Coffee Conversations: Partitioning Discourse

You were talking about people commenting on that they just discovered that Saudi Arabia has a has a a very firm, unchanging, absolute position with regards to the establishment of a Palestinian state. They just discovered that. It's been the Saudi position for over twenty years. And you just found out about it. This is this is like one of those situations where you have to you you really have to learn because because as we've talked about many times, social media has removed the organically existing partitions between intellectual groups of people.

Levels of intellect, levels of intellect on particular topics, particular fields, and what have you. That in the past, only a certain level of intellect and a certain level of expertise would discuss these issues. It doesn't mean that people of a lower intellect and less qualification in terms of their knowledge wouldn't also talk about these issues, but the people up here would never hear them. They would be talking in the barber shop or in the taxi or or on the bus stop or what have you. They would talking to each other and and it would never interfere with people who are seriously engaged in these topics.

Now because of social media, everybody hears everybody. So people who don't know anything, who are barely following the news, who barely follow information, who barely follow events, feel free to comment. As they always have, but as I say in the past, no one would have to listen to them, no one would have to hear them. So now every individual person who has a social media account or who engages with social media has to erect your own barriers. Either like literally through blocking people, unfollowing people, or just training yourself to not pay attention to what certain people say.

Because these are the like to say this, all your all like when I would read, if I if I would read something like that in April 2025, oh, the Saudis have now come out in in full support of okay. What I read is I'm not someone who follows the the situation in real life.

Yep.

I am not informed whatsoever about the situation, and I just follow my own emotions and the propaganda that plays with my emotions. That's how I engage with the topic of Palestine. So automatically, I file you away as someone to never listen to on this topic. I don't pay attention to what you say. You have to erect your own partition with these with these kind of people, for your own sanity.

And like I was saying, to a certain extent, you you have actually a responsibility to not only, okay, have a responsibility to serious discourse, to eliminate these people from being participants in serious discourse because they'll just drag it down. They'll just derail any serious discourse, that's on the one hand. But you actually have a responsibility to that person because you have to be informed by one way or another even if it's indirectly by means of people ignoring you, by means of people blocking you, that you don't know what you're talking about and you should maybe not talk on this topic until you do the work and and learn something. Because if we if we allow you to continue talking on this topic and to be treated as if you are qualified to talk on this topic, you will continue to do so and potentially gain more and more of a platform, and then inevitably you're going to say something very stupid. Yeah.

Potentially dangerous to yourself, Potentially extremist. Potentially radical. Potentially what what have you. That's gonna get you in trouble. So we actually even owe it to you to let you know that you're a fool.

Yeah.

This is the this is the nicest thing that you can do for a fool is to let them know that they're a fool on a particular topic. Doesn't mean across the board, but it means on this topic, you need to educate yourself or be quiet.

Yeah. And and if you think

Or be ignored. Mean, also, it's it's a little bit like I was talking about in the chat one time recently. That it's like it's like politics or geopolitics is like mathematics. But you think it's magic. Not mathematics, you think it's magic.

To where you have three single digit numbers and you want them to add up to 100. To add up, not multiply. Add up to 100. And and you've only got three single digit numbers. And you think it's unfair that you can't add up to a 100.

That you should be able to add that to a 100. What's way? You don't have what it takes, you don't have the ingredients, period. And what you're supposed to do is now, if we're talking about geopolitics and you want to have, I won't say a utopian end, but an ideal, you want an ideal, you want to achieve an ideal situation, a scenario for your country, your society or what have you. You need ingredients for that.

You wanna jump right to the finished product. And you think, this is the magic part, you think that your anger or your passion is sufficient to make up for the lack missing ingredients. You think that your emotion and your passion and your anger and your outrage and your insistence is enough to make up for the missing ingredients. It's not. It's simply not.

And you've been misled if you actually believe that that's how it works and you believe that that can happen. All you can do is you'll end up losing whatever ingredients that you do have, actually. You'll end up disrupting the ingredients that you do have for achieving something rather than building on and accumulating more ingredients to actually eventually achieve the outcome that you want. But you're never gonna achieve the outcome just by your anger, just by your emotion, just by your feeling that it's your right to have a particular outcome. They may and I'm not saying it's not your right.

Everyone has a right to live in an ideal situation, but it's simply not realistic and it's not gonna happen. That's not how it's achieved. So you have to you have to you have to learn how to block out these people from your even your peripheral vision and from your hearing and from your consideration. You can't be exposed to, I'm sorry to say stupidity, ignorance, foolishness, and foolishness here is is like on many levels. It's not just you don't you're someone who doesn't have information.

