# High Weirdness: The United States of Strange (with Aaron Rabinowitz)

An episode of [TheThinkingAtheist](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/412308695), 29 Oct 2024, 31 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/mgln.ai/e/711/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/62476391/podcast_767_highweirdness.mp3

Educator, podcaster, and columnist Aaron Rabinowitz recently published an article on "high weirdness." What does he mean? ARTICLE LINK: https://bit.ly/3BXsuGi VIDEO of this conversation: https://youtu.be/DqB5dfaefT0 Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/thethinkingatheist--3270347/support.

## Transcript

[0:01] Speaker 1: Understand the thinking atheist. It's not a person, it's a symbol,
[0:09] Speaker 1: an idea.
[0:10] Speaker 2: The population of atheists this country is going.
[0:13] Speaker 1: Through the rule, rejecting faith, pursuing knowledge, challenging the sacred.
[0:18] Speaker 1: If I tell the truth, it's because I tell the truth,
[0:22] Speaker 1: not because I put my hand on a book and
[0:24] Speaker 1: made a wish and working together for a more rational world.
[0:29] Speaker 2: Take the risk of thinking feels so much more happiness.
[0:32] Speaker 3: Truth, Fusian wisdom will come to you that way.
[0:35] Speaker 1: Assume nothing, question everything, and start thinking. This is the
[0:43] Speaker 1: Thinking Atheist podcast hosted by Seth Andrews.
[0:49] Speaker 2: Aaron Rabinowitz is podcast host couple of shows, Embrace the
[1:01] Speaker 2: Void and the Philosophers in Space podcast. He is a
[1:07] Speaker 2: lecturer at Rutgers and contributor for The Skeptic. Which is
[1:12] Speaker 2: why we're talking today, and you're talking about a term
[1:15] Speaker 2: which is awesome. In fact, it would also make a
[1:17] Speaker 2: great podcast name high weirdness. Oh yeah, we got to
[1:22] Speaker 2: talk what the hell is high weirdness? Eron.
[1:26] Speaker 3: High Weirdness is the term for the culture that I
[1:28] Speaker 3: grew up in without actually knowing it. It's a term
[1:32] Speaker 3: used by a guy named Eric Davies, who wrote the
[1:34] Speaker 3: book High Weirdness, which is a really excellent book, highly recommend.
[1:37] Speaker 3: I got to chat with him on the show about it.
[1:40] Speaker 3: He has a somewhat more sympathetic view to certain aspects
[1:44] Speaker 3: of high weirdness than I do, but I think his
[1:46] Speaker 3: account of the history of it is really valuable. The
[1:49] Speaker 3: term comes from a book High Weirdness by Mail a
[1:52] Speaker 3: Directory of the Fringe, mad Profits, crackpot Kooks, and True
[1:56] Speaker 3: Visionaries by Reverend Ian Stang. That's all the title. And
[2:00] Speaker 3: these are what we think of today is your collections
[2:03] Speaker 3: of a bunch of stories, conspiracy theories, fringe ideas that
[2:08] Speaker 3: we now see kind of spilling out all over the
[2:09] Speaker 3: place into the mainstream.
[2:11] Speaker 2: Okay, So is he using high weirdness as a pejorative
[2:16] Speaker 2: or does he embrace the weird or help.
[2:18] Speaker 3: Me, Healy embraces the weird?
[2:20] Speaker 2: Yeah, okay.
[2:21] Speaker 3: And the reason I really this article had been kicking
[2:24] Speaker 3: around in my head for a while because I felt
[2:27] Speaker 3: like more and more of the world was built on
[2:30] Speaker 3: high weirdness, that it had kind of gone mainstream and
[2:33] Speaker 3: I was seeing it everywhere. And then that really popped
[2:36] Speaker 3: for me during this election, when the keyword became weird
[2:41] Speaker 3: and there was all this discussion about why are the
[2:43] Speaker 3: Republicans so weird? And I wanted to sort of explain
[2:48] Speaker 3: that like they had taken on board like all of
[2:50] Speaker 3: the worst parts of high weirdness in a lot of ways.
[2:54] Speaker 3: There are also issues, I think on other in air,
[2:56] Speaker 3: other areas where high weirdness has crept in, But I
[2:59] Speaker 3: think the right wing is where we see it being
[3:02] Speaker 3: the absolute worst. But Eric Davies doesn't mean weird in
[3:05] Speaker 3: the bad way. He means weird in the transgressive sense.
[3:09] Speaker 3: So the key sort of philosophical idea of high weirdness
[3:13] Speaker 3: is first of all, a pretty radical skepticism towards the mainstream,
[3:18] Speaker 3: towards mainstream narratives, towards mainstream lifestyles, towards mainstream ethics. And
[3:23] Speaker 3: that is coupled with, you know, the kind of psychonot
[3:26] Speaker 3: approach to figuring out what the real truth is by
[3:30] Speaker 3: transgressing those norms through a bunch of different methods. So
[3:33] Speaker 3: one thing people will think of when they think of
[3:35] Speaker 3: high weirdness as the drug culture of the sixties and seventies,
[3:38] Speaker 3: your sexual revolution a lot of cultural shifts, but it
[3:43] Speaker 3: does have a much longer tradition than that. So Eric
[3:46] Speaker 3: Davies connects it to HP Lovecraft and his world sort
[3:49] Speaker 3: of view of cosmic weirdness and criticisms of his own
[3:53] Speaker 3: cultural period, and then the high weirdness folks themselves draw
[3:58] Speaker 3: back on a bunch of stuff, some of which is
[4:00] Speaker 3: really valuable, like Buddhist traditions, some of which is a
[4:03] Speaker 3: little bit more questionable, like Gnostic traditions, and some of
[4:06] Speaker 3: which is like really really questionable, like theosophy, And you know,
[4:10] Speaker 3: a bunch of terrible wu stuff.
