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 nostalgia and the tendency to think about the past in an idealized way and how from a societal standpoint that that may affect our ability to deal with new issues and circumstances.
We'll also take a look at a recent UN report on climate change and some of the frightening reports on fires and droughts coming out this summer, and consider how much we all should be concerned about all this.
Joining me today is a man who often wonders how the smell of a grill can spark up nostalgia. Tunde Ogon Lana Tunde, Are you ready to put the car on cruise and lay back?
[00:01:04] Speaker B: Because it's summertime all the time, man. The best part is I just got done cooking steak for the family on the grill. So you hit the nail on the head.
[00:01:12] Speaker A: Hey, there you go. There you go.
[00:01:14] Speaker B: And I was reminiscing while I was doing it.
Perfect segue into our discussion, of course.
[00:01:20] Speaker A: Yeah. Now we're recording this on August 9, 2021. And this past week, we saw a fascinating piece in the Atlantic that that question whether the idea that many Americans have that their golden years, like a golden age or golden years from the past, whether that's actually rooted in fact or just our minds kind of playing tricks on us. And now the piece was exerted from the book Our Own Worst Enemy, the Assault from within on Our Modern Democracy by Tom Nichols. So as the title suggests, this question is being raised to try to discern whether or not this type of view could end up creating problems for us in the present. And it's not just a mental exercise to kind of see what's going on. So to get us going. Tunde, what stood out to you in the piece as far as what the author would describe as, and I'll quote, a nostalgia for an idealized past that always makes the present seem terrible. Do you think it's true that this is just one of the myths we deal with just in our what we could call and what the author calls a post industrial democracy?
[00:02:27] Speaker B: Yeah, I actually found that a very interesting piece.
I found it pretty pragmatic.
And also I think part of it has to do with how we're built as humans.
And in reading it, I actually was reminded by something you had alluded to in a show we did probably last year sometime.
So it was a while ago, but you had talked about how all of us as humans pine for the time when we were younger.
I mean, unless you really had a terrible childhood and faced massive abuse and probably that means you grew up to be not.
[00:03:05] Speaker A: Well, actually this was the first thing I was going to talk about. And what it is basically is that what I've seen is that our view of the world and what was going on around us a lot of times was more simplistic when we were younger. And so therefore, as life gets more complicated or really life doesn't get more complicated, as we become more aware of how complicated life is, we yearn for that simplicity to be able to put things in absolute terms, you know, to, to make it so that, you know, when we were a kid, there's good and bad. When we were a kid there are nice and not nice or, you know, this is your favorite food or, you know, so things were always simple. It wasn't, oh, I like this food, but you know, if I eat it, you know, then my arteries. And it's like we yearn for that. You know, I find that it's like a natural pull that we have as people. And so, you know, it just is a fun.
[00:03:53] Speaker B: Like you said, we learn about things as a child.
There's less need or desire probably for nuance. And I think that's your point that this idea of. And it's funny because as I'm saying that I'm thinking of the old Star wars saying that only a sith deals in absolutes.
[00:04:10] Speaker A: Of course you would think that that.
[00:04:12] Speaker B: Might be a whole different conversation for me to explore on another show.
[00:04:15] Speaker A: But.
[00:04:15] Speaker B: But no, that's the thing is that that's kind of what I started thinking to was like you're saying about all of us probably have this bend towards nostalgia over when things were a lot simpler in our lives. And that's what I was getting at with kind of where he said it's like this.
What was that term he used? A post industrial kind of thing. So that's what I thought of. Well, it's not that this time is different with societies. I think probably if you look at the writings of every major group of people that have been through recorded history, there is this kind of notion that the earlier days were better. So I think that is part of a human trait. But I would say that he does to me that he touches on something I think is real too, that the industrial age, let's just say the last 150 years or so, brought about so much technological advancement in such a short period of time. I mean, think about what we just said.
Homo sapiens been around 2 million years. And it's been 150 years. We went all the way from the steam engine to we just did a show about billionaires going into outer space. So in a very short period of time, maybe just what, six, seven generations, humanity has really just taken off in a way that has never been seen before.
And so I do think there is something to that in terms of yearning for a more simplistic time for us today, because I find that's what it was interesting for me to read the article. I find as a 43 year old person, I'm already intimidated by some of the newer things in the world just because I don't want to have to keep learning new stuff. So I joke about that I'm the youngest dinosaur that I know.
But it's true, right? Like things like crypto or NFTs or quantum computing, like all these new kinds like, oh geez, I just learned how to use my iPhone.
I don't want to have to be forced to learn all this new stuff again. And my mind. And it's funny, I joke sometimes. I think I told you this joke before. I remember my grandma's eyes in like 1985 when I'm screaming at her because she didn't understand how to use the VCR and put the tape in and she would always mess it up and the tape would get all like wound up, remember, oh no, the tape in the vcr.
And I find myself talking to my kids and feeling like my grandma, like I'm just staring a deer in the headlights and I'm like, I got no idea what you guys are telling me. And I'm just, well.
