Episode Transcript
[00:00:14] Speaker A: Hello, welcome to the Call It Like I See it podcast.
I'm James Keys, and in this episode of Call It Like I See it, we're going to take a look at what's happening in China as we have seen the streets in many cities explode with public protests aimed at least in significant part at their government's ongoing and very restrictive zero COVID policy. Yeah, Covid. Remember that.
And later on, we're going to consider how we sometimes spontaneously remember things we would rather not think about. And for how many people, this can temporarily bring back the bad feelings associated with those memories that you'd rather leave in the past.
Joining me today is a man who is ready to give you his deepest inner visions. Tunde. Ogonlana Tunde. Are you ready to tell the people why they don't have to worry about a thing?
[00:01:13] Speaker B: Let's see how the show goes.
See what I can do.
[00:01:17] Speaker A: See where we end up.
[00:01:18] Speaker B: Doesn't make them listen to the whole show. If I answer you too quickly, they're going to leave.
[00:01:24] Speaker A: Cliffhanger. Got you. Now, we're recording this on November 28, 2022. And for the past few days, we've seen substantial protests in the streets of many Chinese cities, which is something that is very uncharacteristic in China because their government has made it very clear, deadly clear even, that it does not believe that people have the right to any kind of free speech and to speak, or, you know, any right to speak out against the government.
Now, the protests seem to have been kicked off following a deadly fire in the city of Urumpi, where 10 people died when emergency services could not reach them. And many people seem to blame the lockdown measures that are in place as part of China's ongoing zero COVID policies as causing them.
Now, beyond the fire, the protests seem to reveal a lot of pent up frustration over not just this zero COVID policy and all the lockdowns that seem to pop up anytime there's something going on with that, but just also the authoritarian single party government system that's been in place there for some time now. So, Tunde, let me not get too far ahead. Just as to the more immediate issue. What's been your reaction to seeing these uncharacteristic public protests in China?
[00:02:45] Speaker B: It's interesting. I've, I've, my reaction is of surprise, but not surprise, if I can say that. And I guess I need to now break that down.
You know, I'm surprised on the surface because we're not used to seeing the Chinese population react in this kind of way where we. We've been now conditioned in the last couple decades to see China as a very rigid, like you've said, authoritarian state that has a lot of controls on its population.
And this type of, like the websites.
[00:03:17] Speaker A: That go in there are all scrubbed, you know, everything. Like it's.
[00:03:20] Speaker B: Yeah, and. And just the idea that it seems that the Chinese as kind of a culture have more compared to us, that this kind of protests and open displays of dissatisfaction towards the government, for example, are not part of the culture there as they are here. We have a culture of actual rebellion and resistance and. And kind of the hyper individualism. So to me, that's why, in a sense, the first thing was I was surprised. But then when you think about, okay, Chinese people are human beings just like us, right? So clearly I'm not surprised that at some point after two and a half years of this really, really strict COVID lockdown policy, that at some point they're going to hit the end of their rope. You know what I mean? And, yeah, so that's why, in that sense, I'm not surprised.
[00:04:19] Speaker A: Well, it's interesting you say it in that way because it's like, just hear that they're still on a. They're still into this, this program where they're going to end as soon as anybody tests positive for Covid, they lock down the city or the region where they are. It's almost like, man, it took them a long time in our kind of mental construct and how we view our society. It took them a long time for this because that's a very extreme way to approach Covid. And we could talk, you know, about the merits of that and how that may be, you know, like, that may not be the best way to approach going about it. But the idea that. And I would say this, I agree with you in the sense that it's just. It's shocking to me to see Chinese folks in the street in this way, particularly just understanding the history. If you talk, if you look back, something like Tiananmen Square, you know, 1989, where you have the military going after the public, you know, with respect to protests and so forth like that, and people being demonstrating in the street that it seems like that the authorities have gone at this stuff so extreme in the past, that the stakes are so high for people to be in the streets like this. Like, it's not like what we think here, you know, like, and I've talked about this before when people like, oh, you know, we need to. We need people to Speak out, you know, as far as the atrocities the Chinese, the Chinese, you know, have done, you know, you know, with, you know, whatever parts of their population. And you know, China doesn't hold itself out like the AM like the United States does and saying, hey, you know, we're a welcoming place for everyone. Everybody's free, everybody's equal. China doesn't do that stuff. And so like China is a place where the, it is a very top down authoritarian setup and, and people who step out of line there, it can get very extreme for you very quickly. So to me, I'm just still in the surprise mode because I'm just hopeful, fingers crossed that we don't see some type of extreme reaction from the state in this case because that's the thing that I associate with China and why I don't think we normally see this type of thing in China.
[00:06:25] Speaker B: Well, what will be interesting will be, you know, how they respond, number one.
[00:06:31] Speaker A: I mean, obviously the officials, you mean.
