Episode Transcript
[00:00:14] Speaker A: Hello, welcome to Call It Like I See it presented by Disruption Now. I'm James Keys, and in this episode of Call It Like I See it, we're going to discuss the concept of wokeness in our society and the ways in which it may be a driver of positive changes or something that has spiraled out of control and is being used to impose certain viewpoints and points of view on everyone.
We'll also take a look at the addiction to caffeine, which is something that is seen in societies all over the world, but present in the US To a particularly high degree, and try to figure out whether this is something we should be concerned about or is just part of the day to day life than not to worry about.
Joining me today is a man who was waiting on the right time to shoot his steez. Toonday Ogonlana Tunde. Is now the right time to flash them Keys?
[00:01:13] Speaker B: Either now or never, bro.
[00:01:15] Speaker A: All right, all right.
[00:01:17] Speaker B: It's never too early and never too late.
[00:01:20] Speaker A: That's it.
[00:01:21] Speaker B: I'll let the audience figure that one out.
[00:01:24] Speaker A: All right, now we're recording this on July 18, 2020, 21. And for the past decade or so, we've seen the concept of being woke become something that has been very prevalent in our conversations in our society.
And while there's no universal definition of what being woke is, at its core, it's as the terminology suggests, it's referring to being awake and aware about what's going on and used in the context in society around you, you know, what's going on around you and our interactions, and from a societal standpoint and particularly as it relates to matters of inequality and social injustice.
Now, it was initially used primarily in the context of racial inequality and injustice faced by black Americans in the US but now it's used more broadly and is often used generally to refer to an awareness of perceived inequality or injustice in lots of different contexts, including with women's issues or LGBTQ issues and so forth.
So to start us off, Tunde, just looking at the modern concept of being woke generally, what stands out to you?
[00:02:40] Speaker B: Great question.
I would say this. What stands out to me, number one, is that this is now used more as a political weapon in the modern culture as opposed to, like many things we've discussed, I'd say, in recent months and just reading the history of it, one realizes how far back this goes. So I learned in preparing for today's show that the concept of woke in the United States goes back to the 1930s. And you're right, absolutely right. It was an African American kind of terminology.
And what's interesting, it first appeared at that time more as the kind of stay woke or stay awake when being kind of a black man dealing in a white environment. Because there was, you know, as we know, for the majority of this country's history, if you were kind of the lone black man or person out there in a hostile environment in this country, there wasn't much protection for you in certain parts of the country. So, you know, when, let's say, musicians would tour in the south and be driving through certain areas, there would be kind of this terminology, stay woke. When you're in this part of town or that part of town, kind of stay awake, you know, and then. And then. So literally, it was about just kind of protecting yourself and being aware of.
[00:03:57] Speaker A: Having that heightened awareness. Like, hey, you know, Heightened awareness. Yeah, you can't just float through this, you know, on autopilot.
[00:04:03] Speaker B: Exactly. And so. And so that was the kind of start of it. And then through the 60s, it became more of that awareness of, like you said, the societal awareness about injustices, things like that. So again, kind of like when we did a few other recent topics, you realize this is nothing new.
So then I start leading my brain into, well, why are everyone talking about it now? 2020 and 2021. Like, this just showed up when it's been around almost 100 years in terms of. As a terminology. And I think, you know, I know we'll get into this in the conversation going forward, but I'll end my thought on this is my opinion is this is now used as another arrow in the quiver of the culture wars, if I can put it that way, from a political lens, to stoke emotions and people and get them fired up. So I'll pass it, Tom, back to you.
[00:04:52] Speaker A: Well, you passed it in the perfect place because that's what stands out to me about it right now, is that we did a show maybe a year, maybe a year and a half ago about descriptive terms becoming no longer about the description anymore, but we called them gang signs. Like, socialist is not about what your view on economic policy was. It was a gang sign. It's like, oh, I represent this set type of thing. And it seems like woke has entered that thing now where the way it's used in many instances is not in accordance with an actual description, but it's. It's to. To. To. To show an allegiance or a contempt for a certain approach. And so that leads right into what you're saying as far as how the culture wars, it's Kind of been. What happens with a lot of these things is our ability to discuss issues. Once they get to subsumed into the culture wars, we can't talk about it anymore. It becomes something that you're either on one side of it or you're on another side of it. And if you're on one side of it, it can do no wrong. At least publicly, you can't say anything about it being.
Being. Have anything wrong with it. And publicly, if you're on the other side, you can't say anything about it having any redeeming quality whatsoever. And so that creates this binary where in woke is there now basically, as far as how it's perceived in many ways, places in our society, just the term itself, it invokes certain feelings. It's tied to feelings now, the term itself in our society. And so that's from a standpoint of trying to understand, you know, whether, like, you look at something, does it have a good point? Is it from coming from a good place, is looking at all those things. That stuff's out the window now in terms of the discussion of woke now, it's just. It's a pejorative if you're in some sense or it's a sign of, hey, I'm on your side, so to speak, if it's used in another sense. So that's, again, from my context and my standpoint, that's unfortunate because you should be always. Whether if you support something, you should always be looking at it and saying, hey, is this still consistent with what we're trying to do? Are we missing the mark? Do we need to readjust? And then if you're against something, ideally, if you're all in the same boat, like all in the same country, the objective would be to more so be constructive with the things you're trying to push back on as opposed to just emotionally, I hate all this, you know, and so none of that can happen basically, with the conversation of woke now. And it's, you know, so that's.
[00:07:19] Speaker B: Let me jump in on that real quick because there's a couple of things to unpack with that because I see it splitting into two separate directions. One is, like you said, very, I think, accurately about the kind of gang signs, you know, really we're alluding to the concept of tribalism, which is just a human thing. Right.
