Speaker 1 (0s): Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the true life podcast. I hope your day is going beautiful. Hope the sun is shining. Hope the wind is at your back. Hope a little miracle happens that makes you smile and cry. Tears of joy. How's Zaphora beginning. Huh? Pretty nice. Right? What are we gonna talk about today, George? It's a great question. Thank you for asking. I thought we'd get into the thin red thread that ties together.

Class cast and culture, this running narrative. What is it about these things? Class cast and culture. Can you think of anything that binds those things together, depending on where you live? Maybe you are upper-class lower-class middle-class maybe you are like school in the summertime and you have no class. I know I have been that guy before. Maybe you are from a different part of the world and you were born into a caste system and you thought you could never leave, but you caught a slow boat to China and in CATIA, fast plane to the west coast, and you got in a fast car with Tracy Chapman, either way.

You've been part of different cultures. You have learned quite a bit about who you are, what you want, where you're going and where you've been. I want to talk about the class and cast also the culture of the Western world, where I live. No, I think it was Tolstoy. I could be wrong on this. So don't shoot the messenger here, but I think it was Tolstoy who said the amazing thing about the American system is that they believe they don't have a caste system.

I've heard it explained to me that in Britain, for example, in parts in Europe, there is a caste system. You have the house of Lords versus the house of commons. And the way that I heard it described, and you know, I am not from there. So this is just a description that I've heard is that it works better than the American system. It's this idea that yes, we are elite. We are born into money.

We understand it. We go to Oxford and these great schools, we have a better education and you are working people. And we, as the elite intelligent people, it is our duty to take care of you. And we will. And the working class people know they'll never be in the elite class and the elite class know that they will never be in the working class. And there is a distinction there. Everybody knows it, but they do not feel animosity towards each other.

Now that part, I don't know. I can't see how there wouldn't be any animosity in the system here in the United States. At least the way I see it is sort of a mix of both. I think that you are, there is an emerging sort of cast system, or maybe as if Tolstoy said back in the day, there's always been a caste system. You know, it's amazing. If you want to look at people in government and just look at their last names.

A lot of people who were in positions of authority today are there because of their families or they can trace their lineage back to old families. I would point you to the Supreme court and even some of the newest nominees. If you look at who their families are, you can see why they are, where they are. Look at the federal reserve, who are these people who are their families, who are their grandparents? What are their ties to the country?

That's usually old families and old money putting out new rules. That seem a lot like the rules of yesteryear. So that is the cast aspect that I see As far as class in the United States or in the west. I think it's possible to move up in class. As long as you have provided immense value.

I think you can be invited in to the upper classes. If you have created immense wealth, created a product or a service that is incredibly beneficial. I think that you must carry around a handkerchief so that you can wipe your face after you have to kiss so many asses, but that's just me. It could be wrong on that.

I'm not sure that I want to be at some of the places where the quote, unquote, richest people in the world are. Maybe that's just me being cynical. Maybe I do want to be there. I don't know. Not quite sure, but I think that there's something deeper. I think there's something deeper and I'm going to get to that. I think that there is this thin red thread that weaves its way through the ideas of class cast and culture.

There's this thin thread that ties it all together or at least gives the appearance of doing so. And that's thin red thread is this word called consumption. You see here in the United States, if you're consuming habits or maybe I should say, if your habit is consuming a lot, then you can give the appearance of being in a higher class. You can give the illusion of being Born into a higher cast.

I think you could even make the argument that the class system in the Western world is based on consumption habits. How much can you consume? And can you consume the right type of things? Can you consume a new Gucci purse every year? Can you consume a new Porsche? You know, there's some people in the higher ups, these poor kids, they don't even get their first portion until they're 16.

They got to work all winter just to go to Europe in the summer. I'm just kidding. They probably have to work the whole winter. I was so funny. Okay. What was that? Consumption habits, consumption habits, consumerism and the class system. Okay. Let's see here. You see there's this notion there's a notion of distinction and culture as being a matter of consumption rather than the possession of discriminating perception and judgment.

