'm a member of a culture group that has spent generations favoring themselves and I have an elevated ability to achieve. This is the arguments right. So at what point can you have the exact opportunities that I have, and how do we define that?
Speaker 2:Well, so, as far as the exact same opportunities, that cannot be had. No, because okay. So if you're, if you're a generation younger than somebody, well, in order to have the same opportunities that they had, you would have had to live in the time and space where they lived to have the exact same opportunities. So everyone's opportunities are going to be different. They're going to be similar. They're going to be similar maybe even with what we're doing right now. Okay. So almost the entire world has the internet. Almost the entire world has youtube, and we know that there are people that can get out there on youtube and put out content and then, all of a sudden, they are trending and they're finding themselves with all of this fame and wealth. Right. So that opportunity is there for just about everybody right now, in the current time that we live in. And there are other similar opportunities.
Speaker 2:When the stock market crashes, okay, people have the opportunity to invest when they know it's going to come back. They know, but does everybody have money to invest at that particular point in time, when the housing market crashed, when we had our opportunity to buy into the market? Does the current generation have that same opportunity right now? No, will they in the future? We don't know. So we can try to get it as close as possible. We have to start with the current rights. And are people being treated fairly? Is everybody being treated equally? And if we can get there, that can be the starting point. And if we're not there, how do we get there? And if we are there, okay, well, what else do people want? Like do you want me to do? You want me to give you half my paycheck? Like do I have to physically go out and support other people? And I'm not. And and I'm saying maybe, I mean maybe some people want to do that.
Speaker 1:I know some people who make more are supposed to be disproportionately um taxed or or asked to put in more to the system so that we can we can level these playing fields, but I agree that I don't see there's no way to make things equal without pure communism, which is a proven disaster across every time it's ever been attempted you get fifty thousand dollars a year.
Speaker 2:And you get fifty thousand dollars a year. And you get fifty thousand dollars a year and you live in this four-bedroom house. You live in that like if you're, you get two cars, you get two and a half kids. You know if you're just gonna go and make it, but you can't have that with a society that thrives and is built on freedom and liberty and free choice and free will.
Speaker 1:Even China, which is supposed to be a communist country, is one of the largest economic powerhouses of the planet. They've had to embrace capitalism in order to survive, because it's impossible to have any large group of people exist with perfect equality over any length of period, and when I say large groups, I mean we're talking about the size of a country, right? So what? And I would also suggest that the corruption and the nepotism and the sociopathy and all the things that breed out of people wanting more for themselves within the concepts like peer equality, like communism, create what the the dark elements that this article or the study is talking about.
Speaker 1:So now we're into a paradox because, because we are selfish creatures, we're animals, right, we are human beings are selfish creatures. And we're into a paradox because we are selfish creatures, we're animals, right, we are human beings, are selfish creatures, and we're always going to try and fight and push for more for ourselves, for our own. So there's no way to achieve pure equality because we're always going to be wanting more for ourselves. So how do you achieve equality which lends itself to people secretly trying to get more, which is a corrupting factor, without creating an element where you have a corrupting factor. You have to create a situation where absolutely everybody every man, woman, child and other has absolutely everything that they all want. They all have to all agree on what everything is, and once we give everybody absolutely everything, then we can be communists.
Speaker 2:So I think it's all good, wrong button. No, I don't have.
Speaker 1:Those are the house. Next time on the conversation podcast, the fuyo button, fuyo cheers. Thank you that was a great soundbite statement, by the way. Put that in the fucking podcast the.
Speaker 2:What you're suggesting is let's, let's figure out what the bare minimum is. No, no, no, no, you're on the let's figure out what the bare minimum is.
Speaker 1:No, no, no, no, oh, no, no, no. You're on the wrong side of the spectrum. Oh, we have to give you, me, everybody on your street and everybody on this planet, everything, oh, okay, no, okay. We have to decide what everything is and everyone needs, because if you don't have absolutely everything that's possible, then you're going to try and find out how to get a little bit more, and it will never stop. We will never eliminate this dark factor.
Speaker 2:So that's impossible. Oh, is it now? No shit, sir Life. That's what I was trying to say. That's impossible Because we don't even agree what we want, like you want something different than I want, I have stuff that you don't have and you have stuff I don't have that's why it'll never work, the whole concept of pure.
Speaker 1:we'll never be able to eliminate this part of the human condition, this dark part of the human condition, because we don't know. It's like the movie wally with all the fat people on the station they had everything, but they were doing nothing. Because even if we did achieve ultimate perfection and everyone got everything, everyone was well fed and all of their entertainment needs were met and we all had a hundred wives and a hundred husbands and it was just beautiful world and we all, we lived on the moon and we could travel to jupiter and everyone had everything that they wanted. All we would be able to do is either die as a civilization because we wouldn't have anything to achieve, or we would have to try and find something new it'll never work people are always going to want more.