And it reminded me, as you were talking of conversations we've had also on other shows about America being this exceptional experiment almost against human nature. Right. That the idea that the Constitution, the way that we have the three equal branches of government is designed to create an air of debate and that differences from a political level or a tribal level, let's say. Right.
Can be worked out through reason and debate over time through these different branches and bodies. And going back to.
[00:08:13] Speaker A: Just let me, let me like flesh that out a little bit as opposed to just one side dominating. Like in your normal human context, one side just says what it is. And that's how it's been here. One side, meaning one tribe, one.
One point of view is just the dominant point of view. And then everybody else, you may have it, but that's not a point of view that's accepted. And so in our. The way we're set up, what you're seeing now is kind of an embodiment of that where it does allow other side protects other points of view and they can bubble up and become more prevalent, potentially can live alongside and flourish alongside other points of view. So you can have many streams of points of view, so to speak, operating side by side in theory is kind of the setup to allow for that. Now, again, that goes against human nature because one side is, or whatever one. One point of view is going to try to exert dominion on over all the other. And there's your friction right there. But go ahead.
[00:09:14] Speaker B: Yeah. And that's where alluding to one of my favorite things, as you know, George Washington's farewell address where he warned us against the passions created by the quote, unquote, kind of political parties and the term I like to use, the tribalism. And I think you've alluded to this too, right? Chinese Communist, Communist Party.
Really the communist part is just, you know, to keep the tie in with Mao and the hundred year of. Of that stuff. But the reality is it's an authoritarian party rule with one party. There's no other. There's no other views. And then even the show we did last week, I thought about, as we're preparing today about the, the whole Afghanistan thing and the Taliban stuff, because again, the Taliban represent exactly what you're alluding to, which is, you know, no one, no other thought except our thought is even allowed here. You know, and if, and if you think about openly being hostile to what we feel is right, you're dead. I mean, there's no, there's no even questioning there. So.
[00:10:11] Speaker A: So what?
[00:10:12] Speaker B: Again, our country was designed to try and fight those passions by putting in a system that would force debate and conversation. And so that's what we're seeing today, which is not uncommon in American history, that as we have certain changes in our society, whether it be demographic changes, economic changes that cause some sort of, let's say, angst or hostility within the population.
[00:10:40] Speaker A: That.
[00:10:40] Speaker B: Then there are those, you know, whether it be politicians, corporations, through the media, so on and so forth, that look to take advantage of this by creating these. What I would say is binary choices, like you said, right? So if now I'm being told that this idea of woke is bad to me by the people that I trust, right? Whether it be those in the media or those in. In. In. In politics, so on and so forth, then anything. Those people there that I'm told are quote, unquote, woke have to say, I. I can't hear it. I can't even, you know, like, allow it to come into my space.
[00:11:17] Speaker A: That's the point of creating that emotional tie to. Because if it's emotionally repulsive to you, then you can't even let it in because it's discomfort to do that. So. Well, let me, Let me, Let me jump in, because what you said basically, I think, illustrates the challenge. And, you know, when you have multiple groups, multiple tribes, so to speak, or points of view really is what it's about in terms. Terms of worldview and in terms of values, things like that. And there could be 90% overlap, but even in that context, if there's 90% overlap, the 10% is what everybody's gonna talk about all the time, you know, so if you have that, there is a difficulty in finding the lines of what you could call reasonable social decorum, like how you should be treating people, what level of respect you need to show, or in terms of the context of debate, you know, like what's fair play and what's over the line. That's hard to figure out, more or less. And we're trying to figure that stuff out. You use the. You can use the term building the plane while you're flying, you know, because when you have these large groups, you. You have. People are trying to find the line. And that doesn't even get into the people who actually want to be antagonistic. This is just talking about the people who want to operate in good faith. And. But it's hard to find the line. And so concepts like wokeness, so to speak, are there in many respects to try to add to the discussion of where's the line? Is this over the line or is that over the line or not? But that, like anything can potentially be abused or wielded in ways that aren't about trying to find the line of what's Reasonable. But to actually go too far and say no, no, no. Well, anything I don't agree with is, is bad. You know, whether anything I don't like subjectively is bad. And so I wanted to ask you though, I mean, and I think we should, we should get there in, in the context of United States because that's what we have knowledge about. Do you think in our, in our society right now, and this is, I mean I'll give you some space here because this is a lot. But do you think woke culture, so to speak, or the approach that has been adopted and just what we see, what we're observing has gone too far? Do you think that it's no longer now about finding those lines from a reasonableness standpoint and more so either to be punitive or to get retribution for past things or anything like that. What's your thought on that?
[00:13:43] Speaker B: It's interesting because I guess in preparing for today my thoughts kind of evolved.
[00:13:47] Speaker A: I should say that's a good way.
[00:13:49] Speaker B: To say it because I would have mental flexibility.
[00:13:53] Speaker A: We're all here to hear your thoughts, man.
[00:13:55] Speaker B: Exactly. Let me do my gymnastics.
But as I'm getting older so I got to stretch a bit, you know, before I pull something.
So the, the.
So where was I going with that? Is, yeah, I would have answered you probably just a quick yes prior to, like I said, my little mental evolution here because I started. That's why I like history, because it kind of calms you down that what's going on now isn't like the way it's been forever or sorry, isn't the first time this has ever happened, but is more of this is just a perpetuation of how humans beings deal with change. So there's been other times in American history when we've had issues like this. Forget about, like I said in the 30s, starting in the 30s with the term woke, but with the idea that when the majority group has felt intimidated in the past, they've then attacked the kind of messengers who are trying to just whether it be sound the alarm of something. So remember back we talked about this in another discussion about the idea of BLM being offensive to some people. Forget about the organization. And I'm sure that any organization that's.