Does that kind of make sense? Let me say that again. What emerges from our buying habits is the notion. It's the notion of distinction and culture as being a matter of consumption rather than the possession of discriminating perception and judgment.

I like to think of the consumption, the consumer angle, the thread that ties this all together, our consumption habits as sort of like a, a, A barrier or maybe like a straight jacket and people willingly put on this straight jacket so that they can show solidarity with other people wearing the same color straight jacket. Does that make sense? It's like they, they allow themselves to be labeled by their consumption habits.

And with consumption comes advertising with advertising comes ideas about who you are because the advertising companies are so good at putting meaning and feeling into inanimate objects. That once you put on that object, you put on that persona, you put on that, meaning you put on that feeling. You know what I mean by that?

Let's take think, okay, let's let me try to paint you a picture here. Imagine like a really swanky barn, a really nice part of town. And this gentleman walks in, looks like good-looking guy walks in and like a nice suit, good looking shoes. And he walks into the super nice bar and he sits down at the bar and overcomes a beautiful young bartender. And she's like, oh, what can I give for you?

He pauses looks up and orders, an expensive whiskey, some Buffalo trace or something, Johnny Walker, blue or something. And she kind of looks at him and gives him one of those. Oh, you're one of those guys, smiles, you know, something flirtatious and stairs, just, just long enough to let the gentlemen know she's interested.

And then she comes back and pours him a shot. And he says something like leave the bottle. So she leaves the bottle and then you see him pour a glass and it pans back. And then it pans pans back away from him. And then pens back to him, the whiskey and the glass is gone. And to the left, you see the napkin with her phone number on or something like that. You see in this particular instance, we've got you to pretend that that whiskey will allow you to ascend to the highest class and achieve a high class woman.

At that point, I'm not saying that bargainers are all high class women or they can't be whatever. You know what I'm talking about. What I'm saying is that the advertisement has motivated your consumption habits by showing you that drinking this can help you with send the ladder. And that is what ties consumption habits to class cast and culture.

Let's see. So that guy, maybe that guy that came into the bar, wasn't rich at all. Maybe he lived with his mom and he's spent his college money to buy that suit and buy one bottle. Cause he liked that girl and he just pretending. But for that moment, he got to ascend to the highest level and be in this class or at least was able to give the perception of it. And that idea, this idea that all of us can ascend to a higher level or at least be perceived to be at a higher level.

I think that is something that is destroying all of us. It is this idea of being able to jump class systems may be the very thing that buries us into a caste system. Does that kind of make sense? All this extending and pretending, all that does is force you to try to live a life that's unhappy. It gets back to the spectacle of society.

That, which is, is that which appears to be right, the fake it till you make it. That's the idea that I think we're at as a culture and as a world. And it's not even that the guy in the middle fakes it to be the guy on the top or the guy on the bottom face to be the guy in the middle or the guy on top. It's also that the guy on top is faking it as well.

It's I believe we've gotten to a point where it's all an illusion, it's this idea of what can I make it look like? Let me give you a bigger example. How many trillions of dollars are, is our country in debt. But if you ask a federal, if you ask somebody at the fed or anybody in Congress, they'll tell you, look, it's not the amount of debt we have.

It's just the, we have to just pay the interest. That's all you ever have to do is pay the interest. All you ever have to do is pay the interest That could be looked at another way. You're paying for the interest of others, right? It's like, it's like our guy that goes into the bar, he's paying the interest. He's paying to be interesting. When in fact he's probably an interesting guy already, but he wants to pay For the interest.

It's like, we're all selling a story. What do you want your story to be? So that gets us back to consumption habits and these ideas that are like straight jackets. You see that is totalitarian technique of stratification by arbitrary cadres. It ranks just as in the age, old dictator method of divide and rule, carve men up into middle brow, Midwestern dentist or low brow Eastern salesman or high brows Southern agrarian.

And you can lead them around by the nose. Any fraction of a man can be sent to war against some other segment of himself or any group can be panicked by a report about any other group. Does that sound familiar today? It sounds like exactly what is happening. Not only in the United States with man versus woman gay versus straight BLM versus white nationalist, it's this divide and conquer rule.