[4:12] Speaker 2: So bust out of societal norms, think out of the box,
[4:16] Speaker 2: be highly weird. But when you talk about it today,
[4:21] Speaker 2: and you know, I was, oh gosh, it was earlier
[4:23] Speaker 2: this year. There was this frustration that the more that
[4:28] Speaker 2: you pointed out about how corrupt and immoral and just
[4:33] Speaker 2: awful much of what was happening on the right wing
[4:36] Speaker 2: was the less traction you seem to get. But all
[4:39] Speaker 2: of a sudden, the word weird seemed to catch And
[4:43] Speaker 2: I'm trying to figure that out. Do you have a
[4:45] Speaker 2: perspective on why weird caught on and seems to be working.
[4:49] Speaker 3: Yeah, I have a couple of theories. First, it's just
[4:53] Speaker 3: obviously true, like if you look at what's going on
[4:56] Speaker 3: on the right it is, it is an accurate description,
[4:59] Speaker 3: so I think I think at the end of the day,
[5:01] Speaker 3: it lands because it resonates with what people are observing.
[5:05] Speaker 3: But then, like the second question is, I think, why
[5:08] Speaker 3: does it piss off the GOP so much? Why do
[5:10] Speaker 3: they care that they're being called weird in this way?
[5:13] Speaker 3: And I think there it's kind of exposed a cognitive
[5:16] Speaker 3: dissonance in their own worldview. So I think there's a
[5:20] Speaker 3: lot to get into about why conservatives in the right
[5:23] Speaker 3: wing are much more susceptible to the worst parts of
[5:26] Speaker 3: high weirdness. But I think a lot of it has
[5:28] Speaker 3: to do with they simultaneously view themselves as the true norm,
[5:34] Speaker 3: the true center, the correct way of being, but also
[5:39] Speaker 3: a besieged minority where the mainstream is preaching a gospel
[5:44] Speaker 3: that is completely alien to them, and so they are
[5:47] Speaker 3: rejecting that mainstream view and thereby becoming weirder, but also
[5:52] Speaker 3: want people to still see them as the norm, and
[5:55] Speaker 3: so are really uncomfortable with the idea of being called
[5:58] Speaker 3: weird in a way that like if you set it
[6:00] Speaker 3: to Terence McKenna, he'd agree with you.
[6:02] Speaker 2: How much of this do you think is religiously motivated.
[6:06] Speaker 2: I mean, there's people who are embracing some very odd,
[6:10] Speaker 2: very bizarre elements of theology, gods and monsters, etc. For them,
[6:15] Speaker 2: weird might be a compliment in that way, you know,
[6:18] Speaker 2: be among the world but not of them kind of thing.
[6:21] Speaker 3: I do think there's a religious connection because a lot
[6:24] Speaker 3: of different religious elements, they're more complicated than just religion bad,
[6:28] Speaker 3: and religion makes you worse in this way, I do think.
[6:31] Speaker 3: I mean, I'm an atheist. I think religion is bad,
[6:33] Speaker 3: and I do think it makes you more susceptible to
[6:35] Speaker 3: these various kinds of ideas. But it's worth getting into
[6:38] Speaker 3: the nuances of what kinds of religious beliefs I think
[6:42] Speaker 3: are the most high risk, essentially, the most make you
[6:46] Speaker 3: the most susceptible to these you know, mental viruses or
[6:49] Speaker 3: however you want to think about it. And one of
[6:51] Speaker 3: the particular influences that we're talking about is gnosticism and
[6:54] Speaker 3: how that translates into modern evangelical thinking, which you'll be
[6:59] Speaker 3: much we're familiar with. But so narcissism just very very roughly,
[7:05] Speaker 3: you have a kind of oppressed mindset built into the metaphysics.
[7:10] Speaker 3: So there's God, and there's this other entity that for
[7:14] Speaker 3: some reason, God allows that entity to control the world.