[00:06:33] Speaker B: Or the officials and the government. And I think both short and long term. Right. The short term will be do they crack down on this and kind of like you said, the Tiananmen Square way, or do they, do they let it breathe a bit, let people get some of this energy out, this emotional energy, and then tell them, all right now you got to go back to lockdown type of thing. But longer term, how this plays out. Because I think what I find interesting in this kind of early 21st century where we have this kind of. Now this tug of war between the way the 20th century had large societies competing for different systems. Right. Because you had like, basically you could say that China and Russia are what the old kind of Soviet state style socialism of the middle 20th century looks like in the 21st century. It's authoritarian, but they've, they've realized that they do need to open up a bit and have some capital markets, allow other companies to come in and do trade and be somewhat part of the global system.
[00:07:36] Speaker A: Yeah, but as we've seen, communism from an economic standpoint is not. Nobody's out there trying to practice communism or pure socialism from.
[00:07:46] Speaker B: Even though, yeah.
[00:07:46] Speaker A: System standpoint.
[00:07:47] Speaker B: They use the word communism. Like the Chinese is the Chinese Communist Party. I recognize that's their name. But clearly. Yeah.
[00:07:52] Speaker A: By having branding though, you know, that's more like that's the party of Mao, you know, like that's. Yeah, but go ahead.
[00:07:58] Speaker B: Correct. And that's my point. Allowing Apple to have big factories, Amazon, the fact they have companies like Baidu and Alibaba and all that and they have their own stock exchanges. Clearly they're not a communist economy.
However, what they. What they have done a great job holding on to both nations is their authoritarian streak. Whereas in the United States, we've maintained our democratic streak. And I think what's interesting, that's what I find with this last kind of decade to 20 years, is up until recently, literally the last year, year and a half, let's say, it appeared that they were getting the upper hand, at least in the rhetoric with world affairs, where it looked like the Democrat democracies were very sloppy. And the solution to the sloppiness and the infighting and all that is just, oh, you need a strong man and let's do it this way. But I think between Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which I know is a totally different subject, but then this example of how China's handled something like the COVID lockdown is a good example where them having that DNA of authoritarianism and not being comfortable with the population speaking up leads me to the idea that this may not end well. Because what their instinct of the leadership is going to be is not to take responsibility directly. Like President Xi is not gonna come out and say, I made a mistake as your leader by doing this Covid thing for too long here. We're now gonna change it. Cause that culturally, I don't think he's capable of doing it. So I think that they're culturally just gonna start going even more authoritarian. Kinda like Iran has done as well recently.
[00:09:37] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, we're seeing that in Iran as well. It's interesting that you note that, because I think that is a big part of the problem that we're. That. That China, because the approach to how you govern your people, you. If he responds to public pressure by giving in, he actually harms his authority, so to speak. Like, he's not. He doesn't present himself and, you know, like President Z, the Chinese Communist Communist Party, they don't present themselves as open to suggestions from the general population. You know, it's like, no, we know best. You know, Dear Leader, we're, you know, like we. We have it all under control. And so. And here it does look like. I mean, just from how the world has evolved, you know, like they kind of. And you've said this before. People get with COVID We've seen how it revealed how people would get very rigid in whatever they thought were solutions of it and not be able to adapt as. As more information became available, as circumstances changed and so forth. A zero COVID policy before there's vaccines before people start getting some exposure to Covid and start developing some natural immunity made more sense than it does now. You know, when like the rest of the world, people, some that were very restrictive, some that were very sloppy, some that were very put together, the rest of the world is moving on, so to speak, even the more, you know, the Australias of the world and everything like that, that were much more on top of, you know, like trying to keep Covid out. And so, but he can't respond to the public pressure by saying, okay, let me back down. Because what that does is that chips away at his, so to speak, legitimacy. His, his claim to say, I know what's best at all times. So it almost boxes him in in a sense where he can't respond. He would have to make this change before the, if he was going to make a change before the protests happen. Now that the protest happens, from the authoritarian standpoint, he almost has to double down on it.
[00:11:29] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Well, and that's, that's why to me, this is actually a pretty fascinating moment to watch these things play out. That's why I say not just this one with China, but this kind of last year or so with these different events around the world. Because us bringing up Iran briefly and again, not to, not to change topics here, but the same thing, right? Like a young lady was killed by the police for exposing like one third of her hair, which. Yeah. In the old authoritarian way of doing business in that part of the world, you kill somebody or you really hurt people for that. But I think what's going to get China in trouble too, just like with Iran, is they have these 20th century and older style, almost like industrial age authoritarianism instincts.
But we're in 21st century technology now. And to your point about how does China respond? Remember, because it's funny you say I thought of Tiananmen Square as well. I was 11 years old. I remember watching that on the news, that guy standing in front of that tank. And that was like, even as a kid, I was like, whoa, that's pretty crazy. And, and what did that do, though? I had to ask my mom what was going on. It got a conversation going. And then I understood that China was probably not a place I want to move to anytime soon. And, and my point is, is that if they react like that this time, because remember, the interesting thing about that too is China tried to, has been trying to make sure that history is not taught in their country.
