19: Bret Weinstein - The Prediction and the DISC: Difference between revisions

'''Bret:''' Well, there's a little more to it in the sense that they were entirely unprepared for a white guy willing to say, “No, I'm simply not a racist”. And it just didn't occur to them that that was going to happen. And it didn't occur to them that my own students weren't going to flee to their side at the point that they leveled their accusation, because those things would have been normal in this environment. But, in my case, I grew up in a home-there were plenty of flaws in that home, as you know-but one of the places I don't think it was flawed was that it was very clear-headed about issues of inequality, race, justice. And so I, I really have the sense that these issues were really not new to me, and I had a long history at the college, lots of students of color—

'''Bret:''' They were crazy. But my point is, the accusation is in and of itself so powerful in modern circumstances that people, the idea of standing up to it doesn't occur to most people. And the fact is I was not well enough positioned. The thing descended into madness. It descended into literal anarchy with armed students roving the campus, the same mob was looking for me, searching car to car, for example. It was a very dangerous situation.

'''Eric:''' With baseball bats

'''Bret:''' With baseball bats. But what I'm getting at is I checked with myself and did not feel vulnerable to this accusation. I felt most people could not endure it, but I was in a position to, and in an odd way—

'''Eric:''' These people had flipped the script, and said, if you don't sign up for our racism, you're a racist. Yeah.

'''Eric:''' I don't, you know, here's the thing. I have two documents that I've studied that have a lot of longevity to them. One begins with, “We hold these truths to be self evident” and the other one begins with “In the beginning”. And I think we've made a huge mistake taking this as an argument. It's a non-serious position held by morons and idiots, or people who've been indoctrinated and infected with an idea that there's something left-wing about being a racist. I'm not interested in it, and I also think that it's really important to stop giving these people their due. Like, it's really important to exclude them from the conversation, because if you have to have a three day symposium as to whether or not racism can be redefined in a way that makes it impossible for certain people to be racist but impossible for other people not to be racist, there's just no point. It just needs to be thrown in the garbage because it just-it's a suicide idea that wastes everyone's time and plunges the world into stupidity, madness and hatred.

'''Eric:''' Great. Okay. Are we done?  

'''Eric:''' Good. With that aside, my concern—you know that I play this game, which is called “What is the least interesting, interesting thing about X?”, where I take a person and I take their top characteristic. So for example, the least interesting, interesting thing about Dolly Parton is that she's busty. The most interesting thing is she's a genius level songwriter, and a fantastic singer, and an entertainer, and a great business woman.  Doesn't matter. But the key point is we get hung up on some stupid superficial characteristic, and we don't see the actual interest or majesty in a person, and I feel like that has happened to you. I feel like, at some level, having known you for a very long time, you are an incredibly interesting person for totally different reasons than the reasons for which you have become famous. And I would like to use this episode-and, by the way, you're welcome back anytime. Love to do a series with you. Love to, you know, make this a regular part of our lives if people like it.

'''Bret:''' Yeah, and in fact, Sam, I remember even the content of his tweet where he entered this discussion, where he suggested that what was necessary was a deprogramming for these people. And from living inside of this very confusing scenario, to hear a message of reason from the outside, that it was visible how insane this was, meant a lot to me. It really, it changed things. It was like a reality check.

'''Eric:''' Yep. Sam's a real hero in that regard. It's just amazing that he got there early and he got there correct. And, you know, more power to him.  

'''Bret:''' Well, it's mostly fair. It was not really an appropriate place. I don't regret it. I think for the last year or two, Heather and I were living on borrowed time, that this could have come for us in a worse way, and it could've come for us at any moment. But the thing about the job I had was that it was the upside of a crazy experiment in education. The founders of the college had broken every rule of a normal university, and half of what they did in breaking it was crazy, and half of what they did was brilliant. Nobody ever bothered to separate the two from the prototype, and, you know, fix the broken part. Didn't happen. But, the administrators had no power, and very little knowledge about what was going on in the classroom, which meant that I could create a learning environment that worked both from the point of view of students and worked from the point of view of me in my objectives to keep advancing a research program that frankly I would have had no way to keep on at a normal college. I would have been so burdened by teaching that I couldn't have combined the two things. So anyway, I do think one has to figure out how to make their way in the world financially. One has to figure out where to raise their kids. And from many perspectives, as much of a mismatch as Evergreen was for me in some ways, in some other ways, it was not a bad place to be parked. It gave me—I was anonymous from the point of the world and I could make progress on biology. So I have fewer regrets than I might.  

'''Eric:''' Okay. This is so uncomfortable, but it is also the real substance of our relationship. I always resented the fact that you really excelled at, and enjoyed, teaching as much as you did, and you saw this in terms of a place to play with ideas, to teach students to have a pleasant and enjoyable life, healthy as it was in the great outdoors, et cetera, et cetera, blah, blah blah. And I still see these characteristics in you, and it drives me nuts because you're your own worst enemy in some ways, to me. What you really are, to me, is an unbelievable thinker and researcher, and beneath this kind of very nice, friendly pedagogue is a thinker that the world doesn't know. And I watched recently your interactions with Richard Dawkins, and it was absolutely infuriating. I mean, you know, he's very clear. It's like, “Well, Bret is a real hero, so far as free speech and standing up for free inquiry goes. But he's very confused.” Well, no, I don't think that that's right. I think that you guys had a really substantive interaction about biology, which I wish he would spend more time on because he's phenomenal at it when he's focused on it, and you're phenomenal. And that was supposed to be a really different conversation. But because we got to know you the wrong way, in my opinion, you're always the guy who was strong enough to stand up to students at an obscure place, and this completely masks who you've always been, and you're not willing to take up the yoke, which is the more important role for you.