[00:15:13] Speaker A: Not the actual organization that's messing with.
[00:15:15] Speaker B: Not whatever, correct, not what they do on the street, what they say, but this idea of just the terminology of Black Lives Matter and the immediate kind of knee jerk reaction of people I saw here in South Florida, thrown up flags, All Lives Matter.
And so it reminded me and we discussed that back in the 60s when blacks were fighting for equality and all that and to be equal members of the society in a greater way.
There were marches and people would wear a sign that says, I am a man.
And remember I said it doesn't mean that they were saying other people aren't men. Right. Other groups. But it just was the idea that you're looking for recognition as a human being, as equal. And I would say that this is part of what this modern day battle is going. And this is where I'm getting at the modern day kind of wokeness. And then the pushback to it by certain Americans started around 2013, 2014, kind of between the Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown stuff, when the modern technology of the cell phone cameras. Right. Allowed a lot more interactions between blacks and the police to be filmed.
And so this isn't new to many of us in this country that there were issues in the justice system amongst race. But I guess a lot of Americans hadn't seen this. Just like in the 60s when a lot of Americans never saw dogs being put on black kids in the South. Right. That changed the nature of the dialogue in the country. And I think we've seen something similar in the last decade where the technology has allowed for a certain narrative to be told and another narrative to be broken.
And so there's some in society who believe it and say we should continue to push forward and make things more equal and right as it relates to certain systemic issues. And there's other people that just flat out won't believe it no matter what is shown to them. And so where we're getting at is that it reminds me of that quote that I had from that French political historian, Alexis de Tocqueville. Once the majority has irrevocably decided a question, it is no longer discussed. This is because the majority is a power that does not respond well to criticism. So, and you've alluded to this in past shows where some people in this country have been raised to think that not only are they superior, but the country itself is perfect, that there's no flaws. And maybe the only flaws in the country are when people other than their group are.
Yeah. Literally are either the ones in power or the ones that have done something to make the country look bad. And so if you go back to. If you are, then.
[00:17:54] Speaker A: Or we're not necessarily done something to make the country look bad, just done something that they don't agree with.
[00:17:59] Speaker B: Yeah.
And so if you're then questioning the country in the sense that hey, there's injustices. This, you know, here or there, whatever they are, then those people again, will not respond well to criticism, as the quote goes. So I'll finish the thought off with saying that I think that's what we're seeing here too, because another stat that stuck out to me was that in 2014, remember around the time when I said some of this stuff started is, or I should say reignited.
[00:18:27] Speaker A: Yeah. Gained increased prominence in modern context.
[00:18:31] Speaker B: But 2014 was a very important year in American history that many people don't recognize, which is. It was the first year that there were more white, sorry, more minority babies born in this country than white babies.
25% of babies born that whole year were Hispanic. So what happens is too, is we're seeing this pushback to wokeness and cancel culture also as a response, a fear response amongst, I would say, a section of the majority group who believes that their power is waning. And another thing I felt.
[00:19:06] Speaker A: Let me jump in right there, because that actually is where I think it's the part of the discussion that I think is not had. Because if the question is simply, has woke culture or wokeness, so to speak, has that gone too far? The people that are woke gone too far?
If you answer that in a binary, then what you're doing is creating the same kind of two choices on either end of the extreme construction.
And so there are people who identify as woke who take maybe misguided approaches or are too extreme in their approach, in the same way that there are people who are, who fight against wokeness that are on the extremes of whatever they're saying, where, oh, you know, woke people are anti American, like just extreme stuff there.
And when we have discussions like this, the key is to not focus your attention solely on the edges, on the extreme, so to speak. The vast majority of people who would identify themselves as being woke in the context of what the word means, haven't gone too far. You know, the concept of wokeness is coming from a place of either hurt or empathy.
And it's a desire to show respect towards everyone.
And so in the same sense, you, you cited, you know, like, like the march back, what I think it was in Memphis, you know, with the shirts, I am a man. It's. It's a desire to, to show respect to everyone.
[00:20:40] Speaker B: And can, Can. Can I jump in real quick on that? Because what I realize is the majority group doesn't care about empathy or hearing that side of the story.
[00:20:50] Speaker A: Some of them, no, many of them do.
[00:20:52] Speaker B: Again, when you see that you're Right.
[00:20:54] Speaker A: We're talking about the right, the far end of the extreme of that majority group.
[00:20:58] Speaker B: That's correct.
[00:20:59] Speaker A: So that's my point is that we can't train our eyes just. And you can't say that the majority group is defined by that just extreme. Just like you can't say that the guy, somebody wiling out on Twitter who has woke all over his profile represents all of the people who identify themselves as. Yeah, yeah, I'm woke. You can't take the extremes and then identify the entire point of view by that extreme.
[00:21:23] Speaker B: No, I agree. And that's where it's interesting where. Because it's treated differently on both sides. So let me frame this out, which is because you say something right. And when I was preparing for this, I started realizing the most woke and cancel culture people in the last probably 15 years were actually the Tea Party.
The Republican Party suffered its own litmus test and cancel culture from within for many years. Because if you weren't willing to toe the line of certain views in that party, you were basically ostracized.
[00:21:58] Speaker A: You were kicked out. You were called a rhino, you were called a snowflake. You were. Yeah, all the same stuff.
[00:22:03] Speaker B: And so because I was reading, I was reading something and there's an intellectual conservative guy who I actually like.