[00:06:35] Speaker A: And you know, part of that is kind of hardwired in. Like our brains are more open to new things as when we're younger and as we get older, connections less. So, yeah, pathways, I would say with that. I think that the general tendency to look back and idealize terms is there for the reasons we talked about, but I do think that you can add more texture to it in the sense that I'm sure that the generation after the Great Plague, Black Death in Europe didn't look back at when they were growing up, like, oh, I wish we could go back to that. So they probably looked back a little further and, and even now if you look at it like there was a period and if you say, you know, just the United States, where it seems like certain people could look back at like, oh, things were better for people like me then if you were like a white male unskilled worker, then undoubtedly your prospects were better in 1950 than they are in 2021. And so there is something there where society and I would look at that almost, though, as equally as much of, if not more of an economic system that was set up to share the spoils, more so than what's done now.
But also with that, though that's still very limited. I gave a very specific set of people and everyone else I don't know would look back in 1950 and said, yeah, yeah, my prospects would be much better then because, you know, with the racism or sexism or whatever, like it was very narrowly defined as far as who could. That while the system in place allowed for more shared prosperity, it also was more rigid in terms of who could share in that prosperity. And so everyone else was really pushed out or their prospects were very much restricted. So I can see that there could be someone to be able to say, no, no, this factually, if I have. If I'm unskilled and I'm a white male, then I could have done much better for myself. I could have had a house and, you know, soul earner, family and all that stuff at that time. That doesn't necessarily mean, though, from a societal standpoint, that that was true, though. That was something that was very specific. And so.
[00:08:48] Speaker B: Well, let me touch on that. That's an interesting point because that's very unique to our country and our culture.
So you're right, within this humanity thing that we're talking about, that if humans generally do kind of have a nostalgia about the past for the various reasons we're discussing, then we could say that probably there is a percentage of some Americans, right, not the whole country, that may opine for what they believe were those old golden years. And I think, though, that that's also misguided in the sense that there were a lot of. And I know you're not saying something different, I'm just saying this just to say it for the audience and for the show is like, there clearly were a lot of poor white Christian males in 1950 as well.
So I think that it's part of that. It's almost like a fantasy nostalgia that for those that may believe that, you know, life for them was so much better back then that still they could have taken time machine and go back then and may not have the best life there still were classes can assume.
[00:09:49] Speaker A: That the best case scenario then would have been the case that they would have received.
[00:09:54] Speaker B: And it's the same thing.
[00:09:55] Speaker A: I wanted to add one other thing before we got Too far away from this. It's the same thing I've heard amongst African Americans, for example, when they were like, oh, well, things were easier, or there was more unity in the community. Things were better from a communal standpoint during segregation because there was a certain solidarity and a certain amount of group, almost collective effort to raise the whole community that was lost in. In large part when desegregation became a thing. So that could be considered in a nostalgic type of way as well, because that looks at a. I would say, best case or even just a general case, but it kind of omits some of the terrible things that were happening during that time as well. And so it's like, well, you can't pick and choose your outcome, so to speak. Well, but in fact, from a memory standpoint, from a nostalgia standpoint, that's exactly what you're doing, is saying, oh, well, I wish this. It was like this. And I got this exact outcome.
[00:10:51] Speaker B: Well, it's interesting, and I appreciate you saying that because I've heard that, you know, I mean, I guess as time goes on, right. We're getting older and people are dying, unfortunately. But, you know, let's say 20 years ago, I would hear that a lot more often from older black folks that I guess, you know, who were older and lived through those times.
[00:11:07] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:11:08] Speaker B: And it's an interesting point.
[00:11:09] Speaker A: Or were children during that time, even, you know, like. So that's another piece that. But go ahead. I'm sorry.
[00:11:13] Speaker B: No, that's what I'm saying. Like, you know, 20 years ago, I might have met someone born in 1920 who was 80 years old, telling me that today, unfortunately, chances are, they're not around. So it's just that generational memory is dying on both sides of this conversation when it comes to kind of race in America back in those days. But just to finish back on this kind of. The human part of it, before we jump, is I started thinking about things like music. That's where I think we get a lot of it, too. I thought of. That's a good point, because for the audience, if you haven't seen it yet, Ken Burns documentary series on country music's excellent for any American who's interested in our country's history. Because, I mean, I never appreciated country music the way I do now until I watched it, because I didn't know about the history of the Appalachian, the folk music all the way to the blues. There's certain trajectories, and I started thinking about those type of music. Right. Country, blues, folk music, and I thought, well, a lot of times the themes and the memes in those songs and the lyrics are about some better days back in the day. Like, it's tough now, but we had it good back then. And then I thought about. Then I started thinking about hip hop, to be honest with you.
Because then I thought, well, it's interesting because if I listen to old songs from the late 80s to early 90s, it reminds you that things actually were worse back then in the kind of inner cities. And like, I remember growing up in D.C. i mean, we were the murder capital of the country in the late late 80s.
[00:12:38] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:12:39] Speaker B: I mean, you couldn't. I would say you couldn't walk outside, but I mean, probably two to three times a month as a kid that lived in the suburbs, I would hear gunshots.