You're someone who is Okay. Because someone who doesn't have information is ignorant. To your own intelligence, it's a d deteriorative to your own intellect and to your own ability to engage in topics seriously, intelligently. It it brings you down. So you have to block these people out and just understand that there is a huge huge, massive segment of the online population discussing politics that should not be.

They have nothing interesting to say, nothing useful to say, nothing insightful to say, nothing informed to say, And therefore you should do the work yourself of blocking it. Block it out. They're not saying anything that's useful to you, that's helpful to you.

Yeah, it's particularly frustrating for me personally if someone that if people that I've known for decades who are taking on positions that are very unbecoming of them, you know. And so it just infuriates me and frustrates me that I'm not able to reach them. Then I have to accept that I just have to file it in the same category as I would, you know, when I'm in when I encounter these online enormous Mhmm. You know, who are passionate and have nothing but just that passion.

Without

any information or any

And the thing the thing about this is, the tricky thing about this is, is that that passion is not about the thing that they are expressing passion about. Because if they were truly passionate about this issue, they would be informed about it. Yeah. They would that passion would drive them to gather information, study, research and understanding. If it was really passionate about this issue, like if it was passionate about Gaza, then you would understand all the dynamics at play.

Yes. You would know not just the history, but you would know the power dynamics in the region, you would know what the position is of the region, of the of the regional countries, you would know the history of those positions and so forth. You would be informed if you were truly passionate about it. But you're passionate about something else and I don't know what it is, that's a personal issue.

Yeah.

That's a personal issue. Yeah. That is that you are externalizing in the form of political discourse.

Right.

And it's not, it's it's something psychological about you. Yeah. Some emotional issue, psychological issue, self self image issue that you have. Yeah. That you're you're causing, you know, to to to express it through

It comes out

quasi political talk.

Yeah. It comes out in the in the form of some kind of a delusion about yourself that that's that's, you know, bigger than it's than what it is. Yeah. You know, like, Casey Pond, that one instance when I saw that an Instagram account of a very small following. Mhmm.

And it's a well, it's a woman. She's just citing an instance in Muslim history.

Right.

You know? And and

Yeah. I saw that.

She's you know, she's creating an an analogy, a misconstrued, incongruent Mhmm. Analogy of what took place in history. Not talking about Assyria, but I'm talking about Muslim history, political history. And and and using that as a basis for calling for the boycott of Hajj and Umrah. Yeah.

And and I there's just so many levels. This just it infuriates me, you know.

Like like, I don't know. You're a tool that doesn't even know you're a tool. Uh-huh. Because I don't believe that this is like someone who's paid to say this. They would they would have a larger account probably.

Sure. But but also it it's it's clearly you're just an emotional wreck. And you're a tool, so I don't know what's more sad to be a to be a knowingly be a tool or to to just be a, you know, foolishly used as a tool and not even know it. I don't know if it was on that video or another video of hers that I saw, where she was talking about we need to work on long term solutions to the root cause of the That's exactly what they're doing. And you're and you're saying that that constitutes abandonment of Palestine and Gaza Yeah.

Because they're working on long term stability, long term addressing the long term, trying to build long term solutions by addressing the root cause of the problem. Yes. That's exactly what they are doing and when they are doing that, it's not getting fast enough results for you, understandably, but that's what they are doing. So how how is it how are you going to now work on a long term solution that doesn't also include short term suffering? That's a very that's that's a very difficult thing.

Yeah. Are you gonna work on the short term or are gonna work on the long term? You work you try to do both as much as you can and that's what they are doing. They're trying to do that as much as they can. But, you know

I think the analogy of the the the babies in the river is perfect.

Yeah. I always come back to that.

Yeah. It's just the the best illustration of what's taking place. And, yes, you will still, despite the the messaging in the in that illustrative example, you still get people but the babies, though.

Yeah. You know? I mean, this is the thing. You you have to decide for yourself what kind of a person you are. And I'm not saying that one one or the other is right or wrong.

I mean, just just for anyone who doesn't know, the example is there's a there's a what do you call it? A parable or a story.

Just to illustrate.

An illustrative story. Yeah. About a man walking by a river and he sees a baby floating down the river and he's going to drown. And then he sees another one, and he sees another one, and he sees another one. So he gets into the river and he starts taking babies one at a time out of the river.

And then another man walks up on the shore and sees what's happening and the man in the river says help, you know, help me get these babies out of the river and he starts walking away. The man on the shore starts walking away And the man in the river shouts at him, are doing, where are you going, you have to help me get these babies out of the river. And he said, that's what I am doing, I'm going to where they are coming from. To wherever they are being put in the river, that's where I'm going to stop it there.

