#755 - Dr Phil - What Happened To The Education System?

32:07It makes me so uncomfortable because again, I've read these news articles online, but it almost feels like fiction. It feels like some crazy outlier event that's not a big deal, and I don't know anybody that's been a part of this. And yet, you've been exposed to them, you've had conversations with them. You've seen it firsthand in your own industry, And I guess, you know, my two worlds have been promoting nightclubs and doing a podcast. They may be the two final frontiers of free speech because no one on the front door of a nightclub or on a podcast really cares all that much about trigger warnings.

32:45So to me, it hasn't entered my sphere. It almost seems like a fantasy. And yet you're saying that it's happening in the real world. Well, I think it's something like 80 % of the universities have engaged in trigger warnings, but you're not involved in it because you're entrepreneurial. You work for you and you don't hold yourself to that ridiculous yardstick, that ridiculous standard. And when you're entrepreneurial, you're focused on results, not virtue signaling. And that's a great place to be, Chris. I know I've been entrepreneurial all my life. So, but if you're in a corporation and you got a bunch of board members and all that are really interested in signaling that they're really dialed in, it starts spreading.

33:43And the universities are teaching this to our kids. So a question that I've always had is how much of what we're seeing internally is Coordination it's part of some grand plan to try and take down America or to undo the will of the people or to confuse them or to make them feel like victims or Narcissists or whatever it might be how much of it is that and how much of it is just Cowardous from people who don't want to lose that or just normal job anxiety Well, this is the new matter. This is the new mean that everybody needs to follow. This is toxic, compassionate, performative empathy, and this is what I need to do in order to be able to keep my job.

34:22I don't want to lose my job. So I'll just comply. How much of it is coordination do you think and how much of it is job anxiety? Well, I think these fringe activists are very coordinated. I think they use bot armies. I think they scare people and threaten people. And I think a lot of people are like, hey, it's a lot easier to just don't say anything. It's a lot easier to just keep my mouth shut, keep my head down and go on. But tell you what, I think that pendulum is starting to swing back the other way. And if you wonder if people are really buying into all of this, You can look and see how they vote when they can vote silently like with their wallet.

35:10You saw what happened at Target when they had the tuck -friendly clothing for children. I mean, right there for children to walk by, you saw what happened with Bud Light when they pushed the transgender. gender. And I think most people are like, hey, live and let live. If this person is transgender and that's what they want to do, who am I to say what they should or shouldn't do? But when you start pushing the agenda and say, it's not enough that you're okay with what I do. I need you to stand up and announce that you endorse this. It's not enough that you just live and let live. You got to stand up and tell everybody that you endorse what I'm doing.

36:06Then they're pushing to the point that people are going to say enough is enough and too much is too much. You don't get to tell me what I'm supposed to do. I don't need you to endorse what I'm doing and don't demand that I endorse what you're doing. And I think that a lot of these activists do not speak for who they say they represent. Because I've had a lot of people in these groups that say they're not talking for me. This sounds perilously close to what Jordan Peterson was warning everybody about six, seven, eight years ago, even. Well, it is in that he was saying that the Canadian government is requiring that you use this language, and he was saying, I will not be compelled by the government to say what you're going to tell me, I should say.

36:59And that's not happening here, and it's even worse, I think, because we do have freedom of speech with the First Amendment, we're muscling each other. I mean, I feel like I'm in George Orwell's 1984 sometimes when I'm seeing us requiring each other to use certain language and certain words, we're doing it to each other. It's not the government coming in and stepping on our rights. We're muscling each other. We're requiring each other to do certain things rather than allowing people to do what they want to do. What about the dangers of rewriting as well? Well, you know, I've heard that referred to as wokewashing.

37:44And I've seen some of the books like Huckleberry Finn, which have been rewritten. And it changes the meaning of the book so much that they changed the book so much that the meaning of the book has changed. And the whole my reading of the book was that it was a commentary on racism at the time. I mean, even when it was written, it would certainly be a criticism of racism by today's standards. It was a criticism of it at the time. But they're going to take that out. How is a reader, a child that's reading that book, a teen that's reading that book, going to learn the lesson in the book if you take it out?

