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Humanity Needs a Plan B for Survival (YouTube Content): Difference between revisions
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|link2=[https://theportal.group/tel-aviv-salon-humanity-needs-a-plan-b-for-survival-fleur-hassan-nahoum-with-eric-weinstein/ Read] | |link2=[https://theportal.group/tel-aviv-salon-humanity-needs-a-plan-b-for-survival-fleur-hassan-nahoum-with-eric-weinstein/ Read] | ||
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|link3= | |link3=[https://www.reddit.com/r/ThePortal/s/tKGDYjJc3y r/ThePortal] | ||
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'''Lior''': You shall call | '''Lior''': You shall call Building Blocks for this collaboration with Tel Aviv International Salons and colleagues in the General Zionist faction and the World Zionist Organization. You are in for a treat tonight with two amazing thinkers, doers, and speakers. I often use the term not losing the forest for the trees. The trees are important. You can't lose sight of the details, but it's the forest. It's the big picture we got to keep our eye on and not get caught up in the details. It's the vision and two of our speakers today I surely our speaker is. And in conversation with. Then I want to welcome. Has anyone ever heard of Eric Weinstein? Because I mean I look them up just to see what I might say. And I got to tell you, there's lots. So I'll keep it brief for the sake of this conversation. Eric Weinstein, an American investor and financial executive, as of 2021, managing director for the American venture capital firm Thiel Capital. Weinstein hosts the podcast called The Portal and is a big time thinker who, as far as I can understand and I just said, does not lose the forest for the trees, cares and loves. I'm still concerned with the future of the State of Israel and by extension, the region and by extension, global citizenship in the world that we all live in. We all have to play in the sandbox with everyone. And my friend Fleur Hassan-Nahoum, who you might know. Anyone know Fleur? Don't shake your head at me. Israeli politician, media expert, served as Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem, in charge of foreign relations, Israeli international economic development and tourism. Also the co-founder and founding member of the UAE Israel Business Council and is our Secretary General of Israel, the General Zionist faction of the World Zionist Organization. Before I bring them up, I just want to point out and set this up for a moment. I'm Israel and by extension, humanity stands at the intersection of history. These are very telling and interesting times. And the question we ought to ask ourselves is, what is the future going to say about us? Their ancestors? What in 100 years from now will they say about all of us? What were the decisions we made, the actions we took? What kind of ancestors are we going to be for our future? Very important. And as we enter this stage, I want to welcome our speakers in conversation with one another. Please. Nice round of applause for Eric Weinstein and Fleur Hassan-Nahoum. | ||
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=== Eric Weinstein's Return to Israel === | === Eric Weinstein's Return to Israel === | ||
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'''Eric Weinstein''': 91 to 93. I was at the Hebrew University in Givat Ram and in the math and physics departments, and one of the most amazing experiences of my life, my wife was here for a year before, and then we traded places and it was absolutely transformative. By the way, I should just say, I'm not here in any capacity. I'm not representing anyone else. I don't even know what this General Zionist organization is, I'm not sure if I'm for it or against it. I just wanted to come. I wanted to come back badly. And this is really, literally Ilan asked, "Would you come?" And I said, "Sure." That's why. | '''Eric Weinstein''': '91 to '93. I was at the Hebrew University in Givat Ram and in the math and physics departments, and one of the most amazing experiences of my life, my wife was here for a year before, and then we traded places and it was absolutely transformative. By the way, I should just say, I'm not here in any capacity. I'm not representing anyone else. I don't even know what this General Zionist organization is, I'm not sure if I'm for it or against it. I just wanted to come. I wanted to come back badly. And this is really, literally Ilan asked, "Would you come?" And I said, "Sure." That's why. | ||
