Ministry of Man

Authoritarianism vs Individualism | Ep.4

• Season 1 • Episode 4

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This week we set out to call nonsense what it is and trace how shallow outrage and captured institutions nudge people toward obedience while eroding the dignity of individual choice. From media’s “bag spreading” to Idiocracy’s control levers and Milgram’s obedience study, we test the line between courtesy, convenience, and coercion.

• why performative outrage replaces personal responsibility
• how convenience infrastructures centralise control
• captured regulators and incentives that distort truth
• statistics versus the lived experience of individuals
• utilitarian traps and the limits of tidy moral math
• obedience to authority and the Milgram pattern
• power’s cycle of corruption and revolt
• the courage to entertain ideas without yielding
• faith and conscience as guardrails for liberty
• practical ways to push back with clarity and grace

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Welcome to episode four of Ministry of Man. And we're here. We're back. We're out here. And we're back again. And no one, they all said we couldn't do it. They all said they said, Isaac, you can't do it. You're not going to be able to do four episodes. You are useless and you're good for nothing. And we don't like you and we don't want you around anymore. And uh I said, you know what, son and daughter? I said, you kids are ungrateful. And you don't know the heights that we're going to with this thing. We're taking off. We're going up to the to the top of the top. I thought I'd reached the top. But there's um there's an upper echelon, apparently, that's out there, and I'm gonna find it, even if it means abandoning my two children, leaving them on their own. Because they didn't they don't believe in me. And I said, if you don't believe in me, I'm still gonna believe in me. So we're here. So we're doing episode four, in spite of those uh ungrateful kids of mine that that said that I'm good for nothing. They said, You're a loser, dad. They said they said, you do your thing, but if you go now, never come back because you're an embarrassment to other family. And so um that's just another life update. I like to give you guys a life update before I kick these off because we're going full swing today. The last episode we didn't hold back, and it got some very interesting responses and replies. It's so it's so funny. Uh guys, guys do not like to be told that they shouldn't watch pornography, and girls don't like to be told what they should and shouldn't wear. So if you want to make friends, you shouldn't talk about those topics. If you want to find if you want to be appealing to the opposite gender, if you're a guy and you want to be appealing to girls, don't tell them what they should and shouldn't wear. Oh yeah, it's polarizing. But you know what? It doesn't matter. Because they're ideas, and if you can't handle an idea, then what are we doing? One of the um one of the thing, okay. The reason that I even wanted to do this podcast, so I'm obviously going to talk about things that are just opinions, essentially. I'm gonna talk about studies, I'm gonna talk about my perspective on things, whatever. But the main thing is that I just want to call out stupid ideas because we because a lot of people try to do it, but not enough people do it. And what ends up happening is the whole the culture just deteriorates. There's a reason that we are where we are, because we allow people to talk in a particular way or to move an idea forward, and everyone's afraid to call it out. It's it's asinine and it's ridiculous. So that's why I'm doing this because a culture will just deteriorate and die if uh if people, you know, just stop talking. So we have to call out silly things when they're around. And no one's safe, by the way. I don't care if you're left, if you're right, Christian, atheist, whatever it is, I'm coming for you. If it's stupid, I'm coming for you. So but in saying that, it just so happens that there's a lot of things that are, I guess, more left-wing ideology that's the most stupid at the moment, and that people are neglecting to call out. Like, the okay, the reason that the that there's been atrocities in the world with children and with trans stuff is because people were afraid to call out stupid ideas, except for a couple of people that got absolutely reamed in media and news and things and lost their job, but they're the real heroes because they're actually pushing back against stuff. Like they'll go, oh yeah, yeah, children, they can't. Uh should should children get tattoos? No, no, no, no, no, no. That's that's permanent, that's a life-changing thing. Okay, okay. Should children vote? No, no, no, no, no. No, they're not gonna be able to vote, they shouldn't know. You gotta be 18 to do that, surely, at least. Okay, okay. Um, so this little five-year-old who still believes in Santa, he also thinks he's a girl. So let's chop his balls off. Yeah, yeah, yeah, fine. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, it's only life-changing forever, and you can't ever, you know, reverse it. But yeah, he's fine to do that. He can't vote and he can't drink, and he can't get tattoos, and he can't do a million other things. But yeah, let's do gender-affirming surgery and mutilate the kid. Like, like the world has gone mad. The world has gone mad, and I'm glad to see that there has been a swing backwards now. Like, people are finally like it took some effort from a lot of people, but my gosh, man, it's just like it frustrates me. Cause yeah, I don't know, dude. There's so many annoying things. Like, that was the main reason why I chose that article as well. So, like the article I spoke about last week was like a girl that spoke about double standards, the boob double standard. I'm like, this is just this is obviously stupid, right? Like, we don't even need to, I didn't need to say any of what I said. It's all common sense. They aren't, I don't have fresh new revelations. It's just saying the obvious thing that a lot of people for some reason don't say. Uh, but it's not obvious to a lot of people, and the fact that the people that know it's obviously stupid aren't saying anything, the people that don't know that it's obviously stupid get wrapped up in it because there's no pushback against it. So they just think that, oh yeah, this is must be true, and they don't have anyone going, hang on, no, it isn't. It's not true at all, it's stupid. So, yeah, and like one thing I don't want to do, but this is kind of like a little, a little taste of a a little follow-up because it is kind of funny, because apparently the girl that made that is doing like a weekly thing now of what's sexist in the world, and so I want to um look at the latest article because it's so funny, and but I won't I won't do this lots because one thing I don't like that's like super cringe as well is the whole like incel thing, like guys that watch the whatever podcast and it and just like uh I don't know, just rag on chicks all the time, and like the whatever podcast is so lame, dude. It's just like it's just a guy that just roasts girls that haven't thought about something, and it's like you can it's just a pointless sort of thing, and got like and guys that just make their whole personality online just like about oh, if a woman cares about us about how tall a guy is, we should be able to ask how much they weigh. You're like, yeah, very