[00:12:45] Speaker A: Well, yeah, I didn't live in a crime rate is lower now than it was. That's what I'm saying. So it's just listening to some old.
[00:12:52] Speaker B: Hip hop songs just in the last few days and, you know, just got me thinking, like, yeah, like, things are a lot better today than they were in the 80s, late 80s, early 90s, just generally in every big city in this country. And as much as it's. The meme is on the news that things are so bad now, I mean, you look back, it's nowhere near where it was. And.
And then the other thing where I.
[00:13:12] Speaker A: Thought you were gonna go with that actually was just how everybody tends to think that the music that they listen to in their teens and twenties is the best music.
[00:13:18] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, that's just from a standpoint. No, but that's why I was listening to some old hip hop. Right. Because it was.
[00:13:24] Speaker A: That's the best stuff, right?
[00:13:25] Speaker B: Yeah. 20 to 30 years ago was what I was kind of. You know, I was a teenager and I was, you know, that's when I was. My formative years. And those songs bring back great memories. And then the other thing before we jump, I thought of was religion as an interesting cultural kind of thing that also affects us in this nostalgia way. Because I thought, well, the reality is. And I don't know if this is considered a true religion like some of the others, but Buddhism is very pragmatic in discussing suffering as a general part of life and then enlightenment as the very small moments of true joy. And I guess enlightenment.
Every other, like, religion that I've ever heard of. And that's why the three Abrahamic religions, you know, Christian, Judaism and Islam, you could talk about Hinduism, you could talk about being a Zoroaster. I mean, there's a lot of different religions out there. All of them have something that includes kind of an idea of heaven. And I think that I started thinking like that idea also allows us to kind of complain about the now because just like we talked about music reminds us of back in the day when things were so much better. I think what the religion does is it allows us to feel like, okay, well, one day things will be much better for me. In the future I'll be out of this.
This cesspool of life and whatever the bad things are.
[00:14:46] Speaker A: It's interesting you say that because between nostalgia and then the promise of something great at the end, it actually would bias you away from being in the moment. Yeah, that's kind of like, that's a good point with Buddhism, how Buddhism doesn't do that, but the rest of them do. Yeah, you know, I just, you know, like that's an interesting kind of reverse on the nostalgia thing, you know, but it's very present though, you know, in a lot of places.
[00:15:11] Speaker B: Yeah. And that's what I felt like as we're going into this next segue, that's where it can be manipulated from a political standpoint.
[00:15:19] Speaker A: Well, I don't want to get there yet, though. I wanted to ask you. And really the. What the author really ties as far as what he's speaking about specifically is the kind of the post industrial age that we're in, where for the past 60, 70 years or so, the idea of factory work or mill work and things like that, that stuff has been contracted undoubtedly, you know, like, there's no doubt about that. And the societies though, haven't really come up with anything to replace that.
And so what you end up having is people doing, you know, people doing less, having less opportunity, conceivably, there's just, it's a harder go of it. Particularly, like I said it before, unskilled labor. And I'm not saying unskilled labor as a pejorative. I'm saying that as like an economic term, like as economic term of art.
And so if society doesn't have or hasn't, if that time period basically came up with, when you go out of agriculture, which you've pointed out before, you're going out of agriculture where everybody had to work to eat, then you go into, in this industrial age where there still was a lot of stuff to do, there was still very labor intensive, you still needed people doing stuff. And so this post industrial age, what we've seen is the concentration of productivity.
I guess it's a progression because you needed less people in the industrial age than you did to be productive than you did in the agrarian ages. But it's still, it's further concentration and it's almost like a exponential consolidation of how much work, how many people you need in order for this level of productivity. So productivity per worker keeps going up, but we're needing less and less workers to still be productive. And it seems like quite a dilemma for society, like, but a real concrete dilemma where this kind of goes back to what I was saying before, where someone could look back and say, hey, I wish there were jobs like there were in the industrial age or whatever for anyone going around. And so to me, I thought that was a valid concern. But I wanted to get your thought on that as well as far as just, is there something to this specific pointing to this post industrial age? And that's something that societies are gonna have to figure out, like, what are we gonna do now?
[00:17:36] Speaker B: Yeah, I think there is something to that concern and I think we're in kind of the midst of it now.
Like you said, the ability for automation and all that continues to increase.
Just like Moore's Law, I believe, is the one that computer chip processing speeds double every two years. I mean, if you had a chart where you could see that exponential jump, let's say over 30 years, if something doubles every two years, I mean, you're talking about extreme amount of productivity that machines can deliver now than just 30 years ago. So that's my point.
[00:18:10] Speaker A: One person sitting at a computer.
[00:18:12] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:18:12] Speaker A: As opposed to, you know, like. Yeah, so.
[00:18:14] Speaker B: So I think in this sense. So now I'm going to wow you, we're going to go pick on the Jedi now, not the Sith.