[00:12:58] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:12:59] Speaker B: Because they don't want their countrymen to know that Actually, people did try and rise up against this Chinese Communist Party in recent memory. That.
[00:13:07] Speaker A: And they don't want people to feel any kind of shame as far as the past conduct of the Chinese Communist Party. And that may sound familiar to Americans.
[00:13:17] Speaker B: As well, but let's not digress, even though it is familiar.
And so that's kind of my point to say, if they react that way again, which from an instinctive cultural way, I think they will imagine all the smartphones they have there and what kind of images will be coming out of that country if they really start cracking down in that way. And now what does that mean for the rest of the world? I don't know, because I don't think anyone's in the mood to go invade China anytime soon. But it's just that.
It's just interesting because I feel like with our democracy being so sloppy, feeling what we were is we were prepared for because we're decentralized. And so we live in Florida. Ron DeSantis as governor, had a much different style than Gretchen Whitmore in Michigan, than did Newsom in California, than did the guy in Arkansas. And it felt very sloppy. And we were all fighting, and it was all this. The news made it feel worse in social media. But at the end of the day, our system has kind of maintained itself through a lot of pressure in this last two years. Right.
[00:14:25] Speaker A: And I think it allows people to be flexible, though. That's the thing.
[00:14:29] Speaker B: That's what I'm saying.
[00:14:29] Speaker A: Eventually, people, like right now, people started in different places, but in a lot of instances, it almost was a convergence. You know, like, solutions were found, so to speak. And I don't even. I wouldn't even hold us up as, you know, the best example of this, because we probably had, due to, you know, like, this becoming a political football, we had a lot of people die, probably that didn't need to. You can look in Europe, and there were some countries that probably handled it better than us as far as preventing the initial wave of death, but then also being able to adapt as time went on. Some of the adaptation was looking at what was happening in certain states here in the United States. So it gave us a bunch of test cases, basically, to your point that, okay, if you do this, this is kind of what happens. If you do this, this kind of happens because the different needs, different types of setups, different cities versus rural versus suburban, things like that, all of that stuff mattered in terms of how they do it. Where China is a country of 1.2 billion people, and they got one policy. And so they can't. They haven't even seen how different things can play out, what can work here, what can work there, and so forth. And then they're adamant on doing it their way, so to speak. But I. There's one other point I wanted to make because you had mentioned a couple of the other kind of notorious authoritarian states and the analogy that you did with Iran and the rigidity that they're operating with and how that it's harder to maintain that in our current setup unless you have to maintain ironclad grip on what people learn, what people find out. We can see that in Russia as well, with the ongoing now the war is not going as expected, as planned, and that's creating more strife for them. And that's not to say that if they were an open society, the war wouldn't create strife, because we've seen when the United States invades people, you know, our country is. People are arguing about it the whole time. But that's happening out in the open. And it allows our leadership as it, as it, you know, maybe the leadership changes so forth. It allows us to be able to pivot here or in Russia just to make that point. Putin, there's nobody else coming. Like, he's just the leader. So he doesn't have a natural out. Oh, well, when his successor comes in, he could take a different route. He can learn from this and then pivot. Putin is just, you know, pot committed to this approach. And the same thing with Xi here. He's pot committed to this zero Covid approach, and it's antagonizing his people. And it's just he has a very difficult, there's a very difficult way to deal with this, other than, like you said, hopefully, the eventuality that we don't end up in where they're turning military apparatus on the people.
[00:16:59] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I think that's where to me, it's just again, fascinating to look at all this in such proximity with this timeline, because I would argue that's this, the argument we're making in my mind, I'm just seeing this line here in my head is for term limits in other parts of government, not just the presidency. Because I thought about that as I was preparing for today, and I thought, what makes us that different? Because in the end, again, like we talked about it, we're all human beings. I don't think Chinese people or Russian people or Iranian people, people have a different mental or emotional makeup from birth than we do. But if you grow up in different cultures and societies, you can, it'll manifest in different ways once people grow up.
[00:17:43] Speaker A: So now, one thing, just let me add real quick, one thing that's been observed as far as the differences between like Western cultures and Eastern cultures, and many people have heard this, is the individual is put placed higher than the group a lot of times, or at least higher relatively to the group than in Eastern cultures, whereas the group identity a lot of times takes precedent over the individual identity, or at least again, the balance is different. And so that's the kind of thing that would play in, in terms of governing, in terms of religion, in terms of a lot of different things. But go ahead.
[00:18:11] Speaker B: Yeah, well, and I'm just saying in terms of this being the types of government being authoritarian, meaning what's his name, Putin manipulated their constitution in Russia where he can basically stay in power till he's 80 plus years old. And Xi just got an unprecedented third term where he can rule China until he's dead. Right. So basically, these guys are, in other words, kings, dictators.
They're autocrats at this point.