clever, very clever man. Yeah, sure. But anyway. So the new art the new article, the new article goes, makes me rage. This is the title, makes me rage. New form of manspreading needs to stop. So there's a new form of manspreading. Which, first of all, there's nothing wrong with manspreading. Like, again, don't don't you know that the biological makeup of men and women are different, and there might be a reason as to why men's legs sit further apart. It's so asinine. There's obviously a reason that that exists. If women had male reproductive organs in between their legs, we would both be doing it. You can't take a stance and be like, we're better than you when you don't have to deal with the same things. It's like it's like men going, oh geez, like women taking maternity leave, like, oh, what a suck on the economy. Like just getting paid to do nothing. It's like you can't complain about a thing when it's like you don't have to bear a child. So like it's the same thing. You can't complain about a dude sitting in a particular way when it's like you don't have the same genetic build. She goes, Welcome to another instalment of my series, What's Sexist This Week? Where I unpack the subtle ways the patriarchy creeps into everyday life. This week's culprit, a fresh variation of manspreading. I'm calling bag spreading. The act of wearing a backpack in a tight public area invading the personal space of innocent bystanders, dude. And it's just a photo of a guy wearing a bag. He's got a backpack on on the train. You can't you can't make this up. This is how I know. This is how I know that there's full on that we've never there's never been more equality in the world than there is now. Like, if you're trying to say guys wearing backpacks on the train is the patriarchy, then there is no patriarchy anymore. Like, you can't reach that far into the depths of like something that could be something. There's not a patriarchy anymore. Like, if that's what you gotta try to go for, then there isn't anything there. That's there's that's a nothing thing. Like, girls don't wear bags as well, or the fact that it's not even a guy thing, that like, because she goes on to say, yeah, this girl was this girl was saying in it. So she quotes so this is why she wrote the article because she's like, you know, women are having this problem. I've spoken to dozens of women about it. Dozens. There's either been between 24 to 36 girls be like, tell this one news journalist about man, these guys and their backpacks just whacking me in the face every time I get on. I can't help this is that darn patriarchy. These guys, she goes, she goes, he was standing and leaning against a pole, and his backpack kept hitting me in the face. I'm like, how many times did the bag had to hit you in the face before you just like turned around and f like I had to push it away several times, and other passengers were giving me sympathetic looks, but he didn't move. So, like he didn't move because you can't feel it. If you're wearing a bag and someone hits the bag, it's not your body, you can't feel it. I've been hit in the face by bags before. A girl was wearing a backpack and hit me and like bumped into me and didn't realize. And but when she did, she turned around and apologized. It's not like a big deal, it's like, oh yeah, like people wear bags and they stick out further than normal. Yeah, um, she goes, I thought classic men taking up more room they need, even if it's unintentional, that's almost worse. It's like they don't even care how their behavior affects those around them. So it's like okay. So, like, what are you wanting to get out of this article? What is the desired outcome? All right, guys. You heard the girl, leave your stuff at home. You can't take your things around anymore, all right? You just gotta leave it at home and deal with it. No more bags. Like, we're gonna all band together. Like, guys, we need to make sure we end the patriarchy by leaving our backpacks at home so they don't take up too much space on the train. Like, and then she takes a photo. She turns around and takes a photo so you can see the bag in the background, so she can turn around. There is enough room to turn around, so you don't have to keep keep getting hit in the face. It's like like that was your only option. Like, oh dude, I was dying reading this, man. It's like it I actually feel bad. I genuinely feel bad for women that uh are genuinely like that genuinely might feel some sort of issue with like uh feminist issue or I don't know, whatever gender war issue is going on. Because because this is this is so stupid that like people will read this and think, oh, this like women, this is a women thing. Like this girl does not represent women, like she might have had this one girl make something post something that she saw online and was like, that's my next story. It's gonna be guys taking up more space than they need. And she goes, She goes, Is this a gender issue? Well, social awareness is down across the board. I believe bag spreading could be a gender-specific issue. When you add anecdotal experiences, the dozens of women that have also said that they usually encounter this sort of behavior. A quick Instagram poll of my family of my female followers revealed nearly all had witnessed some version of bag spreading. Whether that's from a bag on someone's back or one that had been placed on a seat. Well, where else do you put it? She goes. She goes, and you can't call it out. It would make the rest of the trip awkward. And I think they know that. There's this untouchable entitlement, as if courtesy doesn't apply to them. So it's like you can't politely go, hey man, yeah, just so you know, uh, your bag's like hitting me in the face, and I don't have enough room to move back. Is that okay if you like take it off or just sit it there or something? Like, no, that would make the trip awkward. I'm just gonna have to continually get hit in the face. There's nothing I can do about it. That darn patriarchy. So she goes, she continues and goes, bag spreading might seem trivial, but I'd argue it qualifies as a microaggression, an indirect expression of bias. A gender researcher in this space says microaggressions, whether intentional or not, perpetuate existing power structures. In this instance, the microaggression reinforces male privilege and the idea that men deserve to take up space and women don't, which is trick which has trickle-down effects across society from workplaces to homes. Yeah, yeah, men take up so much space in the home. Yeah. Yeah, men take up so much space in the home, except for like uh like luggage space. Like, doesn't matter about that, and like obviously not not we're not including bathroom space either. Like men are known for having their stuff all over the bathroom and all over the the sink. And obviously, like closet space doesn't matter, shoe rack space doesn't matter. Uh the spaces in gyms where there's it literally entire rooms dedicated to female only spaces. None of that. That's not that's got nothing to do with uh with anything. It's just it's that darn patriarchy at it again. Like this is why. Like you're doing yourself a disservice when you talk about this sort of stuff because like people aren't gonna take you seriously anymore. They're not gonna take you seriously if you're like if you say that's the patriarchy, like if you really have a problem with the way that the society is set up and you go, we need to fix this issue with the bags, like this has got to stop, then