Name: Joe Rogan Experience #1501 - James Lindsay
Uploaded: 2020-07-02T19:00:03.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #1501 - James Lindsay' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2020-07-02. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #1501 - James Lindsay' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2020-07-02. Transcript available.

Joe Rogan Experience #1501 - James Lindsay

Do but you can ride an elephant in Thailand. I wrote an elephant in Thailand
Nice, it was actually there were actually healthy happy elephants that were
well taken care of because it's an elephant rescue
So they're free. They're free elephants. They wander around
They mean they literally came out of the mist in the jungle man like like a
movie. It was crazy and
They're treated really really well. So I didn't like the riding a part
I thought that was kind of fucked up, but they don't give a fuck man. You you
are literally like a hat to them
Yeah, they're huge. Yeah strong, but they came over and
the whole idea was you pay for this experience with the elephants and
In that they rehabilitate these elephants and they've released many of them
back to the wild
That's good stuff because they can they don't need to be trained to be able to
just eat vegetables and let the right vegetation
They just do it so they came over and you were introduced to the elephant that
you're gonna take care of for the day
And then you you start feeding it sugarcane and they love you
So you're feeding them and you touch them. They're super gentle like the most
gentle creatures
And then you actually clean them off you washed them off and you you you so
there's like this grooming thing
And then when you go to get on them, they know you're trying to get on them
So they actually lift their leg up like this so that you could step on their
leg
Yeah, and then you step on them and you climb on top of them. It's difficult
like it's hard. It's hard to ride them, but
They literally don't give a fuck if you're on them because you're so light to
them
And then they make their way through the jungle, but it was pretty cool. That's
nuts man. Yeah, it was pretty cool. It's pretty cool
it was um
It's humbling, you know, but that's that's the only way I'd want to be around
them other than in the wild
Like I get bummed out at zoos. I do too. That's I mean, that's my story, right?
So I've been yelled at for that. That's like the story of 2020 is getting
yelled at for everything
But I wrote it when I was a kid you could ride elephants at the zoo
And so I don't know people got mad at you for that
I mean, I told the story one time people like lost their minds on me because I
guess it's not okay now
It was like a cost of dollars. They weren't rehabilitating elephants or doing
anything good with it
I was like seven though. So I don't really remember it
But it's like times have changed
Yeah, but you're mad at you for something you did when you were little which is
funny
That's one of the things that's going on now as people are retroactively
getting canceled for things
Yeah, like they did when they were kids. Yeah, it's ridiculous. I mean, it's
like everything's a permanent stain on on you
There's no growth. You can't become a better person. What do you think that is?
Like what's what's what is the?
Desire that people have to do that like where's that coming from well, you know,
there's there's two ways we could talk about it
We could talk about the psychological side of it
Which is like a moral purity thing that's going bonkers or we could talk about
it in terms of the the idea is the theory that's fueling this and
that's all about
That has this idea that that comes from french philosophy that that words and
ideas and thoughts and patterns have traces that don't ever really go away
And so if something you know used to be associated with something bad and we
still use the word or even if you pretend
That it was the case, uh, and you still use the word then it carries this
negative trace
So the moral panic and the psychology side of it's fueled by this kind of like
stupid idea that words always have to mean kind of what they meant in the first
place
Are people aware of that though? Is it I mean is this just conveniently
connected to it or conveniently similar?
I mean you think that people are actually aware of this concept I don't think
they I don't think most people do like this is with so
You know, we're generally talking about this whatever woke thing that's
happening, right?
And so you got to think of woke kind of like kind of like a church, right? Like
you got I grew up Catholic
So it's like you got cultural Catholics like they kind of go to church and
maybe they go to confession sometimes and they don't really
Do they do it but they don't really do it and then you have like the hardcores
like I had a friend in high school that like took notes at church
Oh, right. I'm like serial killer. Yeah, it's like you do what you take notes
and then you know
You've got the pastor and he obviously studies it or the priests in a Catholic
context and they study it
And then you've got the theologians that really study it
And so the stuff I'm talking about is like theology level like that's like the
scholars and then your average person just wants to feel like a good person
So you've got like the woke academics like the seriously the woke people that
are teaching it to kids
Yeah, that really teach it as like critical theory like critical race theory
that's right
Yeah, so those those the ones that are probably aware of all the nonsense
They're making the nonsense
Actually, I think they pick some of it up from culture, you know from activist
groups or whatever
But then they refine it and turn it into something and it you know has this
really weird feeling to it
Like you get the impression that it's like they're wrestling with their inner
demons and then like writing it down
Yeah, it's like it like this book now white fragility, right Robin DiAngelo's
book white fragility
That's the one that Matt Taibbi destroyed. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Thank God for Matt
Taibbi. Yeah, thank the baby Jesus and Odin
That's right
It's so good though, because he's right. He's actually right about it. So
If you read the book, there's all these weird vignettes that she tells these
stories. She's like, oh, I went to this potluck for work and
I'm walking around I walk up and then I see there's two parties and we're at
the park and there's two groups of people
One of them's all black and one of them's not and I had this moment of panic
That I might have to be in the all black group and it's like lady
What's going on? You know, and then it's like all white people are racist is
like her conclusion from this and it's like
Maybe it's you she
So she had this panic that she was gonna have to party at the park with black
people
Yeah, and she was worried that she was racist because of that and therefore all
white people are racist
See, that's what i'm thinking is going on, right?