But like you're saying, because we get to make a choice every four years of who leads our country, that whether we like the change or not, meaning it at least allows for some sort of refresh and recycle of ideas and of people. And so what I'm saying is that in 2020, the country had a chance and made a decision that they wanted to change gears. I'm not here to say whether one president is doing a better job or not over how to deal with COVID and all that. What I am saying is that sometimes just a change in the person at the top is enough to keep the country in a position of, okay, we'll just keep moving forward. And not because what I'm saying is with people like Xi and Putin, like you said, once they get into a snag, because they're going to be there forever now, the population can go and turn a 180 on them over the next short period of time. Because like you're saying about Russia, if this war in Ukraine is still going on a year from now and it's still going where Russia's now lost 2, 300,000 people and it's still embarrassing globally. People are just going to keep blaming Putin like there's no one else.
[00:19:49] Speaker A: And he doesn't have natural. And he doesn't. They don't have natural pivot points.
[00:19:53] Speaker B: Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
[00:19:54] Speaker A: Like when Biden came in, you know, he was able to get out of Afghanistan and it wasn't like, oh, you got us into Afghanistan, Biden. It was just like, oh, exactly, that's not me. You know, so it allows for that. Well, let me, let me, let me tell you this because it allows for. Because your point in terms of what we see in our own country a lot, particularly in Congress, the body that, well, one of the bodies that people talk about term limits is gridlock. And the reason being is that so many people have been there so long and are so pot committed to whatever positions they're in. And so like we don't have as much.
[00:20:26] Speaker B: That's my point. That's what I was saying. When I see that line that's like, yeah, this actually we should have term limits on everybody because it probably create more opportunity for fresh growth, fresh ideas and not at least having authoritarian style people in the Senate and the Congress. Right? Yeah, yeah.
[00:20:42] Speaker A: So.
[00:20:42] Speaker B: So.
[00:20:43] Speaker A: Well, like the second thought on this that I wanted to get to is just, is actually to talk about the kind of the boxed in corner that the Chinese officials have kind of painted themselves in in terms of dealing with COVID you know, and like this zero COVID policy. You, you sent me something recently how this is affecting. Well, I mean, this is affecting, you know, manufacturing all around the world. This is affecting, you know, obviously in this instance, the relationship between the government and the people, you know, like what do you think? Or you know, how, how serious of a corner do you think they've backed themselves into with this zero COVID policy? And then if you want to just comment on, you know, the concept of the zero COVID policy itself as well, I mean, like, or, you know, the vaccine, like another point, their, their rejection of the vaccinations, you know, that were, that were developed in other countries, you know, and saying they wanted to do their own. But you know, just this kind of COVID corner they've boxed themselves into. Which, how serious do you think that is?
[00:21:41] Speaker B: It's very serious. I mean, from everything we've talked about already, right. It's serious that the people are revolting. It's serious that they could respond very aggressively to that. And I think like you said, I want to hit the vaccines at the latter part of my comments. But getting back to what you said about the business side, I mean, there is real stuff. I mean, as we're recording today, the stock market opened up much lower and not only because of this, there's a lot of factors that play into that. But Apple being one of the major companies on the market and taking up a huge Share of market cap in the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ and the Dow, one of the biggest stocks out there was down over two and a half percent today, which is a big move for a company that size because specifically they reported that their iPhone 14 sales are gonna be down by 6 million.
They won't make 6 million units. They were expected to make and sell.
[00:22:41] Speaker A: Yeah, so about sales are down because they don't have units, basically.
[00:22:45] Speaker B: And it's because. And I'll quote here from an article. In recent weeks, rumors spread in the city of.
I'll try and pronounce it Xijin, Zhuang and the Foxconn factory complex of Zhengzhou that residents would be used as guinea pigs to see what would happen if Covid was allowed to spread unchecked. Now I thought of the first thing I thought of. Wow, that's cool. We're not the only country that has conspiracy theories. So, yeah, Chinese people.
[00:23:11] Speaker A: We're not the only country that has people.
[00:23:13] Speaker B: Yeah, I was gonna say Chinese people are full on board human beings because they can believe. Digital too. That's awesome. And so, because I thought about it, like we used to talk about with the vaccine, conspiracies and all that, like, well, if you were gonna try and put be Bill Gates and put nanotechnology to track everybody, why would you create some new virus? Why wouldn't you just put it in penicillin or Tylenol or something that millions of people already use anyway?
[00:23:36] Speaker A: Something that people already trust.
[00:23:38] Speaker B: This is what I'm thinking. Like, well, why would China do that? Experiment in the number one factory for the biggest freaking company in the world, that's their biggest customer of the whole country? Why wouldn't they do that to the Uyghurs or somewhere out in some province in Mongolia and just say, okay, let's discuss.
[00:23:50] Speaker A: Well, the reason though. The reason. The answer to that is because the thinking is that they would be responding to business pressure. Because it's not just Apple. I'm sure there's capitalists over in China that are like, yo, man, you're killing our bottom line.
[00:24:04] Speaker B: And that's where it's just interesting to me that all this stuff plays out the same way around the world. These things I also thought about that could have been a competitor like Samsung talking about Apple stuff. Let me sell more phones this year.