[7:17] Speaker 3: And we're all trapped in a kind of fiction here
[7:20] Speaker 3: in this world, and we're being lied to by this
[7:23] Speaker 3: demiurge thing, and what we have to do is find
[7:27] Speaker 3: the hidden truth by breaking out of that myth. So,
[7:30] Speaker 3: you know, your classic cultural touchstone for high weirdness that
[7:33] Speaker 3: went very mainstream is matrix, which is, you know, where
[7:37] Speaker 3: you get your luck pilling out. You're not just luck pilling,
[7:40] Speaker 3: that's my personal view, but red pilling. The pilling concept
[7:43] Speaker 3: itself being basically waking people up from whatever bullshit is
[7:49] Speaker 3: being fed to them so that they can get the
[7:51] Speaker 3: true knowledge. And all of that is very heavily influenced
[7:56] Speaker 3: by the author Philip K. Dick. You're probably familiar with
[7:59] Speaker 3: the name. If you're familiar with science fiction. You know,
[8:02] Speaker 3: of your top ten favorite science fiction's, two of them
[8:04] Speaker 3: are probably adaptations of Philip K. Dick's stories. He really
[8:08] Speaker 3: defines the modern science fiction world. He also did a
[8:12] Speaker 3: lot of drugs and was obsessed with gnosticism and believed
[8:16] Speaker 3: that he was in communication with a gnostic entity and
[8:19] Speaker 3: a lot of things going on there. But it is
[8:22] Speaker 3: really important to note. I think that when you look
[8:25] Speaker 3: at someone like Jordan Peterson, he is just purely downstream
[8:29] Speaker 3: of Philip K. Dick's gnosticism. They're the same kind of idea.
[8:34] Speaker 3: And it's not even that weird that he's conservative, because,
[8:37] Speaker 3: like I said, people like HP Lovecraft, who are ultra
[8:39] Speaker 3: conservative were still in this kind of milieu. It was
[8:42] Speaker 3: just dominated by sort of drug libertarian ideas for a
[8:46] Speaker 3: period of time in the sixties and seventies.
[8:48] Speaker 2: Is it a persecution thing? You know, in the Bible,
[8:52] Speaker 2: the true believer is persecuted, and if you're not persecuted,
[8:56] Speaker 2: then you must not be any threat to the devil.
[8:58] Speaker 2: And if no real persecutre you shouldt exist, then you
[9:01] Speaker 2: manufacture the persecution, I think, which explains why arguably the
[9:05] Speaker 2: most privileged demographic in the United States continues to whine
[9:09] Speaker 2: about how they're the most persecuted, right.
[9:11] Speaker 3: I do think it is related to persecution, both real
[9:15] Speaker 3: and imagined. So, like there's a sense in which there
[9:20] Speaker 3: are people who lose out economically because of neoliberal global
[9:24] Speaker 3: you know, globalization, these sorts of things. Those people are
[9:26] Speaker 3: really suffering economically, and they may potentially turn towards these
[9:31] Speaker 3: kind of narratives. What I think is central to all
[9:34] Speaker 3: human experiences. This is stuff I do research on, is
[9:38] Speaker 3: that we all have this desire or need to believe
[9:41] Speaker 3: that the world is just, and if we don't call
[9:44] Speaker 3: that out and correct for it, it draws us towards
[9:47] Speaker 3: a bunch of legitimizing myths or harmful illusions. I include
[9:51] Speaker 3: things like the divine justice view, alongside stuff like free
[9:55] Speaker 3: will and meritocracy. All of these views help us. Essentially,
[9:59] Speaker 3: they're all copes, right, There are ways of us coping
[10:02] Speaker 3: with the fact that the world isn't in fact just
[10:05] Speaker 3: High weirdness is another way of dealing with that problem,
[10:08] Speaker 3: another way of trying to understand why, despite having access
[10:12] Speaker 3: to a bunch of really important kinds of knowledge, our
[10:15] Speaker 3: world is still mired in capitalism and all of these
[10:19] Speaker 3: terrible systems. And it's often coupled with a deep hope
[10:24] Speaker 3: that there's something beyond this world that counterweights all of
[10:28] Speaker 3: what seems to be a bunch of unnecessary suffering. Now
[10:31] Speaker 3: I don't believe there is that's bite being raised in
[10:33] Speaker 3: high weirdness, but I am sympathetic to the desire, and
[10:36] Speaker 3: I think it's important that we provide people with healthy
[10:39] Speaker 3: alternatives so they don't end up spiraling into conspiracy theories.
[10:43] Speaker 2: Oh that's awesome. You went after the right wing and capitalism.
[10:47] Speaker 2: I look forward to your inbox over the next I'm
[10:50] Speaker 2: sure you catch some of that you mentioned. You said
[10:52] Speaker 2: the word psycho not give me a definition. What are
[10:54] Speaker 2: you talking about? What's a psycho notot?
[10:57] Speaker 3: Yeah, so psychokonot is like astronauts for your brain, your mind. Really,
[11:01] Speaker 3: So you're Terrence McKenna's, your Timothy Leary's, people who you
[11:06] Speaker 3: know like want to explore what's going on inside of
[11:08] Speaker 3: their own heads, and they recognize that their introspective capabilities
[11:13] Speaker 3: are fallible. So, you know, one of the key features
[11:16] Speaker 3: of skepticism in general is knowing that just because you
[11:19] Speaker 3: look inside your head and you think that you're acting
[11:21] Speaker 3: for X reason, you may not actually be acting for
[11:24] Speaker 3: that reason. You may have a bunch of biases or
[11:25] Speaker 3: a bunch of hidden agendas and things that you lie
[11:28] Speaker 3: to yourself about. And so high weirdness is about not
[11:32] Speaker 3: only not internalizing the lies from your society, but like
[11:35] Speaker 3: weeding out all the lies inside of your own head.