Okay,

that's called the long term solution, that's the root cause of the problem solution. The one who's, the man on the shore who's going to where the babies are coming from is going to, his action will lead to the death of many babies. But the survival and the rescue of many many more. Yeah. The one who is saving the babies in the river is also going to be the cause of many babies dying, because he can't get them all.

And it will be endless. Yeah. But he will also save some babies.

Yes.

So he's doing a good thing, the other man is doing a good thing. You have to decide which kind of person are you. But the difference is, one second, the difference is that the man who's on the shore knows exactly what the man in the water is doing, but the man in the water doesn't understand what the man on the shore is doing. And then he's got something to say about it. This is where we have a problem.

The the the people who are in the river who think that the one and only proper approach is to be in the river saving one baby at a time. They've got a lot to say about the people who are trying to go down to the start of the problem, to go down the river to find where the babies are being put in the river to stop that process from happening. They don't understand it, they can't brain it, and they're critical of it. And they're shouting and calling that person, you know, a murderer, a traitor, or whatever heartless and so on, because he's not doing the very short term thing that you're doing. No one is criticizing you for the short term thing you're doing.

It's good. It's fine. You're doing you're you're doing something that's helpful. But the thing that's not helpful is you flapping your jaws about what someone is doing who's gonna solve the long term problem.

And this has nothing to do with the ends justifying the means whatsoever. Because we also misapply, you know, concepts. Like, he he's the the the guy who's trying to find the root cause of the problem truly wants the problem to end. Mhmm. And very likely has the capacity and the means to do so.

You know? This is this is where very, very important to understand.

Well, also, you know what you know what? There's also a thing. When when they talk about the ends justify the means, and you have to take a position on that, does it or doesn't it? Does the ends justify the means or does it not? Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't.

We're not absolutist about that. There's no reason why you have to be absolutist about that. That's a false paradigm. To say it has to be one or the other. Sometimes it does.

Yeah. Of course, sometimes the ends justify the means. Absolutely. Not always, but sometimes. There's not a single position on that.

Depends on the conditions. Depends on what the end is.

Yeah.

And it depends on what the means are. You insist on it being an absolutist. Yeah. Proposition. It's not.

It doesn't have to be. It's false. If you if you if you insist on that being an absolute proposition. It either has to be or not. Yeah.

This is again western.

Western, yeah. Very peculiar

False thinking. Yeah. Flawed thinking.

They'll be the one to project this and impose this while all at the same time not following through

Mhmm.

The ideals that they propose that we all adhere to.

Well, it's it's I mean the typical thing is, it's supposed to be that the moral position is no, the ends don't justify the means. But that's not how they act. The ones who the ones who have the ones who came up with the idea and the ones who insisted on the position that you're supposed to take on that idea, always take the other side. Yeah. In reality, for them the ends always does justify the means.

They couldn't care less about the means.

Yeah. That's that's that's the striking feature.

Yeah. They've never cared about the means. They're not even subtle about it. Yeah. They just gaslight.

And if you're if you're again, in 2025, if you can be gaslighted by the West, then you need to just retire from public life Yeah. Altogether. You need to become a Yeah. Complete Yeah. You need to become a complete shut in.

Yeah. And don't and don't don't interact with the society at all because you're a hazard to yourself and others. If you can if you can still be gaslighted by America, by the West in 2025. Like I said, you know, there was a time, you know, even in the Muslim world and even across the global South, because their their experience had been with the British, went with the French, with the Italians, with the Portuguese. They didn't have any experience with the Americans.

And the Americans talked to good talk back in the day. And so there was legitimately a feeling for a long for too long, it's embarrassing how long it went on, but it's over now. But there was a period of time when people really did want American support, they wanted America to be involved because they actually thought maybe they mean all of these wonderful things that they're saying. Yeah. And maybe the crimes that we know that they've committed are anomalies, they're mistakes.

Because you didn't have a full record yet. You didn't have the full record of of how how brutal, how vicious, and most importantly, how relentlessly prolific they've been in their in their violence and their savagery and their oppression and subjugation and exploitation and so on. Like in the sixties, you know, we didn't know yet. The world didn't know yet, the global South didn't know yet, Africa didn't know yet, their experiences with the British primarily and the French.

I think it's the myth of them resisting the British and getting their

they have a they have a like I said, they talk a good talk and they have excellent propaganda machine. Yeah. And they have beautiful myths about themselves. And that's why Americans until now believe the myths. Americans themselves still believe the mythology about their country.