So i'm thinking i've thought this for a number of years is that a lot of this
stuff where you get these like woke activists doing their blogs
Or these scholars writing this stuff down is that they're looking at their own
lives
So you have these people that are like they're walking down the street, you
know, maybe whatever they walk into the hotel
They walk into the restaurant and they're like I saw a black guy
And then it's like i'm not supposed to notice that and then they start having
like this thing in their head
And then they go write an angry blog about how terrible racism is because they're
wrestling with it themselves
It's like sigmund freud, right? He had that whole idea
That everybody wants to have sex with their mothers and like your psychology is
all how you resolve that problem
And it's like maybe you just wanted to have sex with your mother sigma freud,
you know
And then now it's everybody's a racist is is kind of the the vibe of the new
thing
And there's like this weird religious
Kind of thing happening around it
That's really the thing that gets me is how similar this is to religious or
religion
Not just really religious ideology like how rigid it is
But also indoctrination like religious cults how they indoctrinate people and
one of my friends kurt metzker
really funny guy who
Was a jehovah's witness when he was younger and so he's really really really
sensitive to this stuff
He's like I know where this is going
Yep
Like this is the same thing that I got when I was in the jehovah's witness
This is right cult shit
It's it's these rigid ideologies that cannot be challenged
You can't in any way veer from the course
That's right and they set you up right so every single single one of these
things sets you up
So for example
One of my favorite examples of these kind of like setups right
Historically in the book I talk about
Historically you know the black feminists came along and they're like oh
feminism's too white
Feminism isn't paying attention to black feminist issues or black women's
issues
And so then these feminists were like oh we have to fix that you know
And they start writing about black issues to the best of their ability
And then three years later the lady writes a paper saying
Oh you're just sticking black things in and it's fake and you're tokenizing it
and you're fetishizing it
And it's like so you can't do it right
There's that that is cult the indoctrination stuff
So it's like you and I could be you know talking about something like this and
you could say something
I'm like don't you think it's a little bit racist and then the next step is
like what are you going to say?
You're going to say yes or no if you say yes now you've owned it right
So now you're like racist and so I'm like well do you interrogate your racism?
Like do you spend time working on that and see you see you're dragging people
into it
Yeah
And if you say no I can say well one of the symptoms
Of participation in systemic racism is an inability to see it if you're white
and it's invisible to you
And so maybe you need to look harder when it seems like you're getting a little
defensive
Oh
You know
And you start panicking
And then you start panicking and when you start to panic when you start to
stress out they're like
And literally this lady emailed me the other day this this Indian woman
I get a lot of I get an insane number of emails about people
From India?
No no from Canada
But an insane number of emails from people who are in different different like
levels of stress
With different things that are happening in their lives around this woke
explosion that's happened
You know in the last month or so
So this lady's like I had to go through a brown fragility training at work
What?
Yeah brown fragility is a thing now too
So it's not even black?
Now they're working their way down to brown people?
Yeah brown people have fragility
Oh my god those poor people
So people who racially were sort of like Switzerland
Like Indians like in India
Like no one ever thought they were racist
Right
You never you would never hear about racist Indians
Right
Maybe Russell Peters would joke around about it
Right
You know Russell the comedian?
Yeah yeah
Now you hear about it
And what they're doing is that they had
What happened was they explained to the ladies
Or not the lady
That was like the whole group
It was done in a room you know in front of a bunch of people
And they explained brown people in general
Like it's some kind of block of brownness or whatever
Brown people have anti-black racism too
And that upholds white supremacy
Oh my god
And then they start just doing this
And it's almost like cold reading
Right
Yeah
You know like that Edwards guy
Whatever that guy's name was
Yeah
That show
And so it's like they cold read
And they wait for somebody to start looking
Like they're getting the sweat
Or something happening
And then they say
Now what we need to do
Now that we've introduced this idea
Of your brown fragility
Is we need to
Your anti-blackness
Is we need to interrogate the feelings that came up
And so they go one by one through the room
And made every single one of them
Confess their feelings
Like who's not going to participate
And here's that double bind
Because it gets to you
Right
And so what do you say
You say
Well I don't really know what you're talking about
Well they're going to say
You're ignoring it
Yeah
Exactly
A