like they're not gonna listen. No one's gonna get on board with you. Like, this is one of the issues that like if you make your whole identity uh a particular thing, and then that thing no longer exists, you have to create more issues to keep being who you are. So all the people that hated Trump when he first got elected, and then like for four years, and then he like wasn't president anymore, and then so it's like okay, what do we do now? We had entire websites and jobs and campaigns set up to try and dis discredit this person, and then so you just have to what you just keep talking about it. It's like if you're like a feminist and and you've and you actually reach equality, so we'll get we got there, and you go, okay, well, that's who I am though. Like my thing is that I'm feminist. So if there's no feminist issues, well then we just have to look for one and try and figure it out, and that's how you get to bags being the patriarchy on the on public transport. Like it's out of control, it's out of control. But anyway, so I just wanted to I just wanted to do a follow-up because apparently I'm not gonna uh worry about this because it's girl is clearly out of her mind. Uh, so I'm not gonna spend any more time on her articles, although it could be fun because that one genuinely made me laugh. And again, like it's such an issue because guys will look at this article and they'll comment on it and be like, oh, girls are the worst. And it's like it's not girls, it is just a girl who saw a post and was like, This is the new thing. It's like, no, it isn't. I've been hit by bags, it's just a human thing. It's like if someone there was a literally, I was at a thing the other night, an event the other night, there's a group of like five girls that were I was standing in a particular place for like an hour in the same place, and a group of girls came over in front of me and started dancing around and being like really somewhat like I guess boisterous would be the word. Uh, and like a lot of them started moving backwards, like to the point where they're very much in my personal space now. And I was like, I had to leave, I had to go somewhere else because they were coming so close, they were in my personal space. I thought they were gonna run into me. And I'm like, okay, well, I'm just gonna move to the back of the room. I don't need to make a big deal of it, and I don't need to say that there's a problem with women because like because they just so happen to not consider my personal space in that particular moment. Like, people will do inconsiderate things, and one of those things is not realize that their bag is in someone's way, but also you can see the bag there though, and like you can just be like, hey, sorry, I'm here as well. The bag's just getting me. Like, it's such a simple fix. No, it's but it's better to just say it's the patriarchy, though. That's more um, that's more interesting, and the again, like the only reason I even talked about this is because this is on news.com.au, it's like the biggest news website in Australia. Like, this is news, it's on the news. There's a full report on it. Like, what is this journalism? That's crazy. Anyway, we're moving on, we're moving on because we we're this is the last episode of or the last uh section of what was meant to be all done in a single episode, but there's just too much to talk about it. But it's the last breakdown, the last thing I want to break down from the movie Idiocracy, and it's really cool because it this one's kind of fun as well and like really interesting. So, again, tiny recap. Idiocracy is a guy who's 500 years in the future, and it shows this dystopian, deteriorated society. And I'm breaking down some of the key themes that I found really interesting in the movie. So the next thing was a dystopian authority. One of the things that I noticed, this is the first thing that I noticed was the almost tyrannical control in some ways. It was just it was an overreaching government, and that's not surprising that they put that in the movie because that's not really a far-fetched concept, if we're being if we're being real. So the first thing I noticed was everyone had to have a wrist tattoo, a barcode on their wrist that had their identity, their name, their job, all their information. Straight up digital ID and the mark of the beast. Like, this is exactly what we're heading towards. This is exactly what we're heading towards. Digital ID has been spoken about. And for those that don't know what the so I don't know if who's heard of this, but in the Bible it speaks of the mark of the beast. So I'm gonna read out. It's ref so this is in the book of Revelation, which is a prophetic, uh, a prophetic book that says, These are the things that are going to come in the future. And it's like a warning. So it's warning people. So this is in Revelation 16 through to 18. This is referring to a beast that is to come. So it's saying a beast is gonna come, and this is all the things that it's gonna do. So in verse 16, it says, It causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be marked on the right hand or the forehead, so that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark. That is, the name of the beast or the number of its name. This calls for wisdom. Let the one who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man, and his number is six six six. Or in other manuscripts, it actually says six one six. So it could be either, could be triple six or six one six. But the point is, you're not gonna be able to buy or sell, and it applies to the rich and the poor, it applies to free and slave, it applies to small and great, everyone. Like, it's it's harrowing that this sort of thing is starting to happen. Because like the stepping stones are okay, we obviously saw what happened during COVID when they're like, you need a passport thing. They even stopped you from being able to work, unless you had a jab, and then you had to have a digital thing to show you, yep, I got my jab, and you had to show it to even go to a restaurant. We aren't that far away. This was written thousands of years ago, by the way. So if that doesn't concern you, it's like, okay, what's this ancient text? Like, imagine if this wasn't in the Bible, because obviously people have their opinions about the Bible, people have whatever. Let's the Bible is a compilation of different books that were written and it was compiled together. So Revelation was its own thing, it's its own little manuscript that they found, it's separate from anything else. Imagine if you just found that and you're like, hang on, are you telling me that this is these manuscripts written on papyri? It says in the future there's gonna be a beast that comes, and it's there there's this a number uh of its name, some sort of number reference, and it says, You need unless you have a particular mark on your hand or your head, you're not gonna be able to buy or sell anything. Like, can you buy food? Can you sell goods? Can you work? Okay. Okay, I'm not gonna be able to work, I'm not gonna be able to buy food or anything. That sounds pretty crazy. And then you and then you look at reality today, you look at society, it's like, okay, well, they kind of already did that, they kind of already got halfway there during COVID. Uh okay, so that's concerning. They're trying to push for a digital idea already. We also have something called AI, which is now replicating voices, uh, images, literally pictures of people, where they're