But the rest of the world now has seen the true face of America too many times and has felt the the hands of America around their throat too many times to to not understand that these are all myths. And that the myths are concocted or are any way promoted precisely to cause you to let your guard down. And to not know that you're actually dealing with an even worse nation than the ones that colonized you. It's nothing. They're they're worse than the British, they're worse than the French, they're worse than the Portuguese, they're worse than all of them put together.

And that's why they created these beautiful myths, you know. But but you know, there was a time when people believed it. Yeah. Sure. Yeah.

But now those days are over. So like like you could get like, at first you'd get fooled. Like say in the nineteen sixties, fifties, sixties Yeah. You'd get fooled. In the seventies, in the eighties, now you're being gaslighted.

Because you're starting to build up a very extensive track record Yes. Of brutality Yeah. Post world war two. By the nineties, February, and what have you, you don't even have an excuse to be gaslighted anymore. You don't even have an excuse.

That you you are if you if you're going to be if you're going to let them gaslight you, if you're to let them get away with gaslighting you, then you're just complicit. You're colluding actually. You're colluding with them. You're you're enabling them. You have a codependent relationship where you're enabling your own oppression or you're enabling your own subordination, subjugation.

You're enabling your torture room. At your stake. Given

all of the information that's widely available, publicly available, you still rely on or look up to organizations like the, you know, Human Rights Watch or whatever, you know, MSC International for authentic

Well, you know, see the problem is, and I've done this myself. When they talk about something that's on that's that's on our side, we'll cite them. We'll cite human rights watch and what they say about the occupation. We'll cite Amnesty International, what they say. We should stop.

Just like what you're talking about with the was it? MSG? Yeah.

The science, the pseudo science.

The pseudo science. The way that western so called experts, you know, for the last twenty, thirty years have been telling you this is bad for your health and then they'll change their mind and say it's good for your health and then, you know, go back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, depending on which industry is funding their research. And then you shared something about what was it?

It was about MSG.

It was about MSG.

Yeah.

They had come out against MSG for years

Right.

And it was basically just an anti China.

Anti local American Chinese restaurants, take out take outs thing. Mhmm. You know, the anti China thing didn't really emerge at the eighties, nineties at the time, you know. So it it it emerged at that time, this anti MSG propaganda. And now they're coming up with new studies or recent revelations about the fact that it was all propaganda.

Okay? Right. You you're

And you shared something

Yeah. Something

that was a westerner

Correct.

Debunking the propaganda. Correct. And you regretted that.

I regretted that.

And and I completely understand why and that's right. And everyone should take this position in my view. Certainly, of them should take this position. I understand the strategic logic of saying I'm going to use a westerner debunking western propaganda because the people who fell for the western propaganda in the first place already have a western supremacist mindset where they think that whatever comes out of the West must be good and superior. And so we'll listen to whatever they say, so that then when you have a westerner come out against it, then they will listen to that.

If you had a Chinese person come out and say no MSG is fine, no, well they say well well, what else would they say? Of course, you'll say that. But when you have a white westerner come out debunking the propaganda about MSG or anything else, You the strategic logic is, well these people will listen to that person. But you don't need to continue centering westerners in your understanding of the world. And what's true and what's not true.

And and if you if that that westerner, just as an example, that westerner who debunked the propaganda about MSG, tomorrow I don't know what he's going to say. Yeah. These are not reliable people, these are not reliable truth tellers. Their positions change all the time. So maybe, so if I'm featuring this person as someone who is debunking propaganda, I'm setting you up for believing the propaganda that they're probably going to sell you tomorrow.

Yeah. Because I'm holding them up as someone who's telling the truth. You can never hold these people up as people who are telling the truth.

See, I I realized that I'm I had I had that regret when I had a response to that particular debunking from someone I know. And then I realized that, okay, so this is a problem having this Western centric debunking mentality because I've known this from an Indian biologist from a small town university who who's has got a small town salary, but is an expert in chemistry. Yeah. So he explained it in the simplest terms under no obligation to anyone about the facts on the matter. Okay?

So that's how I know. So I realized that the person who responded to my sharing has no concept of ascertaining what is right or what is wrong in the first place. So you're the most likely victim to being swayed, you know, and that's the particular target of these, you know, western propagandists. You know? Coconut oil is evil.

Rice is evil. You know? Butter. Butter.

Sugar. You know, there's something to be said about what you what you just said. A small town what is he? Biologist?