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'''Eric Weinstein''': Well, the fact of the matter is that it's still not acceptable in American society, let's say, to say many of the things the anti-Semites whisper privately and a lot of the anti-Semitism that you see on X, formerly Twitter, comes from anonymous accounts, you know? So you have a situation in which there is this general resentment of how far the fences are out, and there's a move right now, like people like Dave ChappelleâI don't know Dave Chappelle's politics, but my guess is that one of the things thatâs pissing him off as a comedian is that he feels he has a right to mock things. And I getâJoe Rogan will openly say to me that, you know, "Mockery is my business. I think mockery is good," because he sees it as a pure positive. It's also, you know, he's talking his book. So in part, we don't recognize that some of the resentment also comes from the fact that people want to know, how are the Jews doing this, and how are the Israelis doing it? Your birth rate is the envy of the world in the developed world. And, you know, I don't know how to convey this, and this isâI said this in the last talkâthere's this misperception of the self, in my opinion, where this is a vulnerable place, it's obviously living on a knife's edge, and yet you still have obligations to people far beyond your land. I think Israel needs to be leading. It needs to be showing Europe a way to revitalize, to increase its birth rates. And I'll say something that many people will find very unpopular, not necessarily in this roomâmake the Middle East Christian again. The depopulation of Christians from this region is a terrible thing, and theyâreâChristians are being persecuted all over the world. And if I canâand I'm not saying this to praise Christians, I'm also very frustrated with my Christian brethren. They won't stand up in the same way, because part of Christianity involves martyrdom. And my feeling is that we've been very lucky that one of the offshoots of Judaism can be pretty good to us. Boy, have we had our problems. Now, I'm not candy coating it, but I believe that Israel needs to, in part, help revitalize communities beyond its borders and take a leadership role that it's quite frankly uncomfortable with. | '''Eric Weinstein''': Well, the fact of the matter is that it's still not acceptable in American society, let's say, to say many of the things the anti-Semites whisper privately and a lot of the anti-Semitism that you see on X, formerly Twitter, comes from anonymous accounts, you know? So you have a situation in which there is this general resentment of how far the fences are out, and there's a move right now, like people like Dave ChappelleâI don't know Dave Chappelle's politics, but my guess is that one of the things thatâs pissing him off as a comedian is that he feels he has a right to mock things. And I getâJoe Rogan will openly say to me that, you know, "Mockery is my business. I think mockery is good," because he sees it as a pure positive. It's also, you know, he's talking his book. So in part, we don't recognize that some of the resentment also comes from the fact that people want to know, how are the Jews doing this, and how are the Israelis doing it? Your birth rate is the envy of the world in the developed world. And, you know, I don't know how to convey this, and this isâI said this in the last talkâthere's this misperception of the self, in my opinion, where this is a vulnerable place, it's obviously living on a knife's edge, and yet you still have obligations to people far beyond your land. I think Israel needs to be leading. It needs to be showing Europe a way to revitalize, to increase its birth rates. And I'll say something that many people will find very unpopular, not necessarily in this roomâmake the Middle East Christian again. The depopulation of Christians from this region is a terrible thing, and theyâreâChristians are being persecuted all over the world. And if I canâand I'm not saying this to praise Christians, I'm also very frustrated with my Christian brethren. They won't stand up in the same way, because part of Christianity involves martyrdom. And my feeling is that we've been very lucky that one of the offshoots of Judaism can be pretty good to us. Boy, have we had our problems. Now, I'm not candy coating it, but I believe that Israel needs to, in part, help revitalize communities beyond its borders and take a leadership role that it's quite frankly uncomfortable with. | ||
=== Israel's Leadership Role in the Middle East === | |||
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'''Eric Weinstein''': Not | '''Eric Weinstein''': Not justâ | ||
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'''Fleur Hassan-Nahoum''': Eric, I think we feel that we're already doing that in terms of tech innovation and clean tech and green tech and agritech and cyber in a way. We feel that we are the country that exports solutions. That's how we talk. You don't see that way? | '''Fleur Hassan-Nahoum''': Eric, I think we feel that we're already doing that in terms of tech innovation and clean tech and green tech and agritech and cyber in a way. We feel that we are the country that exports solutions. That's how we talk. You don't see that way? | ||