going, like a lot of people can't tell the difference now. It's getting really good. It's only gonna get better. It's only, and then people are gonna be like, oh, well, how are we gonna know? How are we gonna be able to identify someone that's AI or not? Hmm. Hmm. What could we do? What kind of like digital setup could we have where where people could maybe scan something to see if they're if they're real or there's something there? So I don't know. It's worth looking into though, and then you got people like Peter Teal talking about the Antichrist, that Tim Dylan clip on Rogan talking about Peter Teal is the funniest thing ever. Anyway, so that was one thing having the wrist tattoo, super dystopian, and it looks like we're headed that way, according to the scriptures and the prophecy foretold. That's where we're headed. So the next thing was electric cars turning off. So they were in a hot pursuit from the police, and they're in an electric car, and then they're driving to get away, and then the car turns off. He goes, What happened? He goes, Oh, they they must have turned the car off. It's electric car, it's on the grid. You're like, Okay, okay. Slightly concerning. That's also another concern that people have with the uh move onto electric cars because there's more and more of those. Okay, another one, yeah, something worried about. Um, this one was kind of funny. So, so earlier, maybe two episodes ago, I talked about Brondo. Brondo was like their sports drink that they were using to water crops and everything. So basically, what had actually happened was they thought their biggest competitor was water. So they thought, okay, well, we don't want to be losing any money. So what they ended up doing was they bought the FDA. So they bought the companies that would tell you what's good and what's not good. And because of that, they were able to use Brondo to water the crops. And obviously, all the crops died. And but they put Brondo in the water fountains, they put Brondo in like everything. There was that was the only drink you could actually buy. So they told everyone, because they'd bought the FDA, they told everyone what was healthy and what's not healthy, and what they should have and what they shouldn't have. And all that takes is just a bribe. It almost seems too obvious. It's like, what do you think the likelihood of, I don't know, a huge multi-trillion dollar industry wanting to control what people eat and drink in order to gain more money. You think about what kind of person wouldn't accept a particular bribe? Like, there's this thing is ever everybody, everybody has a price. I remember I asked a group of girls if they would ever sell photos online, like just to see what their values were. And I knew that they were gonna say no. And they go, no way, no way, no way. And I go, what about if it's just like, you know, your face isn't in it, but it's just like a body shot and you're in like underwear, and no one knows, and it's just one photo and it's for like a million dollars. And they're like, oh, I probably would do it for that. Like, yeah, maybe, yeah, maybe like a million dollars, I'd probably do that. And so it's like, okay, so obviously when I first asked, you were like, I would never do that. And then I put a price tag on it, and then you said you would do that, and so it's like, and then so all we have to do from there. Just scale, you can just scale it down. It's like, okay, well, would you do it for like 20 bucks? Like, no, no, no, no way I wouldn't do it for that. Okay, what about a hundred grand? Oh, yeah, maybe, maybe a hundred grand. Like, geez, in my bank, fire out. Yeah. You can do that test with anyone. Like, you can just say, Would you do this for this amount of money? Oh no, you would just ask the question, like the test for anyone for anything, would you do this? And then they go, No. And you go, how about for money? And then you just figure out what the amount of money is. And so if you're someone who works in an industry and you don't have like a good moral compass, which how many people really do when it comes to money? And it comes to like you're dealing in like multi-million dollar kind of deals, you're like, yeah, okay, well, all right, maybe we can we can uh promote that, you know. You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours, that kind of thing. Like if we're if we're under the belief that that just doesn't happen, oh my gosh, then we lose, we lose, and when there's no coming back for us. Like that, so that's just like a couple of the things. There was a couple of the things that I noticed. I'm like, man, we are there already. And so I wanted to talk a little bit about the difference between authoritarianism and individualism, or state absolutism and individualism. So I'll start with just giving some definitions because obviously this is kind of good timing because I can't don't know if I'm saying this right. I think his name's Zoran Zoran Mandami. I don't even know. But the guy that got in as mayor of New York. So he's a socialist, right? So a lot of people are like, yeah, down with capitalism, up with socialism. They don't really even know what it is. They're basically just saying, we don't want the billionaires to be billionaires anymore, and we want them to give money to other people, aka them themselves. They want things for free, they want other people to pay for it, and they don't really know exactly what it is that they're asking. So, but I'll start with a few definitions. So, state absolutism is basically just a dictatorship. It's usually just one person with complete controlled centralized power. Authoritarianism is um similar, but it's more like a group. So it could be like a government, or it could be still like a dictator or a government. It's the enforcement or advocacy of strict obedience to authority at the expense of personal freedom. You can't have authoritarianism and personal freedom at the same time. They're like contradictory. Totalitarianism is kind of like a step further. It's authoritarianism, but it would seek to control even your private life. So things that you would do in your own discretion. It's the it's the preservation of a single total ideology, as it's called totalitarianism. It is the total rule, whether it's in the public sector or in the private home, it's everywhere. So democracy is the complete opposite to authoritarianism. Democracy is uh it stands contrast to authoritarianism, it's based on the free participation of citizens and the protection of individual rights. And individualism is kind of like the philosophy of the singular individuals. So democracy is like the legal framework for individualism, basically. So when I say either state absolutism, authoritarianism, or totalitarianism, I'm referring to a similar structure of things because it could either be a singular person of control, a group in control, or an uh a far exceeding overreach of totalitarian control. And then individualism is basically just democracy, it's personal liberty, and it's the the freedom of the individual. So one thing to note is that when it comes to individual thought, it wavers the bigger the group is. The bigger the group, the more individual thought will waver and not really be heard. I've spoken the first episode of the podcast that the mass kind of crushes out any kind of insight and reflection of the individual. It's not afforded to them. And because of that, it leads to an authoritarian kind of tyrannical government. So what state absolutism