38:43I don't understand that. I don't get that. It doesn't make sense to me. And I see them tearing down on statues and changing the names on some of the schools because these people owned slaves, well, you have to now say enslaved person, 250 years ago. Well, you know what? That's something that I refer to in the book as presentism, not my term. I learned it from someone else. And that very simply is taking today's standards more as in folk ways and applying it to something that happened 250 years ago is though 250 years ago they were supposed to say two centuries in the future this is going to be different so I need to force tell the future and hold myself to that standard.

39:49Was that a bominable behavior? Yes, of course it was a bominable behavior. Was it some, was it our proudest moment in American history? Of course it was. It was terrible. The way these people were treated and abused and sold, it was horrible. Do we want to hide that from our children growing up now and learning the history of America, you can't hide that. How are they going to learn? That is the lesson, right? That is the lesson. I mean, they're tearing down statues of people that crafted the Declaration of Independence. They're tearing down Lincoln who wrote the...

40:43It's more than I can take sometimes. But Presentism is like, let's say there's a street in your neighborhood and the speed limit is 20. So you drive through there 20 for days and days and days for months and months and months. And then they come along and say, well, we're going to change it to 10. Well, you think there's a lot of kids that moved in neighborhood. We're going to change it to 10. So they come and give you a retroactive ticket for driving 10 over. Well, wait a minute. The speed limit was 10 at the time. Was 20 at the time. Well, it's 10 now. So we're giving you retroactive tickets because you were driving 20.

41:24But it was 20 when I was doing 20. I know, but it's 10 now. You should have known we were going to change it to 10. So we're ticketing you for driving 20 when it was 20 That's what they're doing now. It's like we're gonna criticize you and tear down your statue because you were doing what was Acceptable at the time because it is not acceptable now the Yeah judging judging the people of yesterday by the standards of today especially when the standards are moving unbelievably quickly, is never going to be a good idea. No one is able to live up to, in fact, very few people are able to live up to the standards of today from today.

42:05You know, there's even, I have seen a lot of conversations online that people from the trans community, the LGBT community, talking about some of the different ways that it can be confusing to understand pronouns, or it can be, I understand that it's challenging too. I get it wrong as well. Well, it's like, look, if you, person who is supposed to be the arbiter of truth right now gets it wrong, there's no surprise that people would have gotten this wrong previously. The thing that's interesting, or the trend that I think seems new, genuinely novel and new, is how cemented people are in their beliefs, how much less open they seem to be about changing their mind, that if they have a belief that is intrinsic to their sense of self, they hold onto it tightly, they do not want to change it.

42:53If they do, that's admitting failure and that's like destruction and they can't deal with it. How much truth do you think there is in saying that people are less open -minded now than they were before? Well, I think they're very entrenched. I think it's confirmation bias. They look for what they look for what reinforces their existing belief and they are really closed off to new information. And you said it very well when you said it's changing so fast, it's hard to keep up with it now. If I'm doing a show that has to do with the LGBTQ community, I have researchers that check the glossary for what is preferred or acceptable now, even if I did it a month ago, because it may have changed.

43:57And look, I want to be respectful. I mean, if this is the language system they have, I want to be respectful in describing it. I even said in the book, I said, I'm going to try and describe this the way I think they look at this now. And I'm not setting up a paper tiger. I'm going to try and give you as real an explanation of how I think they describe sex versus gender now versus what they did before. And if I'm wrong, go to this website and check it to get it because I'm not, I'm not trying to say this wrong. But in this day and time, what they try to do is catch, we used to say catch somebody red handed.

44:47Now we say catch somebody with the wrong word in their mouth. It's not, it's not what they really feel. It's just catch a misspeaking and jump on that bandwagon. and they really get, they really alienate a lot of real allies. If they catch somebody saying something the wrong way, it might be somebody that's actually a huge supporter that just out of ignorance said something the wrong way or mis -spoke. And I think it is hard to keep up sometimes with what's acceptable terminology. I mean, I try to do it just out of respect, and maybe I get it wrong sometimes, maybe I don't. I don't know, I try.

45:30Well, I suppose again, the problem here is that if there is status associated to being a victim, there is an incentive for somebody to find victimhood even where there isn't any. And I guess the other side is that people know that most people are trying their best most of the time. I think I fundamentally believe that most people are good. The issue is I don't think the people that are enforcing these rules are particularly good. So they use their own theory of mind, which is, deep down, I don't think I'm a good person. Deep down, I know that the things that I say publicly and the things that I believe privately are the same thing.