Because what's happened is our western industrial nations, us included, as opposed to the, or I say, the Western democracies of the 20th century. And I'll include us as opposed to, let's say, the authoritarian regimes, let's say of a Russia, China, Cuba of the 20th century. I think, you know, and the article does a good job of saying this, that we kind of won that argument of, you know, generally our populations are happier. Generally people are still trying to come to countries like ours and people aren't flocking to Russia and China, things like that.
So the standards of living have been better in Western nations. But that's why I was going to joke about the Jedi. Just like the Jedi leading up to the Revenge of the Sith, we've been a little bit fat and lazy on our success.
And just like the sith crept up and took over for a while.
These issues of how to deal with a large society and keep people kind.
[00:19:21] Speaker A: Of working and doing things.
[00:19:23] Speaker B: Yeah. Engaged and also engaged in a meaningful way, which I think is important, is something that, that we have not done a good job of pivoting on. And we've allowed some of the same old arguments to continue to hold sway for the last 25, 30 years. I mean, think about like what you said earlier in our discussion here, things like manufacturing jobs.
I have a book that I'm actually staring at, it's on my other side of my office here called the Myth of Free Trade by a gentleman named Pat Buchanan, along with a guy named Ravi Batra, that was written in 1994.
And so my point is that that same kind of meme from that book is still being discussed today. Like we're gonna get back the old coal jobs and the car plants and all that stuff. And to your point, those aren't coming back because they're not there anymore. Not because we shipped them somewhere. I mean, we may have shipped them somewhere first, but even in those countries now a lot of things are becoming automated. So it's gonna be, you know, you've got eight and a half billion people and I don't know what it's going to look like 30, 40 years from now. But a large part, not just of our country, but the global society, we're going to have to figure out what to do.
[00:20:36] Speaker A: Yeah, that's kind of the coming challenge. And what you just pointed out though is another facet of that nostalgia where it's looking back and saying, let's get that back. What we had there, not being able to come to grips with the fact that what was there is not anymore. We actually need a new solution. And so that actually is kind of where I think the rubber meets the.
[00:20:58] Speaker B: Road in a lot of this.
[00:20:59] Speaker A: This piece is exerted from Tom Nichols book, Our Own Worst Enemy, the Assault from within on Our Modern Democracy. So it's undoubtedly looking about this, looking at this in a political context.
Do you think that this type of nostalgia can be a threat politically as well? Like we just kind of talked about how it can be a threat or at least it could prevent us from being able to be clear eyed as far as maybe what needs to happen.
But what about from a political standpoint? Do you think that this is something that is.
This guy wrote a book on it, so he clearly he thinks it's a big threat.
[00:21:36] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think, yeah, the answer, yes, that's my clear answer that I think this is a threat, because I think, you know, just this is no different than other times in human history. That's why it reminds me a lot of the 30s in Europe. And.
And again, I'm not here to draw a line between anybody and Adolf Hitler and the Nazis and the Holocaust itself and all that. What I'm saying though is, and I say Europe because you had Italy going through the same stuff. It wasn't just.
And you had Russia in flux too, in the early 20th century. So it wasn't just Germany, which most people focus on, but it was basically the Industrial revolution and kind of the demise of the monarchy and the feudalist system over really the period of the middle to late 1800s and the agrarian dependence.
[00:22:22] Speaker A: You know, you have to move into.
[00:22:24] Speaker B: Cities because it's like all that demographic shifts. Exactly. You had a lot of stuff going on in Europe over a hundred years, let's say, or even less, let's say 60, 70 years between, let's say, 1850 and the 1920s. And so what happens is the nostalgia. Remember, you had thinking, let's stick to Germany now, just because that's the obvious one that most people recognize.
You had. The country of Germany was very Young by the 1930s. I mean, it was kind of a patchwork of the old German and Hungarian tribes and the kind of Austro Hungarian empire.
And you had just all these kind of this patchwork of stuff put together by the late 1800s. And so what happens is there was a time when you had a real Germanic pride and there was just tribes and warriors and all that stuff. And so after the First World War, with the economic demise of Germany and then the tough reparations that were put on by their neighbors for what their neighbors felt was their fault in causing the First World War and all that, you had massive amounts of poverty.
It wasn't just money printing. With a lot of Americans think it's, oh, they just print a lot of money. And that caused their issues. It was a lot deeper than that. And of course, somebody rose to power who, we all know of now, by scapegoating a minority group within the country and within the continent. So unfortunately, when times like this happen, where a society is a little bit feeling on edge because of some of the technological and demographic changes, a lot of times what happens is the void gets filled and the kind of the rhetoric is taken over by those who can seize upon that.
[00:24:12] Speaker A: They can offer solutions. Whether those solutions are actually legitimate or based on fact, they can offer an answer like why is this happening to me? And somebody gives you an answer and they're very unequivocal about it, then that's very, you know, like that's very appealing at that moment. Like actually I think you're onto something. And I would agree, regardless of if that is a one to one analogy, which I don't think you were trying to say it was, but just that when, when you have this situation where what basically is going on is society needs to come up with another answer. And again, like I said, I'm looking at it more as an economic issue. Society needs to come up with another answer from an economic standpoint on how to, as you said, give people meaningful things to do and connect that to their well being and so forth.