He's a thoughtful guy and I think he's, you know, he'd be kind of, generally, I would say my type of conservative. His name's Andrew Sullivan. He's a British guy.
And I'm going to read a quote from him because it made me realize this. So I'll quote here. And so the young inherent adherence to the great awokening exhibit the zeal of the Great Awakening. They push heresy by banishing sinners from society or coercing them to public demonstrations of shame. We have the cult of social justice on the left, a religion whose followers show that the same zeal as any born again evangelical. And you know, I'm not going to argue with him on that. What I realized though is kind of like you said or you were alluding to earlier, I was like, that's fine. And he's not necessarily wrong. It's just that I feel like people like him tend to not see it when it comes from their side.
[00:22:59] Speaker A: And when they see he's citing it coming, this is just like what happened, you would say, with the religious right type of thing. Like, you know, like it.
[00:23:09] Speaker B: But what I'm saying is I didn't see him in like, like I'm saying 10, 12 years ago when when the right was doing it internally, which kind of got us to this point where we have this authoritarian party now, which does this. Right? Because I think you're 100% right and you just hit something on the head. And I want to make sure I point out my own words, right? I said the majority group this and that. And you're right, it's not everybody in the majority group. It's not even a majority of the majority group. And you alluded to this recently in a private conversation where we were talking about something, let's say like the Floyd murder last year.
Immediately after that, the majority of the majority was like, yeah, that's B.S. but what happened so quickly after the ecosystem of the right wing media begins to put all this stuff out there? Oh, well, George Floyd had a criminal record. Oh, he was on fentanyl. Oh, he was. And what happens is over time, enough people on that side then kind of get back into their camp, right? Because it's like, well, I can't go against what, you know, the people I trust are telling me, it's too bad for that guy.
[00:24:18] Speaker A: It becomes, no, that goes to your thing. It becomes a matter of tribalism at that point.
But that doesn't affect everyone. But that does.
[00:24:25] Speaker B: I agree. But again, it kind of silences those who might otherwise be willing to say, yeah, you know what, that wasn't right. And I'm gonna stick up with these people over here that I didn't realize this was going on when enough people in their own community might be like, well, you know, you don't want to be on that side and all that.
[00:24:42] Speaker A: Those people have a. No, that's what I'm saying. It's a technique. You make it a matter of solidarity. You see the same thing, you know, like with police unions or things like that, where issues become not about the merits of what happened, but it becomes about, well, my side, I can't let my side show weakness or I can't be a weak link to my side. And that, you know, like, it's something that I think can be framed as part of this debate. Because also what you see, what we need a lot of times, and this goes into what you were saying, is that people who support the idea of being woke, of being not supportive of being anti injustice, anti inequality, we actually need to be able to speak up when someone who represents themselves as being, as agreeing with those ideas when they go too far. I think part of the problem, there's a natural tension always in terms of people pushing issues at the front of the line versus people who are kind of in general support them, but they're not really driving things forward. And there's always going to be that. But the problem that we have a lot of times is because issues always become about group solidarity that I can't say to someone who, like, I consider myself to be someone who is against inequality. It is for justice.
And so I need to be able to say to someone who also. Who calls themselves woke and is also that when they go too far and say, look, I don't think that that is. I think that that may be an overreach. I don't think the goal there is to be reasonable, to be fair. I think the goal there is to get just. Just to get retribution. And if we're going to go be about just getting retribution, then we're not going to be different than the people we're fighting against. And so. And the same thing on the other side of that, if you say someone who views things from a different context, there's someone who's an all lives matter person. It's important, but they're a reasonable person. It's important for them to look at the people that are further on their extreme and be like, look, the thing that happened with George Floyd was unacceptable. We should not be, as a matter of solidarity, pushing injustice plain on television injustice just because we don't want them to. To win any argument or something like that. And so I think that's the disconnect you have when you see things go to this area of solidarity is that people, like someone will be hesitant when someone does something that's not overtly racist or something that is. Is. That is a true injustice. Somebody wearing cornrows or something like that. And we're like, oh, you know, look at that. That's. That's the word. They're like, no, that's not the worst thing in the world. You know, like that's. Are they mocking cornrows or are they trying to. Is there a joke that it's all on all black people that ha ha, they're laughing at black people with cornrows? No, that's not the case. Then hold on. Why are. What are we upset about? You know, like. Like, so that needs to happen. That conversation needs to happen. And every. If everyone feels like they're constantly on. On it. On the defense, though, oftentimes that doesn't happen. And that causes actually the groups to separate from the middle and move more towards the extreme, because it doesn't. It's not about the issues anymore. It's not about what happened. It's only about what side are you on. And if you are two steps to one side, then you got to run a marathon all the way to the edge, because that's where everybody congregates, you know, in either direction.
[00:28:05] Speaker B: Yeah, well, that's why. I mean, look, there's no country for all men in this one, right? There's no. A lot of us. I think I'd say people like me. I don't want to speak for you. Feel like there is no home. I. You know, both major political parties in this country have their issues, and, hey.
[00:28:22] Speaker A: Man, we have a home here, man.
[00:28:25] Speaker B: I appreciate it. Thank you, brother. I always knew I liked you.
I always knew you were a nice guy.
Tell your wife she did, right?
But no, the thing is that.
That's why in reading and preparing for it, I felt calmer, because I was like, all right, this is just another kind of BS episode in human history in our country. And that's why, again, if you understand and believe that human beings are human beings, this is understandable, because. Because it's all irrational, and that's human beings. And that's what I mean. Like, you're watching the news and people trying to rationalize why this. And that's happening and why. Because this is just humans. And so what we have here now is this division and this use of all these terms. And, like, you said it well.