seeks to do, its aim is to have a collective body. It wants to have, it wants to have the mass. Like the it the focus of authoritarianism is on the mass public. And the the issue with individualism is that it's a threat to the collective body. Because if you're an individual, you're not part of the herd anymore. And so you're no longer able to be controlled. You're just as you're as is. So it's much harder for an authoritarian government to control someone that has individual thought. So they want to stomp out individual thought. They don't want that to actually exist. They want everyone to come together for common good. Everyone be of one mind of whatever the state uh puts upon the people. Individual thought is kind of seen as a rebellious thought because it's it's not conforming to the group. And there's a harrowing quote from a book written by Aldous Huxley called Brave New World. And one of the phrases that it kind of repeats in there, they they learned this phrase through repetition, for one, but it's like it's sleep repetition. So when they sleep from babies to they they're grown, it plays this on repeat and it says, everybody belongs to everybody else. So the reason that that's harrowing is that it's to say that you don't matter as the individual, everybody belongs to everybody else. This is not you that's living, it's uh it's the common group that's living. So uh the issue, I think the biggest issue in looking at determining the problems with individualism and authoritarianism, or more so the problem with I think with authoritarian, like so I support individualism. I'm very much in favor of personal individual liberty. That is my stance for that. So I think that authoritarianism is bad, and I think that anything that funnels more control to a singular person or a singular group is dangerous. And I'll explain why, because so well, first of all, I'll go into this. So one of the biggest issues with authoritarianism is that even with, let's say, socialism or communism, these sorts of ideas of give control to the government and we'll deal with things, is that they don't look out for the needs of the individual because they can't. They have to look at a group. So they'll use things like statistics and what is the greater good for the well-being of the group. So they'll they'll need to use statistics and averages in order to find out, okay, well, what's going to be the best on average for the largest group of people? This is one of the things that you need to be really careful with when it comes to statistics, because I'm a big statistic guy. But the issue is when you use statistics without understanding individuals and the individual experience, which is the most real experience, you can really get lost in the numbers. So let's say, for example, you're an authoritarian government and you go, okay, we've done research on what 30-year-old people respond to, what their behaviors are and how they like to be treated, what kind of diet they have, or whatever, whatever the thing is. We've got information on 30-year-olds. And then you go, okay, well, let's look at this group of people. We've taken an average of a group of people and it spits out that the average of this particular group is 30. And so we're going to use that information and apply it to them. And then you look a little bit closer at the individuals and you see, oh, okay, so there was in this particular group, half the group was 20, the other half was 40, which making up an average age of 30, but there isn't actually a single 30-year-old in the group. So the reality of the fact is that the individual uh doesn't match up with the statistical data. So you need to be really careful when looking at statistics because they can be very misleading. They can be very helpful as well, but they can also be deceptive if you're not looking at the individual. So when you you you can't kind of be, you can't lean too heavily on one or the other. Um, we especially you can't lean too heavily on doing statistics because statistics can do a lot of damage to an individual because they're not really looking at the individual needs. So uh now the psychological effect of the statistical world. So the individual is basically replaced with metrics that paint a picture that's not reflective of someone's living reality. The responsibility of the individual gets replaced with policy of the state. So there's a phrase called raison d'etre, if I'm saying that right, it's in French, which is reason for the state, basically. And then versus raison d'etre, which is your your reason for living. So your personal kind of, you would have a personal raison d'etre, you can't have that to be, that can't be like a collective thing. It's it's your reason for state otherwise. So uh things like public welfare and the standard of living get prioritized, and it seems like a good thing, uh, but there's no reason for, let's say, an individual to want to better themselves. So you wouldn't really be focused on, there'd be no attention on self-development or focus on yourself because the most important thing is the public welfare. It's the general good of people. But the issue is it stomps out the individual progression. So that's antithetical to any, I suppose anyone that wants to develop themselves, because that's kind of seen as redundant. You don't need to develop yourself, you need to focus on what is best for everyone and what is best for the state. So Carl Jung has a quote. He writes, the individual, so this is in a in his book called The Undiscovered Self. He writes, the individual is increasingly deprived of the moral decision as to how he should live his own life, and instead is ruled, fed, clothed, and educated as a social unit, accommodated in the appropriate housing unit, and amused in accordance with the standards that give pleasure and satisfaction to the masses. So it's all kind of done for you. So you get allocated your way of living based on what's going to be best for the masses. You're you're fed, clothed, and educated as a social unit, altogether dependent on what's best for everyone. Doesn't matter if you individually don't like it or if it's not your preference. We're looking at the collective unit here. You're accommodated in the appropriate housing. You you're amused in accordance with the standards that give pleasure and satisfaction to the masses. So you're even like the things that should amuse you or provide pleasure and satisfaction to you is also controlled because it's providing more power and structure to the mass idea, to the larger scale idea. So this is what uh Aldous Huxley would talk about, and what he was actually afraid of, and why he wrote Brave New World to begin with, because he was concerned that there would come a point in time that people were more concerned with pleasure, that they wouldn't even know that they they'd lost their freedoms. They were almost happy to give up certain freedoms because of pleasure, because of things like uh things like that. It talks about in one of the chapters at the towards the end of Brave New World, it says, in order to keep stability and happiness, they forfeit truth and beauty. So stability and happiness are the the primary uh it's the primary focus points of the government, of the the world that they live in. And in order to gain full stability and full happiness without any disruptions, because their aim is that they don't want to ever have unstable terms or the people living there feel unstable or unhappy for any moment of time. They