There could be a lot of red rumors. Yeah, exactly.
[00:24:22] Speaker A: Well, but you know, like that's. I think that that actually gets to the heart of the corner that they've painted themselves into and that deals. That's just the virology of this whole thing. And that is like the, when we started with COVID like, and you and I talked about this, we had several shows about COVID as it was happening, you know, and I feel pretty confident or comfortable with the things we put on, you know, put on tape here. But the thing is, is that when the virus was new, when our, none of, none of us had any familiarity, our bodies, meaning our immune systems had any familiarity with it. There was a heightened risk because it was, that was the, the novel coronavirus. The important part of that was not the novel part. And so what we need, we're. We contact. We come in contact with viruses all the time, all day, every day we come in contact with viruses. They get in our nose, they get in our, whatever, you know, our mouth. They, they're all over, all around. But most of the viruses we deal with on a day to day basis we've had some contact with before. And so our immune systems know what to do with, deal with them and know how to deal with them. Covid created a problem because it was new. And so the point was to get, we have to protect people until we can slowly get people familiar with the virus. And China basically didn't do that at all. Like their whole, their zero COVID policy never allowed for, okay, now that we have either vaccines, now that we have, you know, now that people have had some low level of exposure, whatever, we can start re reintroducing people to it and then everybody can start building up that natural immunity. They never had that. And so now, yeah, the conspiracy theory is that they're going to be a guinea pig to go from 0 to 100. And it's like, well, yeah, you should have been stepping that along with a little bit more and more exposure. Getting out with masks, getting out. Like we, we did that. We didn't do it necessarily wittingly, but you know, and again some people were just jumped in from 0 to 100 and we, we probably had higher death numbers than we needed to. But you need to, you actually, you're ultimately, Covid's not going away. So you ultimately are going to need your population to develop some level of natural immunity to it. And that can be enhanced, that can be, you can be introduced by, with vaccines. But ultimately they'd have to be exposed just like they are with the countless other viruses we're exposed to all the time.
[00:26:35] Speaker B: But you, you already made the great point that the reason why that couldn't take place and, and it's not capable of taking place in, in that type of system that China has is because you've got the central government in Beijing trying to dictate the same exact policy for a billion people. And that's what I'm saying. Like it's a really good one other.
[00:26:54] Speaker A: Thing with that, by the way.
[00:26:55] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:26:55] Speaker A: And they've been. And this is why that conspiracy theory or where whether it's true or not would would have particular salience. They've been telling people and remember that that closed information loop the government's been telling people Covid is super bad. If you can't. If you get it, you die or whatever. So they've created this perception amongst their people that this is no, like we can't just slowly expose our way to this thing.
[00:27:16] Speaker B: Yeah. And to speak to that, I mean this is how bad they've made it for themselves. Watching one of these news things. And I'll, I'll get back to finishing my comment today. That just gives you an example of how much they have to try and control everything. You know the World Cup's on now as we're recording, right?
[00:27:29] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:27:30] Speaker B: That, that the Chinese media stations that play it to the people inside China to see the soccer, the World cup, they've, they've purposely had to cut away from scenes of the crowd.
[00:27:43] Speaker A: Oh wow.
[00:27:43] Speaker B: Because of everything going on data, the Chinese government doesn't want Chinese people to see the crowd in Qatar.
[00:27:49] Speaker A: All massless. Yeah.
[00:27:50] Speaker B: They're all maskless. And probably because to your point, they probably still.
[00:27:54] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:27:54] Speaker B: How are you going to have 100,000 people in a stadium with no mess? You're telling us that this thing's going to kill it. You know.
[00:27:59] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:27:59] Speaker B: Like they're so and so. That's why to me this is again fascinating from what we're talking about because where I was going with my comment earlier was because you already pointed out the authoritarian nature of the centralized government naturally makes it impossible for them to allow for different types of experiments over time in different parts of the country. And again, this is why this is just a fascinating time because this brings me back to really embracing things we've talked about before which make I would say our system so unique in the United States and we're not unique in the world. There's other countries that share this as well, which is the actual argument against that is the traditional conservative narrative of limited central government and more autonomy to local governments to make decisions that make sense in those localities. And I think it's just interesting to see like this is truly what authoritarianism looks like when there's a black swan event, when there's something that is out of their control that they could not have prepared for. And in Putin's case, it's a war that didn't go the way he thought. In Iran's case, it's people the straw that broke the camel's back, you know, the killing of that girl for showing her hair was enough to revoke people that the leaders weren't prepared for it. In China, it's Covid, it's a pandemic that they miscalculated how to deal with their population.