And I think the way you put it is why I said there's no country for old men joke is meaning, like, you're right. If I'm one or two steps in the direction of something, then all of a sudden, if I. Depending on who I talk to, they're going to 100% classify me as. As. As. As. That way.
[00:29:30] Speaker A: So. And you actually would feel pressure, like, internally. I think a lot of people will feel pressure internally to.
To not push back too hard against whatever side they feel like they're on and so forth. Go ahead.
[00:29:43] Speaker B: Because, well, you're just not allowed to have, like, nuanced views. Right? Like, we've talked about this on shows. I'm uncomfortable with the transgender topic.
Does that make me now a massive bigot that hates anybody that's different from me and all that? No, I'm just being honest and saying I don't understand it, and it intimidates me. That's life. I don't feel that way about the gay topic.
[00:30:03] Speaker A: You know, we talked about that the other day in a way that. Cause I was pointing out to you that if anyone Just says, hey, help me understand this better. I don't get what's going on here. Then what people do a lot of times is say, oh, you're anti that. And then it's like, who? I wasn't trying, I'm trying to gather more information and make a decision myself. All I'm saying is that just because you tell me it's okay, I'm not going to just say it's okay. I want to understand, I want to make my own decision. So. But go ahead. I mean, I just wanted to point that out because we that answer around.
[00:30:33] Speaker B: So much because you could, you could take my comment there, which is a genuine comment. Again, I don't disrespect, I don't hate, I don't anything. I just don't understand it. And things I don't understand generally might intimidate me. Right. And so then I just kind of like look at it with a side view. But like you're saying if I were to say that to one type of person, maybe a real big supporter of the trans community, they might just write me off as a bigot. If I say that to someone who hates trans people, they might think that I'm akin with them. Really, I'm not either. And we could say that about something like immigration. We've talked about it, right? I don't want open borders, I want a strong immigration system. But I do not agree with separating a six month old baby from their mother. That's to me is cruelty. So whose side am I on? You know, and this thing is like, but also I see that with a lot of people, like, and let's, you know, I'll talk about our tribe, right? Let's say African Americans. I've seen some people outside of our group generally want to learn or come in with genuine thoughts. And remember, if someone's coming in to saying, I want to see what's going on here and they ask a few questions, we should also have the kind of emotional flexibility to allow some breathing room for them to learn about our culture if we're serious, Right.
[00:31:55] Speaker A: And as a part of that, someone may challenge you on something and say, hey, well explain this to me or how do you jive this with that and so forth. And to be able to not take that as, oh, you're anti this, but you know, you express. And I think a lot of times that comes though when someone feels like when they're asked questions that they actually can't give a explanation for and then it's just like, well, no you just have to believe it, or you just have to agree because. But somebody else might have been able to give an explanation. But I don't want to get too far. Go ahead, go ahead.
[00:32:24] Speaker B: It's also about a paradigm shift, because I've seen that a lot, even with friends of mine who are black, who are hypersensitive to everything.
And I don't mean this as a knock on them, because I recognize that a lot of us do have certain tough experiences in this society.
However, I think we do need to be able to have some sort of skill, emotionally and mentally, to nuance these things and to try and recognize when people are doing things because they're actually racist or if they're just doing things like. And it's funny, I think Charles Barkley said this. You know, not everyone that's rude to you is racist. Sometimes they're just assholes. They do it to people of their own group, you know, this behavior.
And that's what I mean, that it's like on the right, where if.
Again, if I want to talk about American history in a way that's factual, that at one point, and still going on in certain areas, like the systemic racism in the Justice Department and the police setting in this country, there's facts there.
That doesn't mean I want to defund the police. I understand law enforcement's important, but I can carry two thoughts at once. Right. I can want to improve the law enforcement environment in this country and still understand that they're important in our society. Right.
[00:33:44] Speaker A: Raising questions about something doesn't mean necessarily that you have to take the 180 type of, you know, the other completely other end of the spectrum position. And so I want to end this, but I needed to say also that. And I think we should recognize this, that there is a difficulty, and we've talked about this offline, that.
Yes, like what Charles Barkley said, just because somebody treats you a certain way doesn't mean they're racist. But I think there is a difficulty that we should acknowledge that black people face a lot of time in this country that anytime someone treats you a certain way or you feel as if someone treats you poorly or doesn't give you your fair due, you don't know. There's always that ambiguity there of did that person treat me that way because of race or did that person treat me that way because of. Because I did something wrong or because they're just.
[00:34:38] Speaker B: Or whatever.
[00:34:39] Speaker A: It could be like there could be a lot of reasons, and you never really know. And that's Something that it just. I'm not saying that as an excuse. I'm saying that as an acknowledgment of the. That it increases the difficulty of navigating those situations a lot of times because. And I find this happens to the detriment of black folks a lot of times where a lot of times you yourself could be doing something wrong and then you don't get the outcome you desired. And it would be easier for you instead of looking inside and saying, okay, well, what do I need to change about myself in order to get a better result for myself?
It's easier and almost society will condition you to look external and say, okay, well, that only happened because of my race, which could be the case, or it may not be the case. But either way, what you can control in that scenario is if you need to do some introspection and figure out, okay, well, maybe I shouldn't be. Maybe I. This move I made here was the wrong move. Let me address that. You may continually say make that same mistake because every time you get a bad result, you put it on race when actually there's improvement, self improvement to be had. And you can miss out on that. And so that's something. That's a whole nother discussion. And you know, but I just wanted. There is a difficulty there that, in navigating that. And you just. It's hard. You got to do it, you know, you got to figure it out. So there's no easy way to get out of this topic. But we did want to talk about.