What was isn't there anymore. And so you have this time period where you have to come up with something else. And if you don't come up with something that's workable, then anything can happen. You start ending up. If people believe and look around and it looks like they're living through a decline, then drastic measures become easy to take because it's like, hey, we have to do something. And so it's on actually the leadership, the leadership that wants to maintain some level of, whether it be democratic system or some level of liberty and freedom involved in society to come up with solutions that don't involve just blaming somebody or scapegoating or whatever because those are always going to be appealing to certain people, you know, to a lot of people, you know, like that, human beings. That, that, that's, that's been a playbook that's worked many, many, many times, you know, when times are tough. So I think it really underscores the need for people to come up with solutions and to try them, to actually do them. Like you're never going to convince everything and any, everyone in advance that something's going to work. You have to come up with something and then you got to, you know, get it, get it, get elected and then try it. You know, you can't, once you get elected, you can't just mess around with it, you know, you got to actually do it and try to make it happen. So I think it really just reveals how urgent of a need that is when you're in these times of like kind of just flux.
[00:26:28] Speaker B: Well, I think though, as you're talking it makes me realize why I believe in kind of the social cycles over time and why I don't think this gets fixed. But this is where I, I'm not going to say I'm sad. But this is, to me, where this is just humanity, like, meaning, because it takes a certain type to build it up to a certain point and then another type to come in because the people get restless.
[00:26:49] Speaker A: I think actually this is an area where. I think you'll like this. I think this is an area where we are beholden to the leadership that's around. Like, if we have leadership that is charismatic, that's pushing us down a more negative pathway, then we are in these types of situations, we're going to be prone for that, prone to go down there. If we have leadership that's charismatic, that's pushing for positive things and that actually can get things done, then we can. Like, I don't know that you have the way things played out in the mid 20th century without someone like FDR.
I think that that aspect of it, the leadership aspect, you need someone who can even Ronald Reagan, same kind of thing. Like the. All the ideas that were floating around in that space were, you know, like, that's, that's all well and good, but you need somebody to get out there and sell it to the people and tell them why they want it. You know, because it's not. The public has never had the appetite for. Oh, well, you know, if we do this, then we can make incremental benefit here and do that. Like, that's not how it works. And so you have to understand your audience in that standpoint. And so when you have, you can have the best idea in the world, but if you can't sell it, then it doesn't matter. So that's why I said I think it's two things. Like we need ideas and then we need somebody out there and sell it. That actually, you know, then fingers crossed that it works, obviously, but. But right now I think what I've seen and the concern, I would say, is that we're still recycling through old solutions. Like, even if somebody looks at the New Deal is a good thing, but that's not what we do right now. We can't go back to that.
We may take things and learn from the way that played out here and there, but we need a new solution. We need something that we haven't done yet to address the issues now. And I think that if we don't have that so someone will come up with easy answers that won't matter. But if you're always pointing the finger at somebody else, then it doesn't matter if, you know, if what you're saying actually works because people are so busy taking their wrath out on whoever you've blamed. Yeah.
[00:28:49] Speaker B: And I think, unfortunately, and we've talked about this in other discussions, that real kind of catalyst change comes usually during a time of extreme pain or emergency. So you mentioned the New Deal. Well, that only took hold after a great depression, right?
[00:29:04] Speaker A: Yeah. That wasn't the first time people had that kind of idea.
[00:29:06] Speaker B: Yeah. And you know, there's other examples in our history where we could say, you know, it took this happening for this to happen. And so, and so, well, that lends.
[00:29:15] Speaker A: Into your cycles thing like things have to get bad enough to where, you know, like it's either somebody's going to take it and run in a negative direction or somebody's going to take it and run in a positive direction, you know, and that's what, like, that's why I think we're kind of beholden to the kind of leadership that we're going, that's going to evolve in these times. Yeah, but I think that by and large, guarding against the, the, the, the nostalgia is just important for our own ability to kind of analyze where we are and kind of what the needs are at the moment and where we're going to go. But I think we can move from this topic though, because we could, we could keep drilling down on this, you know, forever. And I did want to, I felt like we had to. We saw this UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report that was released. It was released like, you know, this week. You know, we're recording this on, on August 9th. It appeared to be, you know, it was everywhere this morning. And you know, so we see this and there it's like red alert everywhere. And you know, like the pace we're going, you know, things are speeding up and, you know, we're going to lose control soon. It seems to be hitting every alarm that it can.
And we also, like, prior to this, you and I were looking at the droughts and the fires and out west in the United States and like, man, are we not paying enough attention to this stuff? And so I wanted to ask you about that. Do you think people in general really are grasping or even capable of fully grasping how close we are to the edge on these things?
What's your take on this? It seems like we're all just going about our business in large part while these climate people are like, hey, we're in deep shit.
[00:30:58] Speaker B: No, I think you're right. Everyone's kind of whistling past the graveyard in that way, whether intentionally or unintentionally. A lot of people are ignorant to these facts.