stomp it out, they they work it out where they can allow and continue without any interruptions. It's fully stable and everyone is completely happy. But in order to get there, they have to sacrifice truth and beauty. One of the quotes it writes, beauty is attractive, and we don't want people to be attracted by old things. He says that in regards to locking away things like the Bible or Shakespeare, so poetry or works of art. They go, We don't want art, we don't want beauty because beauty is attractive and it will draw you in. And because these are old things that we've done away with, we don't want people to be drawn in by it. We don't want people to see it. So truth and beauty actually rock the boat. It talks about the nine-year war, where, you know, there's bombs going off and all this sort of thing. And people got to a point where they were so sick of the war that they beckoned their own appetites to be controlled, their own desires to even be controlled. If it meant peace, they were happy to sacrifice and have their own appetites controlled, if that meant gaining peace. Passion and death were foreign concepts to people in Brave New World. And that's because passion provides the possibility of an unfulfilled passion. So if you're looking for stability, you don't want someone, and you're looking for complete happiness. You don't want anyone to risk being unfulfilled or having a passion not met. And so they are they are conditioned to not have passions anymore. Their purpose and their reason for living is to function for the good of everyone else. That's it. Uh, and then obviously beauty implies ugly or non-beauty. So you don't want you don't want beauty for the sake of someone else maybe not feeling beauty. Because if something is beautiful, that implies that there's other things that aren't beautiful. Because if everything's beautiful, everything is just the same. So like it's like the an admiration for the flower foregoes admiration for the dirt that it springs from. So you can't kind of, you don't want the dirt to feel bad. And in this case, this is this is people and humans and humanity and way of thinking in life. So um, you know, we hear things like beauty is in the eye of the beholder, which I I understand to a degree, but I don't actually think that that is a productive thing because I think there are some things that are objectively beautiful, and there are some things that are objectively not beautiful. So you don't look at mud and dirt and be like, yeah, that is beautiful. Even though someone could find it beautiful, it's more likely that that there's probably something not right in the that person's way of thinking. So uh, you know, there's degrees with art where it's you know subjective, beauty is subjective, all these sorts of things. But at some point, we can't just say, well, anything could potentially be beautiful because it's just not true. And if we believe that, then we're we're eliminating an idea of beauty that actually advances people or that is appreciative. So I shouldn't say that the mold on, you know, a dirty corner is beautiful and or say, no, you can't call that ugly, or you can't say that's not beautiful. And I and at the same time, you can't say to someone, yes, the the view over this, you know, huge mountains and lakes running through is not beautiful. It's like, even if I don't feel that it is myself, I can still say, well, there's objective beauty there because we have desires to see. And so I believe that there is objective beauty, and I think what we do really wrong as a society to ignore objective beauty. It's a silly thing. We shouldn't, we shouldn't do that. So anyway, I suppose another idea of this is that the bigger the crowd, the easier it is to ignore the individual. So let's say if you're looking at the sake of a million people and you go, 15 people died, but you know, there's a million, there was a million people there. So 15 compared to a million is not really much at all. You're like, and if you narrow that down to numbers, you're like, that's 001% of people died. And it's like, okay, but the individual for them and their families and their surrounding like life at their community, it's devastating. It's like people uh have died. But if you're only looking at numbers, if you're a government, you're like, okay, well, that's actually not a bad cost. So this is kind of my issue with there's a philosophy of life that called utilitarianism. And the idea of it is that you you make decisions based on what is good, or you decide what is good and what is bad based on the, let's say, maximizing pleasure and reducing suffering as much as possible. So you let's say, why should you hit someone? Or why should why is it bad to punch someone? It's like, okay, well, if we want to maximize as much pleasure as possible and reduce the amount of suffering as possible, then it's wrong to hit someone because you've just hurt them. So uh, but then you could look at something and be like, uh, okay, so in war, let's say there's a few people, like criminals, that are gonna make a bomb and blow up a building and kill a thousand people. So you would go, okay, it's good to stop those people because they're about to kill a lot of people. So we want to reduce the amount of suffering as much as possible. So let's stop those people. And so you're you're kind of you're looking at a way of living that is, yeah, I suppose maximizing pleasure, reducing suffering. But it's all it's all kind of based on consequences. So they look at the consequences of an action and behavior, and they go, okay, so um, what is the most goodness for the most amount of people? Um, so the issue that I have with that is again, it creates this world in which it has so many problems because you could go, okay, there's a there's just an innocent bystander there. If you like stress test and you put all these like, you know, meta scenarios in place, it just falls apart every time. You're like, so is it good that I if I was to kill, you know, this little child and it'll but it'll save five adults. Well, you should kill the little child, then, shouldn't you? Because these five adults are gonna be saved. And it's like, okay, so I feel like that's like that's the wrong thing to do. Like, okay, well, this is this is a good way, I suppose, to figure out where you stand with some things is like there's a thing in philosophy called the the trolley problem, and you've probably seen it online. It's basically a train is headed in a particular direction, and there's five people laid across train tracks, and the train is about to hit and kill these five people, and you're standing at a lever. And if you pull the lever, it'll divert the train and it will go and it will kill just one person. So the question is: do you pull the lever or do you not? So if you're a utilitarian, you would say, Well, yeah, I would pull the lever because only one person is going to die, and the five people will live. So the more people that live, the better. The issue is that let's say the the Christian dilemma in this is that you're now complicit in a death, right? Because you've gone, okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna intervene and I'm gonna pull this lever and I'm gonna change the course of what's happening, and it's gonna kill the one person. So now I'm involved in the killing. The dilemma that I have with this is that you're also in some way, so you're also you're complicit in the murder for the first if you pull the lever. But I also