And I want to make a note there. That note is that just like censorship can be celebrated because it means the government or those who are censoring are so afraid they have to sensor. So to can the blatant strategy of divide and conquer be looked at as weakness from the very people on top When the strategy becomes so blatant when it becomes so sloppy, when it becomes panicked, that means that the very people on top are becoming incredibly scared about their control.

They are becoming very aware about their lack of control. And so they lash out, they fund riots, they fund viruses. They fan the flames of abortion. When both sides want the same thing, the people on top have no leverage. That's why they call them wedge issues.

The end of the day, the red tie and the blue tire going to dinner and laughing at the guy. That's not wearing a tie. It's a huge problem. I think if everybody takes a few moments to think about the situation in which they're in and think rationally about someone who you think is on the other side, you know, let's take the idea of immigration for a minute. Okay? Some people say, let's let everybody in. Other people say, let's let everybody in, but let's go through a process.

I think there's small differences, but those little differences are being held up as giant obstacles so that the people up top can siphon money from both sides. It's this illusion of division. And that's what creates the class. That's what creates the cast. And that's definitely what causes culture wars.

The more superficial, the marks of difference, the more ferocious will be the hostility. Let me repeat that again. The more superficial, the marks of difference, the more ferocious will be the hostility. I want you to think about that. Phrase enough, think about a social credit score. It judges you on your habits.

It intensifies the differences and makes a public much more pliable. It allows for ideas to be pushed on to the people from the central power. Anytime there's a rating on you, you've kind of lost your humanity, right?

The same way we put a blue ribbon on a prize pig. So to do governments want to put a ribbon on you, Hey, congratulations, you're a prime piece of meat. You do everything you're told to do. That kind of influence is dehumanizing. Let me give you another example of what happens at fortune 500 companies and or other places where people have an employee number, right?

The moment your name is taken off and your number is putting on you no longer have humanity. And you can be looked at as a number you could be looked at as an animal. You could be looked at as a product who produces instead of as an individual who creates. And I think that that is something that takes us right back to consumption habits.

What our system does is it provides people at the very top, a way to commoditize everything. I'm not sure it's capitalism that does that. I'm sure it plays a huge part, but it's definitely something that strips humanity of all the things that matter.

I once heard it said that we must have humankind must have rules, or they become monsters, but they must have freedom or they become numbers. So it's all about finding the sweet spot in there. We need to have guidelines. We need to have some rules, but when we decide that we're all widgets and numbers lives no longer worth living. That's what, one thing that I really fear with the incredible dystopian nightmare, that seems to be kind of coming our way at times.

It seems that there is this group. I don't know. Does that sound conspiratorial? It sounds to me that the world is pretty much run by multi multinational corporations. All governments are fascist in nature. It just depends on to which degree, how fascist are they? But they are that I think it was John Dewey who said, Government is the shadow cast upon people by business and where you are seeing with the breakdown of supply chains with pandemics, with outbreaks of populism.

I think what we're seeing is the system breaking down. In fact, I would argue this. Here's what I think is happening. I think the entire economic system is breaking and everything we've seen so far has been an extension of a populist revolt since Brexit and Trump, maybe even a little bit before then it seems to me that if you think back just five years, you know what?

You probably even take it back to the battle of Seattle where the world trade organization came into town. And a bunch of this is crazy. A bunch of left wing. People got up there and were all upset. Didn't want it to happen. I, it doesn't even have to be left wing people. It's just, people are upset that we have become so commoditized we've become so stripped of humanity. I think that the people in positions of authority and by that, I mean bankers companies, the majority of prime ministers, politicians, world economic forum, Atlanta council, you know, council on foreign relations.

This is the real power in the world. These are the people that make decisions around the world. There's already a world government. It's just the people don't recognize it. That I think is somewhat breaking down. You know, if you can't get sweatshops in China to make products for a nickel, all of a sudden people are freaking out, oh no, we're going to lose out on our profits. And I think that is, that was the reason if I believe COVID was probably made in a lab.