=== Cultural Dynamics and Gender Roles in Society === | |||
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'''Eric Weinstein''': We're just getting started. And just keep in mind how exciting the early 20th century was for good and for bad. | '''Eric Weinstein''': We're just getting started. And just keep in mind how exciting the early 20th century was for good and for bad. | ||
=== The Role of Conflict in Vitality === | |||
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'''Eric Weinstein''': Kol ha-kavod, that's great. | '''Eric Weinstein''': Kol ha-kavod, that's great. | ||
=== Ethnic Identity and Historical Context === | |||
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'''Eric Weinstein''': Yes, very negative, because that's what, you know, "We have to annex the Sudeten land because there are ethnic Germans over there, the Donbas region and the Crimean peninsula are where the Russian speakers are." So you have, you know, we're waking up from the idea that we've said all these super simplistic things that don't work well together. So they're these crazy sort of drug interactions by different kinds of idealism that we've professed. I believe the conflict in the former Yugoslavia, which is what brought the term "ethnic cleansing" into common parlance, and we don't remember that it didn't exist after World War Two, where the Sudeten Germans were taken out of the Sudetenland because of the risk that that clearly posed, we have, by the way, everybody should use Google Ngrams as much as possible, because that's how you prove that the memories that are being implanted on you happened on a particular year at a particular time. So you should look for "ethnic cleansing" and see that it's not something that's always been here in our vocabulary. So in part one of the reasons that things are always screwed up here is that the outside world is going to impose so many different rules on you that there's nothing you can do. You can't solve your own problems. You can't move people on land that they've been on for a long time. You can't have an ethnic state. All these rules are so tight that in chess, again, you would call this a closed game. You have these incredible chains of pawns. You can't move your pieces much, and eventually you get frustrated with this stuff and you say, "Screw it. We're going to open the game and we're going to sacrifice pieces, because I just can't stand the pressure and that restricted feeling", right? That's what Donald Trump's doing. He's breaking from a closed game with all the institutions having all of these rules into a wide open game where nobody knows what's happening next, and all of our allies are freaking out. | '''Eric Weinstein''': Yes, very negative, because that's what, you know, "We have to annex the Sudeten land because there are ethnic Germans over there, the Donbas region and the Crimean peninsula are where the Russian speakers are." So you have, you know, we're waking up from the idea that we've said all these super simplistic things that don't work well together. So they're these crazy sort of drug interactions by different kinds of idealism that we've professed. I believe the conflict in the former Yugoslavia, which is what brought the term "ethnic cleansing" into common parlance, and we don't remember that it didn't exist after World War Two, where the Sudeten Germans were taken out of the Sudetenland because of the risk that that clearly posed, we have, by the way, everybody should use Google Ngrams as much as possible, because that's how you prove that the memories that are being implanted on you happened on a particular year at a particular time. So you should look for "ethnic cleansing" and see that it's not something that's always been here in our vocabulary. So in part one of the reasons that things are always screwed up here is that the outside world is going to impose so many different rules on you that there's nothing you can do. You can't solve your own problems. You can't move people on land that they've been on for a long time. You can't have an ethnic state. All these rules are so tight that in chess, again, you would call this a closed game. You have these incredible chains of pawns. You can't move your pieces much, and eventually you get frustrated with this stuff and you say, "Screw it. We're going to open the game and we're going to sacrifice pieces, because I just can't stand the pressure and that restricted feeling", right? That's what Donald Trump's doing. He's breaking from a closed game with all the institutions having all of these rules into a wide open game where nobody knows what's happening next, and all of our allies are freaking out. | ||
=== The Impact of Leadership on Global Dynamics === | |||