feel like you're somewhat complicit if you don't intervene and help in some way. I don't think I would pull the lever, I'm not 100% sure, but I don't think I would. Uh, I'm open to being convinced of otherwise, but I the the idea that you shouldn't step in went into helping someone if you have the ability and the capability to help. So uh let's say if someone's getting attacked and you go, Well, I don't, I'm just not gonna get involved. Like, look, it's not my business. So you see like an innocent person getting attacked, and you don't go and step in, like, that's cowardice. So I have that point of view. The issue is uh when it comes to this, you don't know circumstances, there's no one actually being attacked, and so there's you're not stepping in to prevent uh an attack. So it's kind of like there's there's kind of fine little details involved in it. But ultimately, utilitarianism would say to pull the lever. Another issue with authoritarianism is the leadership of it. So all the people that are enforcing it, they're no freer than anyone else that's just having rules enforced upon them. So the rulers of it or the enforcers of it are just as much a part of the social unit because they're all they are is just a mouthpiece. They're just they've they've heard what the state doctrine is, and then they just enforce the state doctrine. So they're not they're also not afforded any individual thought. They're just told this is your job, enforce, and don't ask questions and don't think, like you're just to do the thing. So they're just being told by another authority. So they're still under authority, it's just a different authority. This is perfectly outlined in the Milgram experiment, which I'll go through as well because it's another cool little study and a cool little experiment. So, for those that haven't heard of the Milgram Experiment, this was a test to see how people would respond to authority and how far they would take it. So what they did was they got a person to be the teacher and another person to be the subject. And they took the subject into another room where the the the person that's the teacher, so the the test is on the teacher. The person that's the subject is in on it. Okay, so they go into a different room that they can't, they can't see what's happening to this person, but they're shown what could potentially happen. They're gonna be locked into a chair and they're gonna be getting shocked every time they they do something wrong. So uh they're basically they it's like a memory thing and they ask particular questions, and if they get it wrong, then they have to shock them. So they're told that they're testing for memory or something, other things. The first shock that they admit uh that they administer is about 75 volts. So when the the subject gets shocked first, they start with just doing some audible grunts of pain. That's kind of the first level when they they're told to do this, by the way. So they're not actually getting hurt at all. They're told to do this. So they start like some audible grunts of pain. At about 120 volts, the they'll start to like vocally protest and they become more louder and they go, you know, to say stop, that kind of thing. And it becomes more insistent. At 150 volts, they begin to complain specifically about a heart condition, to say that this isn't good for them. They've got a heart condition. That's at 150 volts. It goes up to 300 volts, they start pounding on the wall, indicating significant distress. After about 330 volts, they then become silent, creating the impression that they're either unconscious or unresponsive. Now, when the person is saying the the teacher, the person that's administering the shocks, there's someone in the room with them, just in a lab coat that's basically conducting the test. And the only things that they're allowed to say, there's four phrases please continue or please go on. Second one is the experiment requires you to go on. The third is it is absolutely essential that you continue. And the fourth is you have no other choice but to continue. So before conducting the experiment, the uh Milgram so the guy's name's Milgram surveyed psychiatrists who predicted only 0.1% of participants would administer maximum shocks. So they expected that most would refuse between 150 to maybe 300 volts once they started hearing the the protests and the heart concern stuff. That's when they thought um, yeah. So they thought that it would mainly be minimum, though. So the actual results, this is what this is what the results were 65%, so two-thirds of participants, continued to the highest level of 450 volts. That is like the like well beyond the point. So by the way, they they come uh to the point of being silent at around 3 30, by the way. Which is nuts. 100% of the participants, everyone that did it, got to at least 300 volts. So past the the heart condition to the point they're pounding on the wall to stop. Uh a total there was a total of 14 defiant participants who stopped before reaching the highest levels uh at 300, four at 315, two at 330, one at 345, and one stopped at 360 and one at 375. So, oh, like people will just do horrible things if there is there's just an authority saying, just do it, just do the thing. Like, that's how susceptible people are to obeying authority, even against their own instinctual nature. They wouldn't want to do that if it was their own test. But because there's someone there telling them, then they don't actually feel responsible. They feel that the responsibility is on the authority, and so they'll do horrible things to people. It's because it's still them administering the shock, it's them pressing the button, administering what they think is a shock to a person that they just met that has a heart condition and is in very clear pain, they're still doing it rather than going, no, I'm not doing this stupid thing. Like, so that's a really scary one. And yeah, so like whoever is sitting on top of the authoritarianism throne, whether it's state absolutism, whether it's totalitarianism, they have full control. So that there is someone or a group of people at top that have absolute control that then no one can tell them otherwise. Louis the 16th was the uh the French monarch. He famously said once l'état symbolique, which is I am the state. So him who is the monarch and the ruler was embodied as the state. There is no one above me, no one can tell me anything. I am the state. Um, Carl Jung also goes on to say that slavery and rebellion are inseparable. So wherever you see this type of control, you're going to always have rebellion. You're never gonna have stability, you're never gonna have peace, there's always gonna be unrest, there's always gonna be uprisings. So it's a stupid thing to even try to implement. And at the moment, you've got people that are using democracy to try to vote in people that are more authoritarian. It's insane. They're voting out their own freedoms. It's very, very dangerous because anytime a leader rises up, they all fall to the same allure of power. This is what Jung talks about they fall to the power that. That they've just obtained and becoming the thing that they desired to remove. This is a lot of the time what happened in like ancient Rome, where they would like, they would kill a Caesar and someone else would take the place. And then they were meant to be the person that everyone voted in because the last one was so oppressive. But then they would, now that they had the power, then they were