[11:38] Speaker 3: So if you think about people doing mushrooms or ayahuasca
[11:42] Speaker 3: so that they can see the truth more. Whether that
[11:45] Speaker 3: just means, you know, deconstructing their own past traumas so
[11:49] Speaker 3: that they're more honest about their feelings, their preferences, their desires,
[11:54] Speaker 3: and this stuff like isn't woo though in some cases
[11:58] Speaker 3: it is often translated or you in those kind of ways.
[12:00] Speaker 3: But if you look at like research on psychedelics as
[12:03] Speaker 3: a treatment for post traumatic stress disorder, it is I
[12:07] Speaker 3: think quite valuable for increasing certain kinds of psychological plasticity
[12:12] Speaker 3: when you need it to deal with issues like trauma.
[12:16] Speaker 2: So when we deal with concepts like high weirdness, is
[12:20] Speaker 2: this something that we can I hate the word weaponize,
[12:23] Speaker 2: let's not use that word, but you know, we can
[12:25] Speaker 2: use it as a tool. We can talk about high
[12:27] Speaker 2: weirdness as we address this bizarre, strange, off and backward culture.
[12:33] Speaker 2: Is is there a way to sort of turn that
[12:36] Speaker 2: on its ear or reflect it back at the culture
[12:38] Speaker 2: that's highly weird? What do you think?
[12:40] Speaker 3: I do think so, I think a true high weirdness
[12:44] Speaker 3: insight is the first step is often just noticing that
[12:47] Speaker 3: something is happening to give a kind of a flavor
[12:50] Speaker 3: text example of what high weirdness stuff is like, there's
[12:53] Speaker 3: a great book from the high weirdness world called the
[12:55] Speaker 3: Illuminatus Trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson. These
[12:59] Speaker 3: are guys who wrote for things like Playboy, but also
[13:03] Speaker 3: were at the founding of what we think of as
[13:05] Speaker 3: a lot of Internet culture. So your modern trolls, your
[13:10] Speaker 3: four Chants, etc. A lot of that arises out of
[13:13] Speaker 3: things like the Discordian fake Internet religion, your Church of
[13:19] Speaker 3: the SubGenius, that sort of stuff. So these guys were
[13:21] Speaker 3: heavily into Discordianism. And one of the things that happens
[13:24] Speaker 3: in the book is there's a thing that happens when
[13:27] Speaker 3: you see the truth, and it's called seeing the Fenoorids.
[13:31] Speaker 3: The word is fnrd, and this is very similar to
[13:34] Speaker 3: like the movie They Live other things that have subliminal
[13:36] Speaker 3: messaging stuff in them. Fenoids are essentially a power word
[13:41] Speaker 3: that exists all around you in written texts, but you
[13:44] Speaker 3: can't see them because you've been taught not to until
[13:47] Speaker 3: you're woken up. And once you're woke you see the
[13:51] Speaker 3: fenoorids everywhere. So at the end of every sentence, you
[13:54] Speaker 3: see the little Fenoorid there that is, And like what
[13:56] Speaker 3: the fhenoids do to people is psychologically, it makes them uncomfortable,
[14:00] Speaker 3: so it puts you at unease all the time. It's
[14:02] Speaker 3: like a kind of subliminal warfare mechanism, and a lot
[14:05] Speaker 3: of these guys were obsessed with psychological subliminal warfare techniques
[14:09] Speaker 3: and the idea that like the governments were developing mind
[14:12] Speaker 3: control techniques, et cetera. So once you see the finoids,
[14:15] Speaker 3: you can't unsee them, and that's their kind of way
[14:17] Speaker 3: of saying, once you see high weirdness, you can unsee it.
[14:20] Speaker 3: Once you start to go down this path, there's no
[14:22] Speaker 3: turning around, which is good and bad. It's good because
[14:26] Speaker 3: like skepticism is good, right, you know, I think you
[14:29] Speaker 3: identify as a skeptic. Identify as a skeptic in the
[14:31] Speaker 3: sense that we think it is important to be skeptical
[14:35] Speaker 3: of things we want to believe, especially but just in general,
[14:39] Speaker 3: to approach new information with a desire to make sure
[14:43] Speaker 3: that it is reliable information. The problem is that a
[14:46] Speaker 3: lot of times there's no stopping once you start, and
[14:50] Speaker 3: people spiral into not trusting anything or not believing anything.
[14:54] Speaker 3: They can become potentially more susceptible to conspiracy theories merely
[14:58] Speaker 3: because they've been set on this path of like not
[15:01] Speaker 3: trusting authority, which is generally a good thing. So it's,
[15:05] Speaker 3: you know, again, this is about how do you help
[15:08] Speaker 3: people do this in a healthy way so that they
[15:11] Speaker 3: do extend their boundaries of understanding, but not so far
[15:15] Speaker 3: they fall off the edge.
[15:17] Speaker 2: This sounds like a riff on patternicity or patterns seeking.
[15:21] Speaker 2: Even the very intelligent begin to connect dots some need
[15:24] Speaker 2: to be connected, and then all of a sudden they
[15:26] Speaker 2: overcompensate their connecting dots that were never meant to be connected.
[15:30] Speaker 2: Would that be fair?
[15:32] Speaker 3: Yeah, So there's a bunch of cognitive features that humans
[15:36] Speaker 3: have that can put you at higher risk for things
[15:39] Speaker 3: like conspiracy theories. We are we're in adapt you know,
[15:42] Speaker 3: one of our major evolutionary adaptations as we notice patterns.