Yeah. Chemistry professor.

A chemist sorry. A chemistry professor who is doing this not for profit, not for any reason because that's what experts do. This is how you this is what I this is what I was talking about earlier about if you were passionate about something, then you would have information about it. Yep. There's no one who is more passionate about any subject than someone who is an expert in it.

Your passion as an activist can't match the act, the passion of an expert because it was their passion that drove them to become an expert. And then you and then there's also further proof in that, in that the expert is so passionate about his subject that he gives you knowledge and information for free because he's passionate about that or she is passionate about that subject. They're just doing it because this is what I live for. This is what I live to do. I don't care if somebody pays me for it, don't care if someone agrees with me, I don't care if anyone even hears me.

But I can't stop talking about this subject because I'm just so passionate about it, you know. And that that passion is evidence by the knowledge that they have acquired and their desire and their passion for spreading that knowledge. Yes. You know. But so so like in this example, it's a good example even though it's not political, But it obviously there's crossover into how how people form their opinions in politics, is to just take dictation from westerners, and to always seek validation from westerners.

Like you need to not habituate yourself to this. And and anyone again who has a platform or who has a social media account or whatever, I would strongly discourage you from sharing. Westerners who are sharing views that reflect the truth or that reflect a proper understanding of what's going on in the global South or in Palestine or Gaza or Congo or anywhere else. Stop centering them. Don't habituate your own audience, your own friend group, your own community to continuing to seek validation of the truth from western mouths, from western spokespeople.

Because that's just setting you up for listening to their lies. Maybe today they're telling the truth, but tomorrow they won't be. And that's probably the only reason why they're telling you the truth today. Mhmm. And even when they're telling you the truth about it, they're not even doing it for honest reasons.

Yeah. This is very crucial. Like the Jeffrey Sachs. I mean, you've talked about

Yeah. Like Jeffrey Sachs. And I mean, the the list goes on.

Yeah.

The list goes on. I mean, you can you can you can I'm not saying you don't listen to them at all. You don't because sometimes you will get information. But I'm not gonna tell anybody, listen to this guy.

No. Heck no. Yeah.

You know, because like people people ask me all the time about like, to get information or what books do you recommend or what news sources do you recommend and so on. And I'm very hesitant to to suggest anything because none of the ones are reliable. The only thing that's reliable is my own intellect, my own ability of skepticism and critical thinking, and fifty, almost fifty four years of experience that allows me to read critically. My my reading is reliable. What I'm reading is not necessarily reliable.

Yeah.

It's all of the database that we're able to recall Right. You know, in in analyzing or assessing or ascertaining what's actually different ways.

Right. So know that no news source is reliable. None of them. Not theirs and not ours. None of them are reliable.

The only thing that can be relied upon is your own mind for being able to read between the lines and to and to correlate data, correlate facts from multiple sources and so forth to try to understand how things work. This is why, and I've talked about it before, but this is why I block and delete people continuously on YouTube. And we kick people out of the telegram group on a fairly regular basis. And it has nothing to do with, oh, you don't agree with me. I mean, can have to do with your just insulting if you don't have manners.

I don't want, you know, bad manners and profanity and so on dirtying up my comment section. But it mostly has to do with, you're not saying something that's an actual thought from your brains. You're either just regurgitating propaganda, or knowingly or unknowingly trolling, or saying something that's just that that is so rapid or so uninformed that it lets me know you don't belong here. You need to go to the classroom down the hall, not this one. You know, go to the kindergarten down the hall.

This is the university classroom. And so you don't belong here. So I'm doing you a favor and me a favor and my audience a favor by blocking you and deleting your comments. It's not about creating an echo chamber. This is an accusation by people who want to disrupt actual education.

People actually getting information by telling them, oh, this is all, you know, you're creating an echo chamber of people who all agree and who all think the same thing. First of all, truth isn't neutral. There aren't two sides to every story, equally valid. I mean, you can come up with all kinds of sides to any story, but the truth is the truth. And so the people who know the truth, are they in an echo chamber?

If they know the truth and you're creating an echo chamber because you don't let in falsehood? Yeah, well we gatekeep that, absolutely. And that also has to do with your own intelligence level. And so if you're in the comments section, saying things that that expose a very low intelligence level, at least in terms of the area that's being discussed, then yeah, I'll kick you out. Of course, and I I strongly encourage anyone and everyone to do that who has a social media account, Just like going back to what we were saying in the beginning, you have to erect partitions between you and people who in the real world would not be allowed in the conversation.

In real life, they shouldn't also be allowed in the conversation online.