I mean, you and I are both coffee drinkers and yeah, I shared something with you this week and it was basically the discussion is first off acknowledging that coffee drinkers, tea drinkers, regular tea, not herbal tea, but, you know, tea drinkers in societies across the world, there is an addiction to caffeine. Caffeine is a drug, you know, caffeine. So what we. This is used so prevalently and you know, it's something that is a part of our life. And if you actually take the. Make the attempt to not be addicted, to pull off a caffeine, you will have physical withdrawal symptoms and you'll feel it and everything like that. But it also in this talks about the. What coffee as a drug does to you. You know, and so I want to know, and we'll get into, you know, we can get into either direction that you want to go with this.
But from your standpoint, Tunde, what are your thoughts on caffeine as a quote, unquote, invisible addiction? And do you Think it's something we even need to be worried about or is it just all good? Like we live with the addiction, it's working for us, so to speak, and we just keep it rolling.
[00:37:04] Speaker B: Yeah. This was actually a really fun article to read and I think I'll blow your mind a bit with some of the stuff I pulled out of it because of course I went in a direction that I didn't expect. But no, to answer the question, yeah, I do think it appears obviously caffeine is a stimulant that is addictive and I can speak of it as a massive coffee drinker. But I joke sometimes and say I like to have coffee with my creamer. Cause I liked my French vanilla stuff, you know.
So sometimes like whether it was caffeinated or decaffeinated, I think I'd still have.
[00:37:36] Speaker A: Like just your dessert in the morning.
[00:37:37] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. That's the best way to put it. The morning dessert. So.
But in reading the article and obviously understanding the chemical nature of our brains and that something like this enters it and it acts as a stimulant, that once we have it enough that our body becomes somewhat hooked to it. Right. It's conditioned to want it and want those effects. What I found interesting were the long lasting effects of caffeine. I didn't realize how long it stays in your body. So the fact that I drink coffee daily means that I'm 100% wired with caffeine at all times every 24 hours at this point, for years of doing it.
[00:38:19] Speaker A: Well, yeah, it takes a day, I think for 25% to be, to be, to be burned off. So like if that takes a day.
[00:38:25] Speaker B: We'Re drinking a day again the next day, then you're just piling up.
[00:38:28] Speaker A: So at this point it back off. Yep.
[00:38:30] Speaker B: Yeah, it's intravenously, you know, like in our veins, you know, like almost like if I could see like like a drip at a hospital.
[00:38:37] Speaker A: So.
[00:38:38] Speaker B: So that's where it became interesting to learn about some of the effects on the, on the brain, on our brain chemistry. It was interesting to see that the general positive effects of coffee generally for the human body. So that was nice to see. But then I think the biggest thing I took out of it, of course, is where it all falls apart is its negative effect on our sleep.
[00:39:00] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:39:01] Speaker B: And that got me thinking a lot about the shows we've done in the past and discussions on sleep, which is how. And so we both are been educated just through doing this podcast on, on different sleep topics of how important that is. And almost like cigarette smoking.
Reason why cigarette smoking is so dangerous is not specifically because of the lungs, is because it can create so many other issues in the human body, from heart disease to whatever. So I would say the lack of sleep is similar to kind of that, whereas it's not that it just causes or has the potential to cause one negative thing in the body. There's a whole bunch of negative things it could potentially cause based on who you are as a person, which is sleep.
[00:39:39] Speaker A: And then those effects can compound on each other and then lead to other effects when combined with like talking about.
[00:39:44] Speaker B: Alzheimer's is one of the biggest things from a lack of sleep over decades is Alzheimer's. So imagine that maybe by me just drinking coffee every day. And literally I drink four to five cups a day in the morning.
So it's like maybe I'm already punishing myself for when I'm 85 years old that I might have Alzheimer's because I just haven't had good REM sleep for a 30, 40 year period of my life. So that's the stuff that really got me thinking about actually trying to go told my wife I'm on our next vacation, I might try and go cold turkey off coffee so that I have a few days to let the, let my body adjust for a few days while I'm on vacation, see how cranky I am.
[00:40:23] Speaker A: Well, I think the baseline aspect of it, that if you do it daily, then it's always in you and then it affects your sleep. Those are key takeaways that I had as well.
The article and this is from the Guardian, it'll be in the show notes. But Talking about that 90% of humans, like everyone ingest coffee or ingest, excuse me, caffeine regularly was shocking to me. Like what? Besides like eating, sleeping, breathing, there's very few things that 90% of humans do.
And so from that standpoint, that was just kind of interesting. That kind of humanity as a whole has identified this thing as, hey, we're going to add, we're just going to add this to our consciousness as a altered conscious. Like imagine 90% of people smoking, smoking weed. You know, like something like that. Like just being on the thc. Just like, yeah, we're chilling. You know what?
[00:41:14] Speaker B: You don't, you don't want my answer? What that was. Go ahead. Well, that'll be another show.
[00:41:19] Speaker A: But that actually leads me to my.
[00:41:22] Speaker B: Biggest real quick though, because, because on your just if I just want to say it while you're on this topic, the other thing, the article Said, which surprised me.
[00:41:29] Speaker A: Right.
[00:41:29] Speaker B: You're right. 90% of the human population is on caffeine, which is by itself amazing because not even 90% are on alcohol or other. No, not at all.
[00:41:38] Speaker A: Not even close.
[00:41:38] Speaker B: Like. Like alcohol being a legal drug, stimulant, whatever. And I. And 90% of people don't smoke cigarettes in the world, you know, so it is pretty fascinating that this is kind of a quiet drug, really, but also the fact that it's the only widely used stimulant that we all give to kids.