[15:46] Speaker 3: It allows us to generalize information, to transfer information across
[15:50] Speaker 3: different situations. So for example, I play a lot of
[15:53] Speaker 3: video games, and it means that if I pick up
[15:55] Speaker 3: a new video game, I'm going to be much faster
[15:58] Speaker 3: at figuring out the interface than someone who doesn't because
[16:01] Speaker 3: there's a language that's built up over time and people
[16:03] Speaker 3: are used to things and so you match those patterns
[16:06] Speaker 3: much more quickly. So we're trained pattern matchers, we're trained mimics.
[16:10] Speaker 3: It's our strongest evolutionary adaptation that we can copy people's
[16:13] Speaker 3: behavior very effectively. But that pattern matching then results in
[16:18] Speaker 3: overmatching sometimes, which results in narrative biases, and like another
[16:23] Speaker 3: big feature of this, something else to tie in it
[16:25] Speaker 3: when we're trying to understand what's causing this the high weirdness.
[16:28] Speaker 3: Folks were very interested in the crisis of meaning long
[16:32] Speaker 3: before I think conservatives really got a hold of it,
[16:36] Speaker 3: by which I mean the recognition that modernity, capitalism, you know,
[16:41] Speaker 3: whatever how we want to describe our current society doesn't
[16:43] Speaker 3: really do a good job of getting people a sense
[16:46] Speaker 3: of meaning or ways to build meaning in their lives
[16:49] Speaker 3: or connection. A lot of that is capitalism, I think,
[16:52] Speaker 3: and a lot of their critiques were also of capitalism
[16:55] Speaker 3: as a result, and they were looking to transgress the
[16:59] Speaker 3: normal system them so they could get back to having
[17:01] Speaker 3: genuine connections. And I do think you see a lot
[17:05] Speaker 3: of movement or desire for that in the modern world,
[17:08] Speaker 3: and then a lot of difficulty finding it.
[17:12] Speaker 2: I'm want to talk a little more about this awakeness.
[17:15] Speaker 2: By the way, I love the film They Live, but
[17:19] Speaker 2: woke useless term these days? What does it mean? How
[17:23] Speaker 2: would my guest define it? I don't know. We'll talk
[17:26] Speaker 2: about it next. Thank you so much for your support
[17:36] Speaker 2: of this broadcast on Paytreon. You can decide how much
[17:39] Speaker 2: you want to support or how long. You can just
[17:42] Speaker 2: set all the parameters and it really helps makes the difference.
[17:46] Speaker 2: Just go to paytreon dot com slash Seth Andrews speaking
[17:52] Speaker 2: here with educator, podcaster, and columnist Aaron Rabinowitz. It's a
[17:59] Speaker 2: weird boomerang effect. I don't know if this relates to
[18:02] Speaker 2: I'll bet it does. I'm just too dumb to see it.
[18:05] Speaker 2: But we see the counter culture movement of the sixties
[18:09] Speaker 2: into the seventies, and all of a sudden back in
[18:10] Speaker 2: the eighties, it just sort of rubber bands back into
[18:13] Speaker 2: the stuffy, highly conservative eighties Reagan era, right, And I
[18:19] Speaker 2: feel like every time we see a counter culture movement,
[18:21] Speaker 2: we see this sort of pushing of the envelope past
[18:24] Speaker 2: the norms and even a healthy way. We just seem
[18:27] Speaker 2: to always sort of pinball back within a generation to
[18:31] Speaker 2: more insular and more conservative values. I don't know how
[18:36] Speaker 2: to say it, do you see any of that, No,
[18:38] Speaker 2: am I crazy.
[18:39] Speaker 3: I think there's a two step forward once that back
[18:42] Speaker 3: kind of situation. So I think, for example, our current
[18:45] Speaker 3: society is much more socially progressive than it was even
[18:48] Speaker 3: when I was born. We've seen significant progress on issues
[18:52] Speaker 3: like game marriage, equal rights, trans rights, but we've also
[18:56] Speaker 3: seen retrenchments. And so in that sense, the culture wars, wokeness,
[19:01] Speaker 3: anti wokeness, all that stuff is also very much downstream
[19:04] Speaker 3: of high weirdness. The word woke itself comes out of
[19:07] Speaker 3: primarily black vernacular, but is also connected to this community
[19:14] Speaker 3: through some pretty weird connections. So the guy Bill Cooper
[19:17] Speaker 3: who wrote Hold a Pale Horse, which is another one
[19:20] Speaker 3: of these, like, you know, Here's the Protocols of the
[19:23] Speaker 3: Elders of Zion and a bunch of other conspiracy theories.
[19:26] Speaker 3: I don't know if they're true or not, but I'm
[19:27] Speaker 3: going to popularize them anyway. He was the guy who
[19:30] Speaker 3: Alex Jones basically rips off to be create Alex Jones.
