Alien Nation on YNH & Russell Brand

'connectualizes' atheists and theists on moral superiority

As you likely know by now: I do not jump on bandwagons and can’t walk past one without wanting to tip it over. So I’m going to do something more controversial than defending Hitler: defending Harari. While I’m kicked off of YT for the week, I’ll be posting some of my old videos on Yuval Noah Harari on Rumble and on Substack, starting with this one made in October of 2021.

This is a complex and important philosophical argument (I think), which ‘connectualizes' Russell Brand's interviews of seven atheists: Yuval, Yanis Varoufakis, Bret Weinstein, Heather Heying, Sam Harris & Edward Snowden, with six theists: Iain McGilchrist, Alister McGrath, Ben Shapiro, Sadhguru, Thich Nhat Hahn and the Dalai Lama.

I plot their belief in God on a horizontal axis but then plot their belief in their own moral superiority on the vertical. My premise is that superiority is a more important dividing line than religion or lack thereof. Those who are smug atheists, like Sam Harris, are politically indistinguishable from smug theists like Ben Shapiro.

I quote Yuval in saying that money is the most successful story ever told and Yanis that democracy is a fig leaf for oligarchy. I explain the 'truthish lies & legal fictions' of nations, corporations & money as stories that normalize both physical and economic violence.

Although I haven’t changed my mind about anyone I categorized as operating from superiority—like Sadhguru whose view of himself is so lofty I get airsick listening to him—I have since demoted a few I categorized as seeing all people as equal. After the Dalai Lama’s ‘kiss my tongue’ public pederasty, he’s been revealed as a fake. As I’ve written, Yanis has also revealed his blind spots when it comes to Ukraine. And Bret and Heather are on my watch list as likely controlled op and very judgmental and hypocritical in clips I’ve watched since.

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Here is a quote a commenter posted from Yuval's book Homo Deus:

Liberals value individual liberty so much because they believe that humans have free will. According to liberalism, the decisions of voters and customers are neither deterministic nor random. People are of course influenced by external forces and chance events, but at the end of the day each of us can wave the magic wand of freedom and decide things for ourselves.

This is the reason liberalism gives so much importance to voters and customers, and instructs us to follow our heart and do what feels good. It is our free will that imbues the universe with meaning, and since no outsider can know how you really feel or predict your choices for sure, you shouldn’t trust any Big Brother to look after your interests and desires.

Attributing free will to humans is not an ethical judgement—it purports to be a factual description of the world. Although this so-called factual description might have made sense back in the days of Locke, Rousseau and Thomas Jefferson, it does not sit well with the latest findings of the life sciences. The contradiction between free will and contemporary science is the elephant in the laboratory, whom many prefer not to see as they peer into their microscopes and fMRI scanners.

Worth discussing in the comments?

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For the other people compared in this video:

Thinking of disinformation as short for dissenting information, I delve into the meaning of the word radical, the origin of demons, the fallacies of rhetoric, the rules for critical thinking, and the question of ultimate reality. I ask whether our minds exist in the world or the world exists in our mind, and how meditation is a connection the empire can't take away.

Responding to Russell Brand's interview of Iain McGilchrist, I discuss time & space, brain hemispheres, love & hate, knowing & not knowing, New Age annoyance, and child prophets. I use a Crow Tarot deck to illustrate infinity and make my pitch for why the crow should represent the Wholly Spirit. Why should doves have all the fun?

Responding to Russell's interview of Alister McGrath, "Is There Any Point in God?" I say, 'not a God consistent with the world.' I explain the theologian's dilemma of why an all-good and all-powerful God can't logically coexist with evil, then elaborate on how a God worth considering might be possible. Follows up on my video, "What Is The Matter?" on Iain McGilchrist by answering a viewer's question of why God can't exist—in an active, interventive way—in the dream.

In Feb of 2018, Russell Brand asked Sam Harris, "What's the biggest threat to freedom, Islam or consumerism?" I rephrase consumerism as capitalism and deconstruct Sam's examples of burkas and suicide bombers that he used to show religious ideology, particularly of Islam, was the source of all evil. I look at how this reasoning gave a faux-moral rationale for the occupation of Afghanistan and the killing of 1M people since 9-11, letting motivators like paychecks and profits off the hook. Rephrasing Russell's 2021 video, I ask "Did Sam Harris Use Feminism to Justify the Afghan Clusterf*ck?" and I urge Sam to question his dogma of moral superiority and its cover of "humanitarian intervention."

In Russell Brand's interview, Yanis states that we must always support the defenders and the sovereignty of the invaded. I question who the aggressors are and if Ukraine is a pawn. Sovereignty and the right of secession are discussed, along with whether this is Russia's war or just Putin's, as Yanis claims. I examine the role of Russian oligarch money in the demise of Greece and Cyprus, and quote Yanis from my book, How to Dismantle an Empire. I end with the hope that we're not being played by all sides, comparing the oligarchs to rats at a chickenfeeder.