46:06They understand that they're playing this game. They understand that it's narcissistic and manipulative and aggressive and maligned and all the rest of it. And they then port that same theory of mind onto everybody else. That means that when someone messes up out of good faith, they don't see it in good faith. Oh, here's the smoking gun that tells us that Dr. Phil is the racist, transphobic, big, at homophobic, Zionist, whatever that we always knew that he was, and this is proof of it. Is it that? Or is it just that language is imprecise? No, I think some of it's even worse. I think some of it is larseness, because if they can catch someone like me using a wrong word or saying something that they can say, Okay, this runs afoul of the current ideology.

46:57Then that's like goal because if they can jump on my coat tail, if they catch Joe Blow saying it wrong, then that's not much good. They catch me saying it wrong, you're gonna get a lot of headlines. How nervous does this make you feel? You know, you've spoken about this, I asked you right at the top. You're in the midst of it, right? You are patient zero for mainstream media. There is a lot of it around you, lots of plays, lots of notoriety associated with it. What's that like? What's personally what's that like for you on a daily basis to be walking on edge eggshells? Well, I don't walk on eggshells.

47:32I've said before, there's good news and bad news when you deal with me. The good news is if I'm involved in something, it's likely to get a lot of attention. The bad news is if I'm involved, it's something that's like to be a lot of attention. So that's why, I mean, really, if they can get me in a headline, then they get a lot of mileage out of it. So it can be, you know, Dr. Phil's Gardener has a wreck. I mean, my gardener can have a wreck 30 miles from my house, and it won't be Bob Jenkins has a wreck. It'll be Dr. Phil's gardener has a wreck. I could have been in Europe at the time, but the headline will be, and I swear, I could stop on sunset to get a kitten out of traffic.

48:33And it was the headline will be Dr. Phil arrogantly blocks traffic on sunset because they just get mileage out of it. So I've learned a long time ago that you can't make everybody happy so you might as well do what you truly believe. And as long as I know in my heart who I am and what my intentions are, Somebody prostituting that just doesn't bother me. I don't think there's anything particularly new about that. I think yes, maybe this has been amped up a little bit, but the news has always been in the clickbait business. They've just got better at it. It's a case of headlines, whatever the most aggressive, fierce, soaking, limbically hijacking wordage that they can come up with, that's what they're gonna go for.

49:24And that's the way that it's always been. I don't know what to say. I'll butcher the saying, but it is the lie travels around the world while the truth is still lacing up its shoes. It's something like that. And there's actually been a study about that. I think MIT did it. And it actually measured this and a lie travels six times faster than the truth. And the reason for that is, a lie is simple and quick and black and white. And the truth is never that clean, it's never that quick, it's more complicated. So a lie is good clickbait, it's a clean headline. And so it travels real quick. Have you heard of Brandelini's law?

50:14It's also called the bullshit asymmetry principle. It says that it takes far less energy to produce bullshit than to refute it. Therefore, the world is filled with unrefuted bullshit. Yeah, I believe it. What about me? Talk to me about family. I know this is something that's very important to you. Is there actually an attack on family at the moment? Yeah, I think there is, and I'm so sensitive to it, because I think family is the backbone of America. I think the family unit is the backbone of America. And if families are strong, and by strong, I mean, there are good family relationships. Kids have a good relationship with their parents.

50:58They stay in contact. They have, I mean, while they're together, they have meals together. They communicate together. I'll give you a tragic example of this, which will speak volumes. There's something going around right now called sex -stortion. And most people won't know what that means. You probably do. Even me, the terminally online guy doesn't know what this is. Well, this, and AI has, I told you, I'm going to have to start dealing with AI as things evolve. What's happening is these people are generating images. images, some of them they may have stolen from somewhere and some of them they generate completely made up and they get online and start talking to a young man and they send him this image of a girl.

51:58They talk to him like they're of 14 or 15 year old girl. Oh, it's like it's like AI cat fishing. Yes, exactly. They send him a picture. They start talking to him and say, you know, I like you so much. I want to send you a picture. So they send him a nude photo. It's like, I've shown you mine. You show me yours. I've shown you my body. You show me yours. And he's like, well, I'm not going to blow this. So he does. He sends her one back. The second they get it, they write back and say, I am not a 14 year old girl and I now have a naked picture of you and I'm going to send it to your parents. All the people in your contact list, your pastor, I've got your school yearbook.