[00:29:25] Speaker A: Well, but you can miscalculate, but they couldn't correct. That's what I'm saying, their miscalculation. But let me just give one more example to drive this point home. But I know you wanted to get to the vaccine piece, and this ties into that a little bit. Just for example, I recently had a family member who lives in the United States go to India and to prepare to go to India and do it the right way and everything, he had to get a bunch of vaccines and he had. They had to do a bunch of stuff under the logic that, hey, the bacteria and the viruses that are common over there, we're not exposed to regularly. So we need to give you some exposure to some things that you're going to come in contact with. So it's not. Your body's not like when you get there, like, what in the world, you know, like. And so with COVID it was. It's a similar kind of thing. Basically. I just wanted to give that example of that point and that the goal is like, when he, him going to, you know, when him going to India, it wasn't like, look, just keep this mask on and stay inside your room all the time. That wasn't the advice they gave him. They were like, look, we got to, we're going to prepare you a little bit in terms of preparing your immune system. And then we're going to give you some, some rules like, okay, you know, don't drink the water here, or, you know, different things like that, you know, and we'll prepare you otherwise because you're not going to. If you just go in fully immersion, full, full immersion, your body's not going to be prepared for that. And so it's the same kind of thing. And again, that's not lockdown. That is okay. We need to, to meter your exposure and allow your body to adapt, because that's what we need. You know, I did want to get to the next next topic though, does there one? I know you have one other thing.
[00:30:55] Speaker B: You wanted to mention, the only one was on China's had a lot of people may not know this on the economic side for about 30 years China has had a goal of having 9% GDP which is gross domestic product. So basically the growth of their economy to grow at 9%. And one of the things that kind of been a trade off culturally is that people put up with some of those, you know, meaning the population with some of these curves on their freedoms as long as things are going well. And one of the things I read which is very interesting was China trying to constantly push to do all these amazing things like they want to have the GDP be at 9% at all times, like 3 or 4% is unacceptable. They want to build all these cities, they want this and that is that again this is where the authoritarian streak is going to hurt them because they will have to torture their population to get 9% GDP on this environment with a COVID lockdown. But then if they don't get like, if they start getting GDP that's negative for a year or two and things like that, they risk now a, a popular revolt for other reasons.
[00:32:00] Speaker A: Yeah. So again I think they become overselling and under delivering.
[00:32:04] Speaker B: Correct. And I think looking at Apple as maybe the canary in the coal mine for let's say large western businesses. It's just interesting. Let's see how this plays out over the next six to 12 months. Because I don't think China will change like on a dime because they just culturally they don't have it in their DNA to say okay, we were as a government, I'm saying not the people. Like we were wrong, you guys were right. Maybe we should open this Covid thing up a bit. And like you said, they've conditioned their population already to be absolutely scared of it. So this is going to be interesting. This is not going to. We might do another show in a few months if this gets a little more.
[00:32:39] Speaker A: And the thing about the 9% that like the tie that needs to be made there in terms of the 9% GDP growth target and then the, the, the Apple factory shut down and so forth is that in order for them to reach that 9% growth target, it's only attainable because where they started first off, you know, if they started as a developed economy, it wouldn't work. But they started as an undeveloped economy and they want to develop. But they need western businesses. But even more so they need western consumers. They need to make things that western Consumers can buy because they don't yet have a large enough middle class to support the level of production that they would. They need to, to, to hit in order to get that kind of 9% thing. So becoming unreliable as far as a source of good things to be made and things like that could really take them down because they don't need. If the world starts starting like China's too unreliable, we got to go somewhere else, you know, to build this. We have that. China can't take. They, they don't have the consumer base that is sufficient to sustain their kind of growth ambitions at this point. And so to me, that, I mean, that's actually, you know, one of the, you know, again, I guess this is a very patriotic show. One of the things the United States has going for it to, to, you know, in terms of the world economy is the consumer base. You know, Americans buy a lot of stuff and that gives a lot. That gives if, if that gives power, if you leverage it. Right. And it's not always leverage. Right. And so forth. But ultimately China needs us to, they need to be able to make stuff that we can buy. And if they don't, they're not going to hit that 9%. And then as you said, their government's going to. People are looking at the government like, oh, we gave up all these freedoms for you to hit 9%. You're not hitting 9% then. Dot, dot, dot. Yeah, so. But I do want to get to the second topic. It was an interesting one or this is an interesting kind of topic because it gets into kind of our things that happen automatically. A lot of, you know, like with our thoughts, with our memories. And so the phenomenon that, with this article that we. And I'll post it in the show notes that we were looking at the phenomenon. I talked about it. It talks about your. Now you have your intentional memory, like, oh, I want to remember where I parked my car. But we also have this spontaneous, this memory that operates spontaneously where you can be walking down the street or something and just remember something and you know, just spontaneously without trying to, without thinking about it or anything like that. And what the article kind of asks, like why, when that. Why do we have a tendency or just why does it happen? Well, we'll spontaneously remember stuff that we're embarrassed about or that we don't want to remember. And then to. Even further than that end up. Those memories can end up making us feel bad. Like we're walking along, you know, just drinking coffee or something, having regular day. And then you remember something like, oh, I remember when, you know, I tripped and spilled my coffee all over myself in front of 100 people and they all laughed at me. And then you feel bad again, all over again. So what, just from a conceptual level or just from experience, what about this kind of stood out to you? Tune Doug.