[00:41:57] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:41:57] Speaker B: They were saying through the. Through fizzy drinks, you don't realize your kids are having caffeine through Coca Cola and Pepsi. And so it's just fascinating. That's what I'm doing.
[00:42:04] Speaker A: Doping your kids. Doping your kids up, see.
[00:42:07] Speaker B: Yeah, that's what we're doing.
[00:42:08] Speaker A: But see, now, the. The other thing that took away or that I took away or the biggest thing I took away, though, is that how tied into our modern society is particularly, I guess, in, you know, if you go culturally with the US But a lot of cultures, Western cultures or whatever, the go, go, go, go, go culture, where, you know, just constantly moving. And caffeine is a drug, like its effects, it makes you more energetic, it makes you faster moving your thinking, all that stuff. Now, if you do it every day, obviously what happens with any drug is that by continuing to do it, you're only restoring baseline. You're not getting all those benefits to the full degree, but you're getting them to some degree. But I look at modern society in terms of how fast, for example, technology advances now and so forth. And some of that's just the compounding effects of growth and more people, more people figuring out stuff, more education around. But I think some of it's probably caffeine. Like, if caffeine wasn't a part of human societies around the world, I mean, we may still be from a technological sense, like right now, if you just like take that out, take coffee beans and tea out or whatever, we may be just now flying airplanes or something like that. Like, I just wonder about stuff like that. Like, has this. Has caffeine. Has this been like a secret way, like a secret weapon, so to speak, on our societies driving forward is that we have this drug that we all do, or 90% of us do, that sharpens our mind temporarily and so forth. So, yes, you look at the negative aside, negative parts, you know, like you said, particularly with the sleep and how sleep is tied to such negative health effects and so forth, but then also the positive side that people are doing it all. And because it does have real effects, it makes you feel a certain way. And it actually not just makes you feel a certain way from a, a, like a standpoint of oh, I feel good, but I feel a certain way. As far as I'm going to go get, go get, go get, go hunt or I'm going to go, you know, do whatever I'm going to do, it makes you more of a go getter. So that part about it and the reason I brought that up after the.
[00:44:04] Speaker B: THC part, it reminds me of the crayfish in the, in the, in the water stream.
[00:44:08] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:44:09] Speaker B: Antidepressants. And now he's hunting off, he's all crazy.
[00:44:12] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. It's exactly that. And so, and I brought that up on the THC part is that because, you know, caffeine also can increase anxiety, stress and all that. And you know, just so I wonder like if you, if you replace that with the thc, would our societies just be all more laid back? Like if 90% of the people were on THC then So everybody's just like, oh, you know, social media would be boring, but nobody's mad at each other. Everybody's like, oh, it's okay, man, we don't need to worry about that.
[00:44:35] Speaker B: Yeah, well, the funny truth is, because you're probably right about that. But the real truth is this is probably explained going back to the first part of our conversation. We're all screwed up and irrational because people are 100% medicated with both at the same time.
Think about it. Smoking weed. Think about it. They smoke a weed, they smoke a joint, then they go get a cup of coffee. So an hour later their body's all in flux.
[00:44:58] Speaker A: Well, but if 90% of the people are on caffeine, then that may make to your point on the other issues, that may make everybody view issues in a more extreme way because the caffeine is pumping them up. And so.
[00:45:11] Speaker B: Well, on a serious note, I mean, I think in today's modern world, right. I mean, what was it just in the last two weeks we did the, that episode where I was joking about the crayfish but about the antidepressants in our water stream, because of the amount that our population consumes, there is enough disseminated through our urine that it's affecting the ecosystem in streams and rivers, meaning the chemicals are going into the animals and they're showing different behavioral effects. So think about that.
So now we got to add caffeine as another kind of stimulant of the brain chemistry along with if people are on meds, like Prozac or Xanax or things like that. And again, like you're saying. I'm not saying that it's good or bad. It's just an interesting observation. And it also got me thinking on a serious note, like, I wonder what humanity was like before society were exposed to this. It's just interesting, like if we had a time machine, because we can't appreciate it. Because that's where I was saying. And now I'll get off my high horse here, going back through some of the history stuff that I pulled out of this. That coffee was first being cultivated in East Africa on the Arabian peninsula by the 15th century. So that's the 1400s.
[00:46:23] Speaker A: So.
[00:46:23] Speaker B: And then by the 1700s it was really permeated throughout Europe. So really there's nobody alive right now and no living memory of society because it's been hundreds of years that the whole world has been on this stuff. Yeah. And so I'm just curious, I'm not saying for right or wrong, it'd just be, wow, what if we went back a thousand, two thousand years just to see what people were like?
[00:46:42] Speaker A: Are people more laid back? You know, everybody's just more chill. So. Yeah.
[00:46:47] Speaker B: But let me speak to something you said about we might have just been getting the Wright brothers off the ground today had we not had caffeine. Because the article did an interesting job alluding to that concept.
And it also got my mind thinking from 30,000ft about things like globalism and global trade because I found it fascinating. We don't again, going back to history, like we talked about in the first part of this, this episode, we don't appreciate the interconnectedness of the world. So what did I just say? That it was East Africa, which would have been primarily Ethiopia, Somalia, the Sudan. Right. That's East Africa where coffee originated. People don't give that part of the world credit for things like that. Then, you know, in 1570 there were more than 600 coffee houses in Constantinople, which is today's Turkey. Right. In the Ottoman Empire. So we don't appreciate the, that, you know, the Arabs really were the ones that disseminated this to the world. And one, one of the reason became so popular. And again, this is just the interesting cascading effects long term of cultures and why things are so unpredictable for humanity because of Islam as a religion's banning of alcohol. Think about that.