52:45I'm going to send this to everybody and humiliate you if you don't send me $10 ,000 right now. And I did three or four stories about that last week and one of them killed himself in an hour and 40 minutes. He panicked and thought, oh my God, I'm going to humiliate my parents myself. He killed himself almost immediately. Another one killed himself in a matter of a few days. It was just horrible. I mean, just absolutely horrible. Why? Because there was a time when families were so tight that if something happened to One of them had happened to all of them. And you would go to your family with anything and you were, it was all together.

53:33And now there's, the relationships are so distant. They don't feel it anymore. And these kids felt alone. They felt they couldn't do it. And then we had a few examples there who did go to their parents and say, hey, I screwed up big time. Here's what happened. And so their parents said, well, don't even talk to me anymore. Just cut them off. And of course, the answer to that, if you get caught in that trap, is it was an AI -generated picture. All you got to do is say, that's not me. I wish that was me. Please send it to everybody. I don't care. And hang up. And I mean, you're out of it. But the kids don't think that way.

54:22and they panic. And that's because they don't have that relationship with their parents, with their family. Always tell parents, talk to your kids about things that don't matter. So that line is open when it comes time to talk about things that do. You gotta do that. You gotta have it where you can talk about anything. Does this suggest that family is under attack? Though is this not just a natural consequence? downstream of there's more things to distract people. They can watch Netflix or play video games or go on social media. How much of this is an actual purposeful attack? There are six billion views of the hashtags, toxic parent, toxic family, toxic mother on social media platforms right now.

55:19six billion views of them peddling no contact toxic parent toxic family. Yeah, it's under attack. People are out there selling that sort of mentality and these are people that don't know come here from go sick them about family dynamics or how to heal a family or anything about keeping a relationship open or what the consequences are if you cut off your family. And if you do and it's two years later and you're now alone and lost and depressed, let me ask you where those people will be then. You'll be able to find them in two weeks with a flashlight because they're gone. They don't know squat about nothing.

56:13They're just on their spewing out, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Give me some white pills then. What are the principles that people can use to rely on to be more resilient? There's a lot of bad outcomes at the moment that we've gone through. What are the ways that people can fight back? Well, that's because you asked questions about problems. That's why we've gone through bad outcomes. Ask me something happy, like the one you just asked. Number one, be Who you are on purpose?

56:51That, I talk in the book about 10 principles of a healthy society and number one is be who you are on purpose. Look, you don't want to be reactive to society. You don't just get up on whatever comes your way on the internet or at work or your friends. Don't be a sheep. Be who you are on purpose. And that means you got a star in your own life. And I don't care. You know, people say, well, that's easy if you use to say, Dr. Phil, you've had your own TV show for 25 years. So yeah, it's easy to be a star in your own life. I don't care if you're a plumber or a teacher or an architect or an accountant or whatever, star in your own life.

57:35You've got people in your life. You've got children. You've got friends. You've got parents. You've got a church. you've got a team you play a star in your own life and that means you've got to decide what's important to you and that I'm not telling you about being selfish. It's not selfish to take care of yourself because you can't give away what you don't have. If you don't take care of yourself, if you don't love yourself, if you don't nurture yourself, you can't love and nurture other people. So if you let yourself get emotionally bankrupt, then you have nothing to give to other people. So be who you are on purpose.

58:20Don't let the internet program, you don't let some ideology program, you choose who you want to be and what you think is important. That is, that to me is so critical. And I think you pair that up with thought that make all choose all behaviors based on results and all thoughts based on rationality. And rationality means is this thought based on fact? Is it, does it get me what I want? Does it protect and prolong my life? I mean, there are just simple tests that you can ask yourself, is this really something that makes sense? Easy questions you can ask yourself when you're thinking something. Is this factual?

59:27Have I verified this or is this something I'm telling myself? Does it get me what I want? Does it protect and prolong my life? These are things that you can ask yourself. So choose your behaviors based on... People always tease me about saying, how's that working for you? That's a pretty damn good question to be asking you. If you're doing something, how's it working for you? If it ain't working, change what you're doing. I love the idea of focusing on solving problems rather than winning arguments. I see so much of the discourse online is all about winning arguments rather than solving problems.