So I can't say that they are willfully overlooking it. And other people do have access to these facts and know what these facts are and just choose to overlook it. And then I think that like you said and like we talked about with when we did the show recently on the billionaires going to space and how some of them have been getting flack from people saying, oh, why don't you do something with your wealth about helping the environment and the climate. And remember we discussed that's not really their role, that's the policymaker's role. And governments, you can't. I don't care how wealthy Jeff Bezos or Richard Branson or Warren Buffett is. They can't tell a whole country to get off fossil fuel or to start using wind turbines or something else. And so, you know, I do think it comes back to what we kind of just talked about in the first section, which is the leadership of a society and why I think this is.
It's already too late to do anything based on this or I shouldn't say anything. It's too late to stop to prevent any disruption. Yeah, correct. We're already past that.
[00:32:16] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:32:16] Speaker B: So now it's just trying to really, just slow the speed of really things getting out of control. But I think my concern is with these things like the fires and we've reported, I remember we reported on the, the Australia fires last year. California is a mess. We know that. And there's fires, I've got a cousin who lives in Steamboat, Colorado in the mountains and they're having issues with the smog from other fires happening in Colorado. Then there's these massive fires in Greece.
So this isn't something that is limited to just one part of the world. And my concern, and we talked about this, is that we're hitting a tipping point because as more fires rage, they're destroying one of the few things we have to help us, which is trees sucking up carbon.
And so what they're doing is these massive fires are producing more carbon in the atmosphere and burning the actual natural double edged sword.
[00:33:07] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:33:08] Speaker B: And so it's just. And what are we going to do about it? I don't know. I mean we're just going to keep, you know.
[00:33:13] Speaker A: Well, that's the big part.
[00:33:14] Speaker B: Like it's not. Yeah, it's not happening. And we're just going to keep producing more humans and clearing more land so that we can have more meat to eat and all these things.
[00:33:23] Speaker A: I mean, well, I mean, I'll tell you this Man, I think that the debate on whether like there's warming and whether it's caused by humans, that's been over. Yeah. And I think that, you know, like, I'm more interested in the people who accept what's going on though. Like obviously there's some people that are pulling against it, like, oh, I don't want to believe it and stuff like that. Like, but they're just, they're either in denial or they're just being, you know, kind of just counter. You know, they're, they're just, they're just being, you know, like being difficult. You know, when you deal with people that are being difficult, you sometimes you just got to keep it moving and just understand that they're going to just be, you know, chirping in the background. Yeah, but like so looking at the people who understand, you know, reasonably understand what's going on, I think even with, and I'd consider myself one of those people. And you, I don't want to speak for you but for what I'm about to say, but I think that psychologically we're like prevented from understanding how big of a problem this is because it's just if you admit that hey, everything like our food system could deteriorate in five years or something like that, then it might be harder to go about your day to day routine. Like in the same way.
[00:34:33] Speaker B: Yeah, there's a bit of that in.
[00:34:34] Speaker A: The same way that we can't, we don't walk around with the idea that yeah, a meteor could strike the earth one day and you know, like we'd all be dead. You know, like we don't walk around carrying that around. Now in this case that's very remote. That's like, you know, every few million years something you got to worry about. Like this is something that people are telling us on the news is coming right now.
And yeah, so I think that there's a level of again, forget the people who are like deniers, but the people who believe it.
I think there's a level of denial that prevents us from prioritizing this in a way that probably we need to. And that's kind of what I wanted.
[00:35:10] Speaker B: That that's where leadership comes back to. Because I think specifically, and I'll speak for me, but now. But I'll say, I assume you would be this way, right, if we had.
[00:35:19] Speaker A: We're really tiptoeing around each other today.
[00:35:21] Speaker B: Yeah, I guess so. It's a nice dance.
No, but if, because I feel like, okay, like I recycle. I do What I can. Right. And I know I still drive a fossil fuel burning car, but I'm looking into getting hopefully an electric vehicle next year. You know, I want to do my little parts that I can and maintain within the society. Right.
But I feel like if we had leadership that really advocated and pushed for us to do a little bit more, I'd find myself probably wanting to do a bit more. That's what I'm saying.
[00:35:52] Speaker A: Is that make it easier to do more?
[00:35:53] Speaker B: Yeah, Leadership's important. Like I thought about it. I'm very diligent with recycling.
[00:35:58] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:35:58] Speaker B: And I'm disappointed whenever I read things I say probably less than 10% of the plastic in the world gets recycled. Now, does that mean that my town throws away all my recycled bags and puts them in the trash anyway and doesn't do it? I don't know. Honestly, I don't know.
[00:36:13] Speaker A: But, you know, I have the same disappointment.
[00:36:14] Speaker B: And so. And so, and so, you know, but if I saw somebody really pushing and saying, we're going to do a national effort and you know, because what I realized too, when it comes to a lot of these things, it's small things that make a big difference.
[00:36:27] Speaker A: So one of the small things by a lot of people.
[00:36:30] Speaker B: Correct. So one of the things like imagine how many plastic bags, grocery store bags are laying on this planet right now just in the ocean and all that.