[00:35:36] Speaker B: It was very interesting and fun to think about because in, like, these type of topics we do, you start thinking about how you. How your brain is wired and how you deal with it as an individual.
[00:35:46] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:35:46] Speaker B: And so, you know, I could. I. This happens to me a lot, actually, so it's fun for me to read it and actually get a scientific breakdown of my own issues, because now I do that a lot where I think about things come up, and then it leads to a different thought, would lead to something else. And I'll be in a totally different tangent mentally five minutes later and. Or five seconds later, depending on how quickly the thoughts arise. And it also got me thinking of things like deja vu's, because I had a deja vu a few days ago for the first time in years, and it just felt kind of weird. And I was just thinking, like, I wonder why my mind thinks this happened before. And then I was thinking, to save.
[00:36:25] Speaker A: The deja vu, we got to do a deja vu.
[00:36:27] Speaker B: Yeah, because I was just thinking, like, maybe it's something like this. Like maybe something similar happened and my brain's just having a brain fucking fart about it.
[00:36:32] Speaker A: Yeah, save the deja vu, man. I'm looking forward. We'll have that conversation separately.
[00:36:37] Speaker B: Okay, just. Just to preempt you, unlike the Matrix, I don't think it's a glitch in the system, sir. I do think it's just a glitch in our head, but. Okay, we'll. We'll save it. But, but, you know, the, The. You know the way the article cites it. Right. The current understanding is the neurons in our brains, the, the. The. The cells that, that connect and, and, and help us with all these memories and how things move around is. Is like. And I can see it almost like a conveyor belt. All these things are connected in our mind.
So it's not a surprise. Like, the one thing I think that we can all relate to and the listeners listen to their things like aroma, smell.
[00:37:12] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:37:12] Speaker B: Because everybody, or even music in a certain way, everybody can think of, like, okay, if you walk past a bakery or if you walk past, you know, if you go by a neighborhood and someone's cooking barbecue, those smells will immediately mean something to you and may resonate and bring back a memory, either positive one, some. Sometimes it's cologne with people, they smell a certain cologne, they remember somebody that.
[00:37:36] Speaker A: Wore that thing or remember a night or something like that, or an experience.
[00:37:41] Speaker B: And that's why I say, I think music as well, where if you heard a certain song at a certain part of your life, I can listen to some songs that I haven't heard from high school and all of a sudden it'll just bring me back to those memories. And it's like things I hadn't thought of in years. It's like.
[00:37:57] Speaker A: And so, yeah, what they're saying is that things are stored in our brains in a way that certain things almost overlap. And so when. When something is accessed, it may end up trigger another trigger, another thing being accessed, you know. And so I found that. I found it to be very interesting as well in the sense that how circumstances. The circumstance doesn't even have to be analogous. It can almost. It can be related or it can just. It makes some connection. Again, this gets into the parts of our brain, the parts of our body that happen without us knowing about it, so to speak. You know, and we, in this case, we experience it because it's in our head. And then the idea and the fact that it can.
That you can have an emotional reaction to it beyond just remembering it. Something that may have happened 20 years ago, like, oh, that was a great night, or, oh, that was a terrible night, or, you know, whatever. Something like that is really striking in the sense that it. Because it almost is in the sense that the emotional aspect of it, if you think about it, there's no reason you should. Like, if something happened that long ago and it wasn't overly significant, you know, obviously it's not. We're not talking about something like a death in the family, but just some. Some experience. It's, you know, like, that's a lot to. For an emotional connection to be made. But it shows, though, how that stuff is interconnected now.
[00:39:12] Speaker B: And it's interesting. One thing they discussed in the article that I want to cite here is the idea of rum.
And basically, you know, for the audience to break it down. Ruminating is like dwelling on something in the past. But. But it's. But it ruminate means it's going to be something more negative that happened in the past. It's not like a great happy experience. So basically it's. It's. We think we repet. And it's repetitively thinking about the negative situation and experience and how you feel about them. And the thing is I agree with the article. It says, while this is good in theory, like, as humans, we think, oh, well, I just want to think about my past so that I can analyze it and get better. It's 99 of humans can't, because then we start dwelling on it. And I've got a great quote that I put right here on my monitor so I can see it every day while I'm working. And it says, forget the past. No one becomes successful in the past. And what I have it for me is to remind me that if I have some issue in the business or something like that, I can't dwell on it. Like, I got to keep looking forward and maybe I can just assess it quickly to say, okay, what shouldn't I do in the future? But to continually think about it is probably not going to help. It'll create a negative state in my mind, which probably won't work out well in the wrong run. You know what? One area I realized that from what I do in a living. Sorry, for a living in financial services is the idea of debt.
Like, I remember even in my personal life back, like in the financial crisis, I had a few properties back in 2008, 2010, and I had, you know, 100% mortgages and all the stuff that, you know, people did the wrong way back then.