like, Well, well, now that I've got it, well, maybe I'm gonna do my own thing now. Like it's like power's a dangerous thing. One of my favorite quotes from the show Vikings, Ragnar Lothbrook goes, Power is always dangerous. It attracts the worst and corrupts the best. And I was like, man, I did not expect to hear that from uh from a fictional TV show. Whoever wrote that was genius. But it does, it does. Like if you think about it, power would attract the worst people because they'd want to use it for nefarious reasons. And once good people have it, the best people that have it, they get corrupted by it because they're not used to having it and they can't handle it. So why do people choose authoritarianism? Why would someone want to choose, say, communism or socialism, these sorts of things? Dostoevsky writes, People do not really want freedom because freedom involves responsibility. And most people are frightened of responsibility. They prefer to live under someone else's idea of truth, to obey rather than think, to blame rather than act. The real battle is not between good and evil, but between cowardice and courage, between those who dare to think for themselves and those who choose the comfort of chains. And chains can be comfortable. That's the thing. The issue is that thinking requires discomfort. In order to think, it's not always going to be a good feeling. Because you're going to have to entertain ideas that you might not necessarily agree with, and they might be unsettling and uncomfortable, like even the prospect of it. Aristotle says it is the mark of an intelligent mind to be able to entertain an idea without accepting it. So that's what we should strive for in order to think of, okay, can this particular idea work even though I don't subscribe to it, even though I don't believe it, can I entertain the idea of its existence and go through the feeling of discomfort to get there? Because I don't, you don't agree with it when you're entertaining it, but that shouldn't stop you from thinking about it at least. Thinking it requires discomfort. And when we live in a world that is constantly aiming and directing us towards being more comfortable, like who would want to do that? We are constantly finding ways to avoid discomfort, even in the smallest little things. As soon as we get sad, we get medicated for it. As soon as there's a difficult conversation to have, we avoid it. We block people, we ghost people, we unfollow. It's like I'm not going to deal with the confrontation of it. All the validation we get is from likes and shares. We don't go in public and do anything because we don't want to be cringe. So we don't do anything in public. We're just like, I want to do what's socially acceptable. I don't want to be uncomfortable for a moment. Yeah. So the reason that I think that this is good to talk about is because I believe that the counter to a government that wants to press and always try and feed control to itself and have a uh and the solution that would make individualism thrive is Christianity specifically, Protestant Christianity. So this is why. In order to have any kind of state absolutism or a tyrannical totalitarian government, you have to abolish religion altogether, like any form of religion, not just Christianity, any religion. The reason you have to do that is that you the state needs you to be completely dependent on the state. You can't have something else that's helping you. You have to, the state has to be your God, it has to be your everything. So the the thing is with something like Christianity, is that Christianity is dependence on God alone, far beyond the state. So you are actually submitted unto God, and anything else is called idolatry. So you can't submit to the government because that's idolatry. You wouldn't do that. You have God has to be first. So you also gain the ability to make judgments, you gain power to make your own decisions that are in line with your God-given calling or purpose. So God becomes the ultimate authority. If you're looking for an authoritarian government, you can't really do that if people are saying, Well, you're not my authority. I have a higher authority than you. So the Bible will say, you are in the world, but you are not of the world. You are not of this world. You are a visitor. So depending on the religion, though, religion itself can be dangerous because there is such a thing as like religious absolutism, for example. That's like where you're not afforded the ability to think for yourself within the religion. So this is why I'm not a Catholic, because uh you don't get any freedom to interpret the scriptures. You're you're basically, it's the same thing as the state. You're just told you have to believe this, you can't question it. There's doctrinal dogmas and there's creeds and there's church leaders in authority. That's like the Pope, you can't question the Pope, he's a top guy. If he says that, this is what goes. So that's why I am a Protestant Christian who says that the Bible alone is the authority, but there's different interpretations of it. And I think that that still allows you to have individual freedom and liberty. There's some things that it's very clear on where it's like, okay, this is like if you're going to be a Christian, you can't just do whatever you want. Like you're obviously just not a Christian, then. You there's still a it's still an ideology as well. It's uh it's something that you practice as a way of living, but it doesn't rob you of your individualism. So the philosophy, I suppose you could say, of living a Christian life is that you are supposed to die to your instinctual natures, so your carnal, more primal, animalistic natures that humans have to live for other people, but not removing yourself. So obviously in Brave New World, it will say uh everyone belongs to everyone else. So that's almost a perverted version of what Christianity would say. Because we're supposed to love others and sacrifice yourself, but you don't diminish yourself. So you are still you. There's a you have a personal relationship with God that is individual, and you have a personal specific calling that is for you, that you were made for, that you were born for, that you were designed to do, that you were given particular gifts, you were given given skills, you're an individual, you have your own identity. So that doesn't get removed. Whereas in authoritarianism, your identity doesn't matter, it is just all for the one thing. So uh this is the the issue that I think is going to happen in the future is that there's they're wanting to push for a world religion because there are, if if there is, let's say, a nefarious government that wants to push for a one-world government, they also want to push for a one-world religion because they can't, they wouldn't be able to do a one-world government if Christianity exists in in the way that it does, because they're like, well, we need to be the ultimate authority. So what the well, what is being said is that they're they're pushing for a one-world religion, which is going to be, you know, Judaism, Catholicism, and Islam. And they're going to go, we all, it's all one thing and we're all together. So that's the plan or the so-called plan. Whether that happens or not is, well, time will tell, I guess. But I know that the most freedom you can get for individualism uh and a life philosophy is Protestant Christianity. That is what I believe. So I'm gonna end it there. Thanks for listening. I'll see you later.