[19:34] Speaker 3: But he's also very popular in various minority communities because
[19:39] Speaker 3: they take seriously his theories about why Jews in particular
[19:44] Speaker 3: are responsible for the suffering of other minority groups, So
[19:49] Speaker 3: there's a lot of weird dissemination of these ideas into
[19:53] Speaker 3: communities that we think of as being sort of culturally
[19:56] Speaker 3: opposed and have different reasons for believing these sorts of
[19:59] Speaker 3: thing things you're mentioning sort of persecution complex earlier, like
[20:03] Speaker 3: oftentimes it's a genuine experience of persecution that can send
[20:07] Speaker 3: people in these directions, not just a sort of fake one.
[20:11] Speaker 3: But I do think a lot of what we're seeing
[20:13] Speaker 3: right now is the right wing continuing to fight against
[20:18] Speaker 3: the fact that society has progressed away from the vast
[20:21] Speaker 3: majority of its views and is looking for any wedge
[20:25] Speaker 3: issues that it can find in order to try to
[20:27] Speaker 3: maintain sort of market share on the social front. And
[20:31] Speaker 3: at the same time, it's delegitimizing elections, it's delegitimizing academies,
[20:37] Speaker 3: it's delegitimizing any system that is preventing it from just
[20:42] Speaker 3: continuing to hold power despite being a minority view.
[20:45] Speaker 2: Quick digression. You mentioned the word woke. I mean i'd
[20:48] Speaker 2: come to see it, as you know, people with more
[20:51] Speaker 2: progressive values are often labeled as woke, but it almost
[20:55] Speaker 2: seems to be the jella you can't nail to the wall,
[20:57] Speaker 2: like woke just seems to be whatever somebody doesn't like.
[21:00] Speaker 2: The term has almost become useless in some ways. People
[21:03] Speaker 2: just throw it out. It's a conversation. Stop or do
[21:05] Speaker 2: you go down that road? Do you talk about the
[21:07] Speaker 2: term woke? I do, and I I.
[21:11] Speaker 3: Don't want to get rid of it. I think it's
[21:13] Speaker 3: worth still talking about. I do think it's good that
[21:16] Speaker 3: we've kind of backed off of it. Generally it was
[21:17] Speaker 3: a little too hot and obsessed for a while. But
[21:19] Speaker 3: this idea of like get woke, stay woke as a remind,
[21:23] Speaker 3: like a high weirdness kind of reminder that the system
[21:26] Speaker 3: is always trying to trick you back into thinking that
[21:29] Speaker 3: the status quo is good, and there's always a million
[21:32] Speaker 3: ways for you to sneak back into thinking that things
[21:35] Speaker 3: are normal and okay and natural and don't worry about it.
[21:40] Speaker 3: And then I think, like in the particular woke anti
[21:43] Speaker 3: woke discourse, it's really interesting to talk about critical social justice,
[21:49] Speaker 3: which is I think the sort of technical term for
[21:51] Speaker 3: what we think of as wokeness, and then to parse
[21:54] Speaker 3: the strains of it that I think are good and bad.
[21:57] Speaker 3: So I think when a lot of people are critical
[22:00] Speaker 3: of wokeness. What they're being critical of is what I
[22:02] Speaker 3: would call like retributive wokeness, or you know, cancel culture
[22:06] Speaker 3: is the term for this, basically essentially a kind of
[22:08] Speaker 3: woke awareness coupled with a desire to harm or punish
[22:13] Speaker 3: the people who are often correctly identified as privileged or
[22:18] Speaker 3: as benefiting or continuing to promote harm towards others. They
[22:22] Speaker 3: think it's the retributivism that's the real problem. They are
[22:25] Speaker 3: not the awareness of systemic injustice or all of those
[22:28] Speaker 3: kinds of things. So that's why I like the sortive
[22:32] Speaker 3: work that we do over it CAN, because I think
[22:35] Speaker 3: it is more in keeping with the healthy veins of
[22:38] Speaker 3: high weirdness, where part of breaking away from the mainstream
[22:42] Speaker 3: norm is breaking away from the retributive desire to punish
[22:46] Speaker 3: people and towards a more compassionate view where you recognize
[22:50] Speaker 3: that everybody's trapped in the matrix.
[22:52] Speaker 2: I think too, there's a difference between what has been
[22:55] Speaker 2: called canceled culture and what we often call consequence culture,
[23:00] Speaker 2: and I do support that. I mean, if somebody says
[23:02] Speaker 2: or does something like if Elon Musk comes in and
[23:05] Speaker 2: totally fucks up Twitter, and I decide to leave Twitter
[23:08] Speaker 2: and go somewhere else, which I mean like he already has.
[23:10] Speaker 2: There's no Yeah, that's okay. I'm speaking in person, in
[23:13] Speaker 2: the real and in the theoretical as an example. But
[23:17] Speaker 2: if I decide I'll screw this, I'm out. I'm not
[23:19] Speaker 2: saying that Elon should be like he should be ripped
[23:23] Speaker 2: out of Twitter. I'm saying that I, as part of
[23:25] Speaker 2: the market, can decide whether or not I want to
[23:27] Speaker 2: support that, and I can encourage others to do the same.
[23:30] Speaker 2: In the arena of ideas. That would be the difference between,
[23:34] Speaker 2: you know, calling for his cancelation and just saying there
[23:37] Speaker 2: are consequences, right.