And I don't know if it escaped the lab or if this was an elaborate ruse in order to stop commerce in order to slow down demand. The reason I say that is if you've been paying attention to the federal reserve at all, what you have heard is Jerome Powell and the fed rule, the seven banks or whatever, just complaining about demand. Oh no,

Speaker 3 (24m 57s): Too much demand. There's too much demand. Oh no, there's too much demand.

Speaker 1 (25m 2s): So if, if that is the problem, let's just pretend that demand was the problem. So what happened? They stopped shipping. What would that do? Well, that would, that would stop the man in its tracks. What else did they say? Oh no, there's too many working people making too much money. Wages are spiraling out of control. Like think about how crazy that sounds. People in the highest positions of authority and finance are saying are screaming that people are making too much money.

People are making, working. People are making too much money. Another way of saying that is, Hey, we're not making big bonuses here, here. Our margins are being squeezed. Hey, these people on the bottom can just quit whenever they want and go find a better job. That's what I hear. When I hear people at the top saying that employment is running rampant for the first time in 60 years. And I believe it's because of demographics. Working.

People are able to walk away from their job and go work wherever they want to work. If people can work from home and if their boss doesn't like it, working, people could tell them to fuck off because there's another job right over there for a long time. People in positions of authority have been able to say that to their employee. Look, if you don't want to work here, then go work, go find somewhere else to work. Well, now it seems because of demographics because there's 10,000 baby boomers retiring a day.

There's not enough people on the bottom to support them. It's like an inverted pyramid. And that's why demand is going to go up. That's why the jobs report is always going up. That's why, if you were in a, if you work right now, you can go anywhere and get a job, regardless of how horrible people in positions of authority tell you, it is. It's really not that horrible. If you work for a living, you can go on LinkedIn right now and get 30 different like you could sign up for.

I don't know. Here's what I have signed up for a content creator. And every single day I get no less than 30 job applicants I could apply for no less, sometimes 90, right? And these are all like a hundred grand a year. Like that's crazy to think about that. That's how much the Western world needs people to work. And that's why you're seeing Republicans and Democrats just opening up the gates. Like let everybody in, bring them in here. We need people to work.

And the more people we can bring in from third world countries, the more we can bring down the wages, which more we can be profitable and have huge bonuses for the people on the very top. So if you look at it from that angle LAN, let me know if this sounds crazy, maybe it's crazy. I don't know. But it seems to me that you had Trump, you had Brexit. And this was like the first few cracks in the world. Economic forum, fascist takeover of the world for a long time.

People at the very top in carving up the world, we own this. You know, this idea of colonialism has never really left. It just left the conversation, but it's still been happening. And now all of a sudden, the people in the richest countries are like, Hey, we're not getting our cut anymore. You guys hand us over our money and we're not playing. And so there is a full court press to push down the people in the richest countries.

That's why they want to raise gas prices. They want to choke out the people in the richest country. So they cannot revolt. They do not want a populist. Revolt. Populism is a pejorative to these people. They want to be able to strip every rich country of its resources and funnel it into their private institutions, to put it into their family office. And that means if you work for a living, you should be getting less so they can get more.

And we spoke about who they are. You know what here's, here's an idea. I'm thinking about making some playing cards. Do you remember when we had the Iraq war and they had like Saddam Hussein Uday KU day, all the, all the, you know, talent, not the Taliban, but they had all the different Iraqi military people on there. All the terrorists were on these cards so that the soldiers could look at these cards and they could see who the enemy was.

And they handed everybody cards. They played cards. So you're constantly looking at who the terrorists are. So if you see them out in the open, then you know who they are. I think we should have those playing cards for all our politicians. I think we should have all those playing cards for all the CEOs and fortune 500 individuals. That way, if things do break down, every man, woman, and child can understand who the people are that are responsible for making the horrible decisions that have put us in this position.

That's what I got. I've been going about 30 minutes here on this class cast and culture and the thin red line that ties them together, known as consumer habits. That's what I got ladies and gentlemen, I hope you enjoyed this rant as much as I enjoyed ranting it, but more than that, I hope you have a beautiful day. I hope you love the one-year with and everybody in your family is doing fantastic. That's what we got for today.