[00:40:51] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:40:51] Speaker B: And I remember there was a time when I was real stressed out and I do short sales and all this stuff, and I remember thinking about all that stuff all the time.
[00:40:59] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:40:59] Speaker B: And I remember coming to this kind of naturally. One day I woke up and I was like, you know, I got to figure out how to stop thinking about all these issues. Because if I just think about how bad everything is or how much debt I have over my head, then I'm not actually thinking about all the positive things I can do to get out of it or all the opportunities that are out there. That. And I really had to focus in my own head and kind of hack my brain and figure out how I'm going to think of some other things. And that's where the article is also interesting, because then I'll hand it back. It had a section that says, can we stop negative feelings? And I found that interesting that we could kind of control the outcome.
[00:41:34] Speaker A: Well, I think what you laid out, actually, it's interesting that you lay it out in that way because that I have the same kind of approach in terms of. I do always, well, usually try to identify, at minimum, where if there's a place that I could have done something different, if I Got a negative outcome if there's a place I could have done something different and if so, where. But then, yeah, I'm quick after that. I gotta move on, you know, like, because the rumination thing and part of this may be, you know, an adaptation of, of being an entrepreneur. Because when you're an entrepreneur, you know, you got to do, you have to do new things, you have to do things you've never done before, you know, and so forth. You got to get out there in that sense. And so there's going to be times, there's going to be a level of, oh, I wish I would have done, not done this like that, or I wish I would have said this like this, or I wish like that's going to come up anyway. And. But you can't let that paralyze you got to keep going. And so I would agree with you. I mean, I've had that exact same experience though, in terms of where I've had high tension, high stress moments and then learning from that, that, you know, like learning, okay, I got to move on from this, but also just whatever I can take from it. And the last thing I'll say before I close this up is one thing I mentioned to a friend of mine one time is how the, the stresses that you go through in life with this and this doesn't go, you can't ruminate on it, but that stuff is normal. You have to experience that stuff in the sense that learning how to deal with one thing then in the future that helps you deal with future things.
[00:43:05] Speaker B: Like, I'm sure one thing that helps with this. I'm not going to say everyone has to do this or you're not going to be able to not ruminate. But as you were talking and saying some of the similarities that you have with all this, my thought was, well, you played competitive football in high school in Ohio with a very competitive state for football. I played basketball up until NCAA college. Right. And I thought that's, I think, a great thing about sports. That's what I, it definitely is taught my wife. When our middle son was getting to teenage years and he had a lot of energy, it was rambunctious.
And I said, we just got to put him in sports because I don't care what the sport is. But like you had alluded to, right, if you're going to be any successful in sports at any level, doesn't mean you got to go pro, but just be good in high school or college even, you have to somehow put it out of your mind. Whatever mistakes you made, number one. And keep focusing on the task at hand and going forward. And even more to. In a collective way, on a team sport, like, I played basketball, you played football. So I'm not talking tennis or golf here, but on team sports, you actually have to learn how to let go the mistakes of your teammates.
[00:44:12] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:44:13] Speaker B: Because we've all been on teams like that where, like, for me, basketball, Right. Somebody might miss a shot, and then there's a guy beating him up from his own team.
[00:44:22] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:44:22] Speaker B: And then he's. They're running down the court for five minutes arguing about.
[00:44:25] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:44:26] Speaker B: And when I would see that on the other. On an opponent's side, we got him and say we got them and they're already done. So. So, yeah. So I think no, sports is a really good.
[00:44:35] Speaker A: The sports is a really good point for that, because in sports, what they do is give you microcosms of life over and over again, you know, like. And that's. But that's why, you know, the whole thing of, you know, there has to be a winner and a loser, so to speak, like, learning how. And I coach youth sports and doing that is like, the kids do have to learn. Okay. If you lose, it's not the end of the world. You get back up and you keep going.
[00:44:58] Speaker B: Hold on. I had this idea I was going to present to everybody about just giving trophies to all the kids, no matter what, telling me that's not a good idea.
[00:45:05] Speaker A: I'm just saying there is. There is value in learning how to lose and get back, you know, and then stay on top of.
[00:45:11] Speaker B: I was going to suggest we do a whole show about giving everyone a trophy, and now you just ruin no winners. Sorry, but no.
[00:45:19] Speaker A: And so, I mean, the sports. Do you know that to your point, the sports do accomplish that in. In a. In a small sense. And that's. Those are lessons you can transfer to other parts of your life. But any kind of competition as well, it could be sports, it could be other types of competition, pan competition, so forth. Just anything where you can compete. And then regardless of the outcome, you have to then continue on, you know, like. And it's not just you're not quitting, so. But I think we can get out of here from there, man. We appreciate everybody joining us for joining us on this episode of Call It Like I See it, subscribe to the podcast, rate it, review us, tell us what you think, send it to a friend, and until next time, I'm James Keys.
[00:45:54] Speaker B: Tune D Lineup.
[00:45:55] Speaker A: All right, we'll talk to you next time I.