Speaker 1:They have to, otherwise we can't. I mean if we don't, and that's a good thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a good thing because it creates innovation. It creates, uh, the competitive nature that it is to come out with things that we don't have before, things that we have on our wrist, things that we're using right now, things that, things that we haven't actually configured yet yes, okay, I got a whoop, and yes, you can bring it down if you want to see it.
Speaker 1:So it's like the Reaver planet on Serenity and I know we're getting into concepts you don't understand. But in the movie Serenity these savage space pirates come from nowhere. I don't space pirates.
Speaker 2:The ice pirates? No, not the ice pirates. It's different, different kinds of pirates.
Speaker 1:They're brutal, murdering humans who ravage the lands, called Reavers In the movie. They find the planet where the Reavers are from and the government had tried to give, tried to put something in the atmosphere to make everybody calm and happy and perfect, and a very small percentage of the population had an adverse effect and turned into these vicious space pirates. But everybody else found that they had everything they needed and just sat there and died. That's about what happened. If we had absolutely everything, if we don't, if we don't have conflict or or concepts, if we achieve pure, ultimate satisfaction and equality, all we will have left to do is go to bed and die as, as a as a species.
Speaker 2:It's one of the reasons why some of the most successful people, famous people, people with the most money in the world, tend to be the most unhappy. We see it time and time again People, they had it all. They took their own lives. They had it all. They had the perfect wife, they had the perfect life, they had the perfect job. They or they had it all. They had the perfect wife, they had the perfect life, they had the perfect job, they had the perfect career, they had the perfect everything. And then they threw it all away and walked away. And where did they go? What happened to them and why? Why did they do that? Because they couldn't find meaning in any, in any of it.
Speaker 2:I think if people can find purpose, they have something that drives them. If they have a reason to live, then all this other stuff that can happen. But that has to be coupled with standards and morals and a code and a creed of some sort, a mantra to live by, something to direct them. Otherwise, you're just kind of rudderless and you're letting yourself guide you through life, and that usually ends up being just whatever feels good at the time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that and that that supports what the guy was saying about how societies where rules are broken without consequences create these kinds of problems, and that also supports your, your, your notion that, excuse me, our governmental body, our-party system is all working together to keep us agitated. Now, I would submit that society is meant to keep us occupied and not thinking about how we're just sitting around waiting to die, not thinking about how we're just sitting around waiting to die. But I honestly think that our government is pitting us against one another, basically to keep our brains going, keep us active. They're giving us something to strive for. You don't hate that guy, you don't hate that girl over there. I wonder that in this first world countries like the us and and, uh, great britain and such, that we were starting, we're starting, to get too happy, too complacent, and so they need to give us these things to keep us active, and then hate is a motivator for continuing to live and exist.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, so that's that's been. I mean, that's that's true in the marketplace. Right, you have to. This glass is the best glass ever. You know why? Because it will do this, this, this and this. And why is it better than your glasses? Because your glasses are. This is a problem. This is a problem. This is a problem. So you present the problem and you present the solution and you sell it. And the same thing is true the glasses politics.
Speaker 2:With politics, it's they're sales people, they're selling us something, and I learned this firsthand in 2016. I suspected it, but 2016,. I was like, hey, wait a second, Because I tried to just immerse myself and drown myself in everything. Politics, yeah.
Speaker 1:I did the same thing when that happened. I did.
Speaker 2:Because I wanted to try to figure it out and I really tried to be as open-minded and objective and as unbiased as possible. And I would watch. I'd watch everything, anything and everything it could. It was on, it was on the right, it was on the left, it was fox, it was cnn, it was msnbc, it was stuff on youtube from some obscure guy screaming his head off it was, and everything in between. And I would watch.
Speaker 2:I would try to pick something from each side on one topic and try to find out what their, what their points and counterpoints were. So I could fully understand the argument because I found, if I'm only watching this thing from just using msnbc as an example, well, I'm just really hearing what their slant is. And then I would watch something else on fox and, okay, what's, what's their take on it? Oh, they're saying something different. Okay, try to watch something in the middle. And I would learn pieces of information from each source. But to go through that was just so time consuming and they were deliberately omitting pieces of information that would have made the whole process much. It would have educated so many people much faster if they'd just been honest. They don't want to educate you.
Speaker 1:They want to keep your brain active.