[23:39] Speaker 3: Not quite, not exactly. No, I would say accountability would
[23:43] Speaker 3: be Elon Musk is removed from Twitter, like I would
[23:46] Speaker 3: say justice requires that Elon Musk like I made an
[23:49] Speaker 3: art like when he was first floating the idea of
[23:52] Speaker 3: buying Twitter, I did a debate with a guy about
[23:55] Speaker 3: content moderation and what would happen if Elon bought Twitter,
[24:00] Speaker 3: and I was like, don't make it a Nazi bar, Like,
[24:02] Speaker 3: don't let the people back in who are going to
[24:04] Speaker 3: turn it into a Nazi bar and ruin a good
[24:06] Speaker 3: website and that's literally exactly what he did, and he's
[24:09] Speaker 3: tanked its value as a result, and it's a terrible
[24:12] Speaker 3: place now. People are fleeing it into roves. You know,
[24:15] Speaker 3: advertisers have rightfully stepped away from it because they don't
[24:18] Speaker 3: want their brands sitting next to pro Hitler content.
[24:21] Speaker 2: Well, I mean, let me jump in aaron for just
[24:23] Speaker 2: a second. Like the advertisers walking away would be consequence culture,
[24:28] Speaker 2: right they just find sure you're gonna say fuck the advertisers.
[24:31] Speaker 2: I think you said go fuck yourself and they said, fine,
[24:33] Speaker 2: we're out of here. That would be a consequence of
[24:36] Speaker 2: his actions.
[24:37] Speaker 3: I just want to make clear that I don't believe
[24:39] Speaker 3: that market systems are the only way to have accountability.
[24:43] Speaker 3: I don't need the majority of people to think that
[24:45] Speaker 3: Elon is bad and vote on that for him to
[24:48] Speaker 3: be removed. I think like, if we had the ability
[24:50] Speaker 3: to do so, removing not just removing him from power,
[24:53] Speaker 3: but removing his billions of dollars would be exactly the
[24:56] Speaker 3: ethical thing to do, whether the majority agrees that or not.
[25:01] Speaker 2: Now, I had this conversation with cognitive dissonance two weeks ago,
[25:05] Speaker 2: and I've come to the point where I just think
[25:07] Speaker 2: I don't think you can be an ethical billionaire. I
[25:09] Speaker 2: think you're a hoarder at some point. Yeah, it's a
[25:12] Speaker 2: policy failure the society that has allowed you to hoard wealth.
[25:17] Speaker 2: You owe something back at some point in a world
[25:19] Speaker 2: with so much suffering, You do have a societal responsibility.
[25:24] Speaker 2: Tell me what the article is meant to do in
[25:28] Speaker 2: the skeptic titled Welcome to the Modern American Right, the
[25:31] Speaker 2: world that high Weirdness built. What's your end zone? You're
[25:34] Speaker 2: sounding the alarm, I mean, what do you want?
[25:37] Speaker 3: I want people to understand sort of both how the
[25:41] Speaker 3: mainstreaming of high weirdness has infected all of their content.
[25:45] Speaker 3: I think it's just valuable content cultural knowledge to understand
[25:49] Speaker 3: why your world looks the way it looks. So as
[25:51] Speaker 3: an educator, just first of all, I just want people
[25:53] Speaker 3: to better understand their own world. And I think that
[25:56] Speaker 3: this turns a lot of keys and clears a lot
[25:59] Speaker 3: of things up. And then, like the more narrow concern is,
[26:03] Speaker 3: I think it also explains why we're not going to
[26:05] Speaker 3: see the GOP right itself in any near future. And
[26:10] Speaker 3: I don't really know what the way it writes itself
[26:12] Speaker 3: actually is. I've thought that it's been in a death
[26:15] Speaker 3: spiral for over a decade, but I don't know how
[26:17] Speaker 3: long death spirals last for something in this particular situation,
[26:21] Speaker 3: and I think that could do a ton of damage
[26:23] Speaker 3: in the meantime. And like, the way to understand what's
[26:26] Speaker 3: going on there is, if you buy hard enough into
[26:30] Speaker 3: the idea that the mainstream is bad, you become completely
[26:36] Speaker 3: cut off from any information and you could go, you know,
[26:39] Speaker 3: you get that epistemic siloing, and it just is going
[26:43] Speaker 3: to escalate and escalate. So I want people to be
[26:47] Speaker 3: aware of that and to be and like finally to
[26:50] Speaker 3: be comfortable calling out that weirdness, because I think one
[26:54] Speaker 3: thing that I often push back on is kind of
[26:57] Speaker 3: radical centrism or both siderism, you know, this attempt to
[27:01] Speaker 3: be like, well, both sides are super weird, and the
[27:03] Speaker 3: reality is like one side is renfair weird and the
[27:06] Speaker 3: other side is track women's menstructional cycles weird. Those are
[27:09] Speaker 3: different kinds of weird, and one of them is much
[27:13] Speaker 3: much ethically worse than the other one. And my biases
[27:17] Speaker 3: are I go to ren fairs. I'm not saying they're
[27:19] Speaker 3: not full of a bunch of unethical behavior. It's just
[27:21] Speaker 3: a different kind. And what's gonna happen with the GOP,
[27:25] Speaker 3: I think is it's just gonna get weirder because if
[27:28] Speaker 3: they win, they're gonna have power, and that's going to
[27:31] Speaker 3: be terrifying, and they're going to do things. And if
[27:33] Speaker 3: they lose, they're going to be reinforced in their belief
[27:35] Speaker 3: that they are a persecuted minority in the spiral will
[27:38] Speaker 3: probably continue.