1:00:11Here's a really interesting example, something I noticed on Twitter, which is very rarely do you ever see someone concede a point and say, actually, that's really interesting. that you said that. I'd never seen that. I didn't see that before. And there's two reasons. First one being that admitting defeat online is tantamount to destruction. It's embarrassing. It's lame. You're supposed to have this perfectly robust walled -off fortress of whatever your philosophical world view is. And the second one is that most of the rhetoric is so adversarial and mean and cutting and sadonic that who entering into that type of an exchange wants to admit that they're wrong.

1:00:51So you've just taken the piss out of me for a full thread of tweets. I'm not going to say, oh yeah, good one, Dr. Phil. Thanks for really resetting my worldview. I'm going to say, no, you just called me a name before. So I'm going to call you a name and I'm not going to believe what you say. Yeah. And I'll challenge you to look at my threads and responses because I'll have people call me everything but decent. They get some good ones on there. Those are usually the ones I respond to if I respond. I don't sit and type in myself. I have somebody I tell. I say, I write this down because I type like.

1:01:35I'll say, I take this down. I tell them first off, Hey, thank you for caring enough to share your thoughts because it took time for you to respond. And I disagree with a lot of what you said, but I hear you and I hope you'll consider this and fact check me and if there are some things I said that are not factual then come back to me with it and let's let's talk about that because I had somebody that they said oh I thought you were really into facts and now I see you saying this I mean like I'll never I'll never follow you again and I said wait thanks for saying that and you didn't have to respond at all.

1:02:34You could have just cut me off, but please, fact check me and send me what it is that I'm wrong about. And if I am, I'll correct it and tell you and let's keep this dialogue open. And he hasn't responded yet.

1:02:55Because Because when I'm doing something on a show, I'll figure out what I'm going to say and do. I have what we call a brain room. These are college professors I've hired from around the country and they're all over the political spectrum. I'll have them research something. They'll send all of that to me. And then I'll work out the points I'm going to make and And I'll send that back to him and say is this supportable and they'll say well Yes, no or maybe and I'll get down to what there's absolute empirical support for And then when I do the actual show I send the transcript to them to check and make sure I didn't conflate two things that weren't meant to be or whatever.

1:03:51And if I've said something that is not what was intended or is not supportable, it comes out. So they check it before I do it, and then I check the they check the points I intend to make, and then they check the transcript afterwards, and then it goes to air. So I triple check things with a research room before I ever say it. and that book has been scrubbed top side and bottom. Let me tell you. Because I want to, let me tell you, I want to be the place that deals with facts. And if it's an opinion, I say so. I say, all right, now, I'm, there aren't, this isn't one that lends itself to facts. This is just opinions.

1:04:32I want to give you mine. Take it for what you will. I identify it if it's that way. Otherwise, I give them the empirical data. What do you mean when you say, do not stay silent just so others can remain comfortable? What you said earlier about, I wonder how many people are just kind of biting their tongue because they don't want to take the heat. And I say, I don't think we can do that. I think it's time we got to speak up. Dr. Phil, ladies and gentlemen, I really appreciate you coming on. I very much respect the fact that you're going through all of these hurdles in an effort to try and be balanced.

1:05:07I think it's in some ways sad that you need to do that just to protect yourself from being caught out in the wrong statement. And also given the fact that you reach millions and millions and millions of people, it's also important. Because if we're struggling with information and the quality of information, then the people who reach the most people should be trying to communicate it in the most accurate way possible. So yeah, it's a very impressive way to live out your philosophy. You know, I think if people are going to honor me with their time, I owe it to them to do my homework. So I'm going to do the best I can and I won't always get it right.

1:05:48And when I do, I'll correct it and hopefully catch it before it goes out. And if not, I'll say so. So I really enjoyed this conversation. You asked some challenging questions, Chris. So I really appreciate it. I appreciate you too. Thank you, Dr. Phil. You have to come up and see us sometime. And I'll be down your way pretty soon. I've got a lot of friends down there, Ron White and Joe Rogan and some other guys down there that I hang with. So hopefully we can do barbecue. We can play pickleball. We can do all of the awesome things. All right, good deal.