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'''Fleur Hassan-Nahoum''': Honestly, Eric, I know you're an atheist. The last one with the ballistic missiles, even the defense air infrastructure we had could only guarantee at 90%. And it ended up being 99 point something percent. | '''Fleur Hassan-Nahoum''': Honestly, Eric, I know you're an atheist. The last one with the ballistic missiles, even the defense air infrastructure we had could only guarantee at 90%. And it ended up being 99 point something percent. | ||
=== Understanding Iran's Strategic Position === | |||
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'''Eric Weinstein''': Okay, so the key issue traditionally has been that one has two different dangers that one has to worry about: skilled players and unskilled players. And I think that it is definitely the case that there were savage leaders in this region who were extremely skilled. I think Hafez al-Assad was an extremely skilled player. I think King Hussein was an extremely skilled player. You've had many prime ministers who were skilled players. You know, look at Saddam Hussein taking over the Baath Party. This guy spoke violence like a poet. | '''Eric Weinstein''': Okay, so the key issue traditionally has been that one has two different dangers that one has to worry about: skilled players and unskilled players. And I think that it is definitely the case that there were savage leaders in this region who were extremely skilled. I think Hafez al-Assad was an extremely skilled player. I think King Hussein was an extremely skilled player. You've had many prime ministers who were skilled players. You know, look at Saddam Hussein taking over the Baath Party. This guy spoke violence like a poet. | ||
=== Skilled vs. Unskilled Players in Conflict === | |||
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'''Eric Weinstein''': I absolutely refuse. It isâI have not picked up a gun. I have not sent my children here to fight in your army. And it would be absolutely irresponsible for me to say what you should or shouldn't do. I will say this. You are also endangering the diaspora and the planet with a very dangerous conflict that can easily spread. One of the great nightmares for the US is that suddenly we have too many theaters in play. We've got one going on in Russia and Ukraine. We've got another one with the Taiwan Straits, we have one with the Middle East, and there are only so many bases, so many carriers. And the fact is, if the US retreats into the sort of Christian national isolationist movement, which I think is very bizarre, the idea that these two oceans will protect us indefinitely, and even to take the words "America First," which we associate with people who did not feel that America was threatened by Hitler. | '''Eric Weinstein''': I absolutely refuse. It isâI have not picked up a gun. I have not sent my children here to fight in your army. And it would be absolutely irresponsible for me to say what you should or shouldn't do. I will say this. You are also endangering the diaspora and the planet with a very dangerous conflict that can easily spread. One of the great nightmares for the US is that suddenly we have too many theaters in play. We've got one going on in Russia and Ukraine. We've got another one with the Taiwan Straits, we have one with the Middle East, and there are only so many bases, so many carriers. And the fact is, if the US retreats into the sort of Christian national isolationist movement, which I think is very bizarre, the idea that these two oceans will protect us indefinitely, and even to take the words "America First," which we associate with people who did not feel that America was threatened by Hitler. | ||
=== The Dangers of Covert Operations === | |||
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'''Eric Weinstein''': Yeah. | '''Eric Weinstein''': Yeah. | ||
=== The Need for a Plan B for Humanity === | |||
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'''Fleur Hassan-Nahoum''': What you're saying is we need a plan B. | '''Fleur Hassan-Nahoum''': What you're saying is we need a plan B. | ||
=== Revitalizing Scientific Leadership === | |||
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'''Fleur Hassan-Nahoum''': Okay. We'll come to you next. | '''Fleur Hassan-Nahoum''': Okay. We'll come to you next. | ||
=== Navigating the Future of Society === | |||
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'''Fleur Hassan-Nahoum''': I think one more question, and we have to end is telling me I should have ended already. One more there in the middle. Yes. The lady in the middle. | '''Fleur Hassan-Nahoum''': I think one more question, and we have to end is telling me I should have ended already. One more there in the middle. Yes. The lady in the middle. | ||
=== Demographics and Cultural Identity === | |||
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