You're not allowed to drink, especially in a strict Islamic world of the Ottoman Empire. Then the Stimulant that was allowed was coffee.
And it also then stands to reason that in the coffee houses is where you had the great kind of discoveries and mind soup that brought us a lot of the mathematics of that era.
So then you translate that to the coffee houses of France and England in the 1600s and a similar thing, one could say the Enlightenment and certain changes that came about in European society may not have happened in the same way had you not had the ability to congregate in these areas of coffee house. Because they were saying how the cup of coffee was one penny in London at the time. But what you got when you went in there was greater than just a cup of coffee. You got access to a library, you got magazines, and you had this congregation of thought in the society for the first time.
And they joked and they said they don't think that the, that the Enlightenment could have been manifested in like a bar or at a pub. Yeah, because it's just a different environment when you're congregating drinking alcohol than when you're congregating just drinking coffee. Because the coffee, the stimulation of the mind when drinking is different.
[00:49:18] Speaker A: Well, no, I mean alcohol is like, I mean alcohol makes you feel a certain way, but it's actually a nervous system depressant, whereas coffee is a stimulant. And so, yeah, I think I took note of that as well in the article how they talked about how, you know, in the Islamic world, where it originated, how it was, it contributed to that, was the mind altering substance that was available because alcohol wasn't available. And so it contributed to, and was a part of these areas where these higher mathematics, where the concepts of mathematics were being advanced. And then it goes to Europe and then boom, not too long after that you have these different ways of looking at the world springing up and people congregating, talking about this stuff. And so, yeah, I mean it's.
[00:50:01] Speaker B: And one more thing on that.
[00:50:02] Speaker A: Go ahead.
[00:50:03] Speaker B: Just for the kind of the commodity side and the business side, because I'll quote the article real quick here. It says to supply this demand in Europe and especially England required an imperialist enterprise of enormous scale and brutality. Especially after the British decided it would be more profitable to turn India, its colony, into a tea producer, than to buy tea from the Chinese. And so what it kind of got me thinking was kind of like the American slave trade for, with cotton. That also then the demand in, in, in the more wealthier areas of the world, or today we could say it's the iPhone and a sweatshop. In China, Right? Yeah. Our demand in the first world then creates the imperialistic nature of our nations because they need to go and dominate where the resources, the commodities for the. The what we're demanding at home are.
So back then, it was. Tea was very important, so.
[00:50:56] Speaker A: And also the sugar that was happening in the United States.
[00:50:59] Speaker B: That's what it said. Yeah. They had the East Indies colonies getting them the tea and the West Indian colonies where the slave trade was getting the sugar. And that all culminated. And so just again, that's what I'm saying is that if you look at it truly through human history, it's amazing because these commodities and our desire for them over time have also then created these migratory patterns. Because we've talked about it too, right? Me coming to South Florida and moving here years ago was the first time I learned that you have East Indians in the West Indies, right? In the Caribbean, like descendants of Indian people in places like Trinidad and Jamaica.
[00:51:37] Speaker A: And you mean like India Indians?
[00:51:39] Speaker B: Correct, like India. And so my point, I used to ask people, well, how did, like, how did people from India in the 1800s just find out about Jamaica? And that's what they would explain to me, like, oh, yeah, well, my great grandparents came here because they, because it was a British colony. They had free passage from India and they just had an opportunity to come here. And I'm like, wow, that's fascinating. You know, just migratory stuff. So anyway, yeah, I'm off my fascination of humanity.
[00:52:03] Speaker A: Hey, never off that, man.
[00:52:05] Speaker B: What coffee can bring us.
[00:52:07] Speaker A: Yeah, that's. That's the drug you never can get enough of, man. So I mean, and that's. Yeah, like, I think we can close it up from there, but I mean, I think that the questions being asked as far as when you conceptualize how just ubiquitous this is across societies. Again, this isn't just one society, this is across humans in the world. 90%. That's nuts. And so you imagine that. And then like I said, the fun part of that imagination is imagining without it, because it does alter its mind altering. And then any other type of mind altering, such as imagine 90% of the people on any of those things. And it's like it's a different world. And so as this has developed, as this has evolved, something we never even think about. So it's.
[00:52:48] Speaker B: Imagine 90% of the people on everything were already on all those stimulants and the stuff we probably don't even know.
[00:52:55] Speaker A: And yeah, I mean, the quality of life part, I mean, like, because 90% of the people in the world are on caffeine, but also, you know, like perhaps that drives the need for sleep aids and sleep medication as well, as you pointed out, because that's a big part of the cat. Addiction is a big part of our problem sleeping.
[00:53:13] Speaker B: So my last statement is you're telling me we just gotta buy pharmaceutical stocks. That's all. That's what I'm getting out of this whole conversation.
[00:53:19] Speaker A: Hey, man, everything comes.
[00:53:21] Speaker B: Money's not gonna stop flowing to that. We gotta keep fixing ourselves with another chemical.
[00:53:28] Speaker A: This was a problem that they actually didn't create, but they figured out they. They got something for it. So everything.
[00:53:32] Speaker B: Yeah, they got something for it.
[00:53:33] Speaker A: They got something for everything, man. So what? No. We appreciate everybody for joining us on this episode of Call Like I see It. And until next time, I'm James Keys.
[00:53:41] Speaker B: I'm Tana.
[00:53:42] Speaker A: All right. Subscribe rate review and we'll talk to you.
[00:53:57] Speaker B: I.