[27:39] Speaker 2: I'm worried a little bit about violence, actually strike away.
[27:42] Speaker 2: I'm worried. I'm worried a lot about violence. Culture crimed
[27:47] Speaker 2: often with religious language. Right, they are in God's army.
[27:50] Speaker 2: It's gonna be Christian jihad. They're heavily armed, more firearms
[27:54] Speaker 2: than human beings in the United States. Holy shit, it's
[27:57] Speaker 2: a coup. Those evil radical left, and I guess there's
[28:00] Speaker 2: no other kind of left, Aaron. They always say radical left,
[28:03] Speaker 2: it's never just left. But I worry that they're going
[28:06] Speaker 2: to take to the streech. Have you had that conversation?
[28:09] Speaker 3: I have, And I think, like stochastics, terrorism is a
[28:13] Speaker 3: genuine concern. There was a little bit of concern around
[28:16] Speaker 3: that with the recent attempts to deal with the natural
[28:19] Speaker 3: disasters where there were so many conspiracy theories promoted by
[28:22] Speaker 3: people like Elon Musk directly, which led to threats of
[28:26] Speaker 3: violence against FEMA AID people. So yeah, I think another
[28:32] Speaker 3: January sixth is very likely in the offing. One thing
[28:35] Speaker 3: I really want to highlight, though, I think it's really important,
[28:38] Speaker 3: is you know, this is a an atheist show, so
[28:41] Speaker 3: there's a lot of emphasis on the Christian part of
[28:43] Speaker 3: white Christian nationalism, but I just cannot hammer home hard
[28:47] Speaker 3: enough they weren't white matters here, right. It should not
[28:51] Speaker 3: be the case that in the there's a closing in
[28:55] Speaker 3: the polls in the final months between you know, an
[28:58] Speaker 3: individual who was putting forward normal policies and two people
[29:01] Speaker 3: who've been promoting conspiracy based racial programs and genocide for
[29:07] Speaker 3: the past several weeks. That should have been disqualifying. The
[29:11] Speaker 3: Haitian immigrant stuff like the grab them by the pussy
[29:15] Speaker 3: stuff should have just been fundamentally disqualifying. And the fact
[29:19] Speaker 3: that it wasn't and has been incorporated memory hold treated
[29:23] Speaker 3: as if just part of the news cycle should be
[29:26] Speaker 3: the most terrifying part of this entire election. And like
[29:29] Speaker 3: the fact that the media is going along with that,
[29:32] Speaker 3: it just shows how much they want to kind of
[29:34] Speaker 3: pretend everything is still normal while the weirdness is just
[29:37] Speaker 3: out of control.
[29:38] Speaker 2: Oh, the media has failed. The New York Times, right,
[29:41] Speaker 2: the newspaper of record. I've been reading recently their framing
[29:46] Speaker 2: of the bizarre, just bizarre stuff that's going on on
[29:50] Speaker 2: the right, And I'm like, who writes this stuff? It
[29:53] Speaker 2: looks almost like a press release. It's the New York Times.
[29:56] Speaker 2: I'm sorry, that's a whole other show, Aaron. I will
[30:00] Speaker 2: put a link to your article in the description box.
[30:03] Speaker 2: Everybody can read it in depth. Any final thoughts before
[30:06] Speaker 2: we call it as far as high weirdness, anything you
[30:08] Speaker 2: want to leave us.
[30:09] Speaker 3: With, Like, the hardest part of this is because of
[30:12] Speaker 3: a place like The New York Times being so terrible,
[30:15] Speaker 3: it's reasonable to be suspicious. It's reasonable to believe in
[30:20] Speaker 3: some conspiracy. Like you know, it's reasonable to believe that
[30:22] Speaker 3: Trump is conspiring to overthrow a democratic election right now.
[30:27] Speaker 3: So there's no easy answers, and demonizing of conspiracy theories
[30:30] Speaker 3: itself is not I think the right way to go.
[30:33] Speaker 3: What I think is important to understand is that fear
[30:36] Speaker 3: of persecution can slide all over the place and end
[30:40] Speaker 3: up in a far right place and that's what we're
[30:42] Speaker 3: seeing happen here.
[30:44] Speaker 2: Writer and educator Aaron Rabinowitz. It's been a joy to
[30:49] Speaker 2: talk to you, and thanks for enlightening us on hi weirdness,
[30:53] Speaker 2: and we will see you out there in the ether. Okay,
[30:56] Speaker 2: thanks very much.
[30:57] Speaker 1: Follow up Thanking Atheist on Facebook and Twitter for a
[31:00] Speaker 1: complete archive of podcasts and videos, products like mugs and
[31:04] Speaker 1: t shirts featuring the Thinking Atheist logo, links to atheist
[31:08] Speaker 1: pages and resources, and details on upcoming free thought events
[31:11] Speaker 1: and conventions. Log onto our website, The Thinkingatheist dot com.

Shows are listed from Apple Podcasts' charts and directory, and Podcast Index where it is used. Every show and episode belongs to its publisher and plays from the publisher's own feed; this site hosts none of them.