Speaker 2:Yes, so, yes, that's what. That's why I called it a tug of war earlier, because, hey, we're going to pull a little this time and, okay, all right now, it's good for us if gonna pull a little this time and okay, all right now, it's good for us if we lose a little bit, so then you can gain some ground and then we can make this a. You know, it's like a ball game when you, when your team, is losing by 30 points with a minute left. Which ball, jesus christ? Basketball, all right, okay, yeah, I mean, that's plausible.
Speaker 2:The nba finals we're on today and, uh, yeah, you, a lot of people just turn that off like, ah, we're just gonna, we're gonna tune out, right, if we had one one party that just dominated every single election forever, you'd be back to be happy. It's like, well, why are we even? Why are we even trying? Why, why are we even playing? What are we fighting for? So, yes, I am of the opinion that our current elected officials, as altruistic as they would like to lead us to believe that they are, I think maybe there's a handful of them that actually are that, and most of them are just in the business of being in power for as long as they can be in power for.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a compelling argument. I mean, and you see, you see little pieces of it Like when there's, when there's non-political functions that feature, feature individuals from both sides, and just all buddy buddy. Somebody in somebody in Congress who's been there for a thousand years passes away and everyone says you know he would, he or she was a great, was a great, uh, litigator and uh, you know a friend and colleague. But but two weeks ago they were saying this fucking person is an obnoxious cunt and they can't do their fucking job to save our lives. You kind of get the feeling like they're bullshitting us. So I agree, I think that's a compelling argument, for the whole machine is and the machine is not just politics, it is news media as well. It's all designed to keep us engaged, keep our brains going, and they've found that the best way to do that is to keep us agitated and upset and a little pissy which is why I care very little to watch the content that they're producing.
Speaker 2:nope, just knowing the fact that they are backed and funded by people that have an agenda, people that want something sold, I think a huge problem and this is a tangent I think it's a huge problem. It's a big one. I think we made a mistake when we decided that we were going to advertise pharmaceutical companies. We're going to allow pharmaceutical companies to advertise and push new drugs on commercials on television. I think we've done everyone a disservice by doing that. I think that's one thing that we should probably remove, because I know they are one of the biggest donors to either party.
Speaker 1:Can we just put in a law that during the symptoms and side effects it says something like adverse effects may include the destruction of society?
Speaker 2:Yeah, perhaps, perhaps, because, in a sense, right, if I and this goes back to your article when it talks about people being selfish All right, groups can be selfish, corporations can be selfish, and they should. They want to be able to survive, but that has a cost, and if that cost on society is, hey, I need you to get on the air and tell this story and allow us to advertise and push this agenda so that people believe that this drug will do what it needs to do, so that, and then we'll continue to give you money. So say you know you be the puppet. Put whatever allows to put whatever we want in your teleprompter. Tell our story, sell us. We will continue to fund you. Now, you continue to be in business If you're beholden to the people that are giving you the money to provide unbiased information.
Speaker 2:That's supposed to be accurate. I think there's a conflict of interest there, and that's just one. I know there's many other places that legacy media gets their funding from and, yeah, I think it is a problem. And things on YouTube are, in most cases, by my assessment, more authentic and more genuine and more transparent and more and more open about what's actually going on, because, okay, yes, they might have a sponsor or they might have even with reviews. Hey, you review this, they might have a sponsor or they might have even with reviews.
Speaker 2:Hey, you review this. They gave this to me to review, but I don't have to say anything specific about this. They said just tell the people what I honestly thought about it. And then they do Um, I think, when, when, uh, you get, you get sponsored, but you don't, you don't necessarily, you know, you, you promote something that you actually believe in. I think that's honest, okay. So if you actually believe in something, then definitely promote that, but if you're just a shill, like that's a problem well, I, you know I follow very few people on anything and I do follow a few people and I do.
Speaker 1:I do dislike when I'm watching one of their videos. I mean, I've seen it a lot recently, excuse me. It starts out like it's one of their funny little videos or whatever. And all of a sudden they're like and that's why I drink La Marca Prosecco. And it's like are you fucking serious? Right now it's like the soap commercials from the 40s now. So, yeah, I think it's inescapable Money talks and thank you for ending my episode on a tangent. But no, you're 100% correct. Society is the whole thing is society is being driven by the powerful people and power. The money is the power and woo, woo, woo and not whoop, whoop, whoop.
Speaker 2:But if, if, we get super popular and you just pull your ag1 out of from underneath the table, I'm probably gonna walk away I think one of the best things that this article that you brought up provided is a roadmap of places to avoid in the United States. Where should I not visit at night?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so that's funny, because Nevada, I mean you're visiting Las Vegas at night. That's kind of the reason it exists Neither here nor there. All right, okay, okay.