What a sacrifice it would be to just bring your own bag. Right. Or do you go back like we were kids. I remember we all had paper bags in the grocery store. Why don't we have that? And it's just. I don't know why I started thinking about, you know, the regular conspiracies of it, some plastic lobbying group making sure that, you know, I mean, but it's basic oil, man. No, you're right. But that's what I mean. It's basic stuff like that. That if the right leadership got in and said no more like you said, like sometimes we got to be told what to do in a certain way. We're killing the planet. It's a fact.
And it's kind of in a. It's a longer arc than the pandemic, than Covid. But it's a similar thing. Right. Like you had the early adopters.
[00:37:18] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:37:19] Speaker B: People that believed when they were told by scientists, like, okay, this thing is serious.
Then you had the deniers.
But then you had political infighting about it, which also we did a show on the kind of culture of masculinity behind fossil fuels. Right. That this has become A political thing as well. This whole. You either believe in the climate science or you believe or you don't because of your politics. Remember the Jill Bagel drill from the 2008 campaign?
So things like whether it be our healthcare through the pandemic or the environment and taking care of our earth somehow and unfortunately they become political tools which then don't allow many people that otherwise might come around to believing some of the evidence.
It doesn't allow them to do that because they're so baked into their political emotional state, their identity.
[00:38:09] Speaker A: It makes it a thing about identity and no longer about the merits of. Because you can have. You can take a position, be presented with additional information and change that position, but you can't have an identity then be presented with information and change your identity.
[00:38:24] Speaker B: Remember we. Higher hurdle, we did a discussion last week where I was an example of that when I. About Simone Biles, where I first saw it and thought, you know, one thing and then when presented with different information it allowed me to change my view. And I think, and I think that's. It's an important thing though, for those who are serious about the change, whether again, whether it be the pandemic or the climate.
I think those of us who believe in this stuff and are serious about wanting to fix it also need to make sure that people who have had strong beliefs that are, let's say, opposite to you and I, I'll say that here, are allowed to come into the fold in a sense that they're not made fun of, I think because it's so easy, because you see a lot of other people making fun of people. Right. Whether it be in the pandemic, mask wearing or whether it be. Someone could call me a snowflake for wanting to bring in my own bag to the grocery store or to buy.
[00:39:22] Speaker A: Yeah, you want to give people grace to be able to change their mind. That's what I was going to say, come on board.
[00:39:28] Speaker B: But that's what I'm saying. So it's easy. Easy for someone like me to look at someone else who might be now dying of COVID in a hospital that made fun of vaccines and say, haha.
[00:39:37] Speaker A: Look at you, that would be.
[00:39:38] Speaker B: That's not the right thing to do.
[00:39:39] Speaker A: Yeah, that would be terrible to do.
[00:39:41] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. So if I'm serious and I want to see us get past the pandemic or deal with the climate change, I think those of us that believe the way we believe need to just say, look, it's an open tent, come in and believe it. I Don't care if you're late to the party. But you showed up, you know what I mean? Like, but here, what I say with.
[00:39:58] Speaker A: That though is that, and I think, I mean you raised leadership, which I think is a valid point. But what I'm saying actually is that you know, for example in the United States, like where we select our leadership, understanding the point you raised about the identity and making it a political, a political gang sign where you know, you can't even listen to the people talking about climate because they are in the other set. Beyond that, I think that the people who take this stuff seriously, possibly we don't prioritize it enough when we're selecting who we're going to support or vote for or donate money to the climate issues. When you're looking at the issues that people run on, very rarely is climate one of the top issues that someone even who if they're speaking to the crowd that believes in the climate change and wants to do something about it, that that's very rarely one of their top issues. Even though conceivably this is something that's going to. This is the number one issue that's gonna affect us all.
[00:40:59] Speaker B: Well, I think. Cuz it doesn't poll well. I think it's just modern politics on a serious note. No, I mean, but it doesn't. Right.
[00:41:05] Speaker A: And well, I mean that's kind of the, you know, like if they're not doing it, it's because it doesn't poll well.
[00:41:10] Speaker B: Yeah, well and it goes back to like you said about absolutes and about all that and even the, you know, the Simon Sinek book. Start with why, you know, he made a great point. This is why people, politicians with the 12 point plans never win. It's the ones that can connect and get direct to the emotional connection. And usually talking about like you're saying it's just long term esoteric stuff about you know, the next hundred years and this and that humans aren't wired that.
[00:41:33] Speaker A: Way so they just got the wrong messaging. Then it needs to be about you're going to die or you're going to like do they need to something more extreme from a message?
[00:41:40] Speaker B: Unfortunately, kind of like just bringing back just the first half of our show today. You know, we're going to need extreme pain to feel change. Unfortunately.
[00:41:48] Speaker A: And you have cited this on a show before the ozone hole. They sold that like everybody's going to get skin cancer and die. Guess what happened? People stopped using the cfcs and ozone Club.
[00:42:02] Speaker B: But here's what else is happening Though remember there wasn't a culture of masculinity around the ozone hole. And also think about what we just talked about in the first section, which has been now this is where we could actually bring back little bit of that discussion from the use of a political weapon for this stuff.
Think about now climate, what it takes to deal with fossil fuels which are now become a huge part of our culture and the industrial age and all that.
[00:42:27] Speaker A: Right.
[00:42:30] Speaker B: You're also dealing with a little bit of the nostalgia and this where certain politicians have played on this. Right. Bring back our old jobs in the coal mines.
Bring back my nostalgia for a muscle car of the 1970s that makes a lot of noise and vibrates and makes me feel good when I hit the.
[00:42:49] Speaker A: Gas or you know, like oil.
[00:42:51] Speaker B: Think about it.
[00:42:52] Speaker A: Oil creates jobs, fracking creates jobs.
[00:42:55] Speaker B: But think about it. So politicians have been able to weaponize the environmental conversation because it's also about potentially, right, the fear of taking something away from you. So yeah, if you elect that guy who's talking about putting windmills out there and, and, and solar farms, he's going to naturally take away your eight cylinder vehicle. He's naturally not going to want you going into a coal mine and working down there and all that stuff. So I think that that's part of the issue too that's happened and that might be more unique to American politics and culture. I'm not sure because you know, I haven't lived in another country for a long time and how they deal with these kind of topics. But at least here in the U.S. you know, I think the last 25 years has been like, it's been difficult for national politicians to really get an embrace from the entire country for some of this policies because the electorate has been hit with fear about it's going to hurt the economy, which you know, we've talked about. I'm not sure how that, you know.
[00:43:58] Speaker A: Well, but it also, but this, I think, and this goes to anybody, it's easier to deny it, it's easier to just not think about and it's scary. That big of a problem. Yeah, nobody has great answers anyway. Even, even those, those not great answers like you said, are going to cause some type of inconvenience. But the answer is not like somebody can say hey, if we do this it'll be inconvenient, but it'll solve the problem in five years. You probably, you could sell that. Probably a little easier than yeah, we'll do this. And you know, it might work. But then we got to talk to China and then this and that. Like there's all these factors that there's no easy answer.
[00:44:28] Speaker B: And that's a whole other thing, is that the earth and nature doesn't have a national boundary. So you're right. I mean that's where you look at things like this sort of one thing I was going to say, you know, this, this UN report we're discussing is a culmination of over 14,000 individual reports that have been produced since 2013 about the climate. So this was kind of like just one massive. Yeah, like overview of all of that. And a lot of those reports led to the Paris Climate Accord.
And think about it, that was an attempt, kind of like. And it wasn't the first because remember we didn't sign on to the kyoto treaty of 2000, I think three.
So there have been attempts to get the world on the same page.
But what happens, this is one thing I don't think is unique to the United States. I'm sure other countries have the same type of politicians, you know, we do because they're all humans. That once you start talking about doing things with other countries, that creates another layer of distrust for a lot of the population, depending on which who the country is. Right. So one more thing I want to say which is a bit of eating your broccoli, which is I think that people are remiss if they think that we're gonna solve these issues long run by going to space. Like we talked about. It seems a lot more difficult to really move maybe millions of human beings to some other place that we don't even know yet because there's light.
[00:45:49] Speaker A: Kunde, is this a Star wars reference?
[00:45:51] Speaker B: No, I'm just.
[00:45:52] Speaker A: Who's talking about moving millions of people to space?
[00:45:54] Speaker B: No, no, no.
Well, people that don't wanna deal with the climate issues on the Earth. So I'm saying is to figure out how to recycle plastic seems a lot easier than figuring out how to deal with like what we talked about on the recent show, bone density loss after one year in space or dealing with radiation hitting our cells when you don't have the magnetic field and all that. I'm just saying that this idea, this fantasy that some. Oh yeah, we're going to be in space in 100 years and colonizing these places. I just, that seems so much more far fetched than us just dealing with the environment. And I think, and I'll just finish here, one advantage I think we saw from the shutdown last year, the pandemic, when it was really the heavy shutdown over like a six or eight week period was how quickly the world, the Earth seemed to recover.
So I just think that there is hope. But like we're talking about in our conversation, I just think that global leadership and the kind of world population has to be motivated to do it. And unfortunately, I don't think that's going to happen easily. That's going to take probably pain, you know, and maybe these fires are the catalyst. I don't know.
[00:46:52] Speaker A: Well, we'll see. We will.
[00:46:54] Speaker B: If we don't have a show in 30 years because the Earth is gone, then we won't see.
Well, yeah, maybe we'll just have to.
[00:47:02] Speaker A: Like, you know, can't go into space. You'll just go to the bottom of the bottom of the ocean. It will call it like I see it from under the sea.
[00:47:09] Speaker B: Yeah. No more Star Wars Aquaman.
[00:47:12] Speaker A: There you go.
[00:47:13] Speaker B: That doesn't seem as attractive to me, but okay.
Well.
[00:47:17] Speaker A: But now we appreciate everybody for joining us on this episode of Call It Like I See It. And until next time, I'm James Keys.
[00:47:23] Speaker B: I'm Tundere.
[00:47:24] Speaker A: All right, subscribe rate review and we'll talk to you next time.
