Speaker 1: That has been the tool of the left wing since
the post war era. That is, push against what people
find acceptable. Push as hard as you can, and if
people don't react, keep pushing, keep provoking, keep provoking the categories, keep.
Speaker 2: Pushing against people's standards. And then when.
Speaker 1: People react too strongly, then say no, no, no, it's ambiguous.
That then open up the ambiguity, say that's not what
we meant, that's not what we're actually referencing, you know,
open up the space so that you don't have an
enemy to punch. And it's all very fluid and all
very very ambiguous. And then but what you want is
to find just enough reaction to be able to wedge.
And if you can wedge in gaslight at the same time,
it's even better. So then you can wedge and you
can create two sides, and you can force people to
take your side and then force people to be against you.
And then, like I said, if you can gaslight at
the same time, it's even better because then you can say,
they have no reason to attack us. Look at how
defenseless we are, look at how we're victims. You know this,
they misunderstood us. And although they misunderstood us, they're attacking
us anyways, and so now you know, we feel morally
justified to continue to push. And so this is exactly
what we're seeing. You know, when you look at the
boxing match, it.
Speaker 3: Is this is Jonathan Peeshel, Welcome to the symbolic world.
Speaker 2: Hello everyone.
Speaker 1: With the surprising success of highlights video on the Olympics
and the opening ceremony, you know, I wasn't thinking that
I'd be making videos on the Olympics, but because there
are other things going on with the whole question of
the male female boxing situation that is happening, and I'm
seeing that explode as well. And I'm also noticing that
for many people, things are a little confusing and they're
not certain, you know, what is happening and why all
this is happening. But there's a direct relationship between what
happened at the opening ceremony and the controversy that's going
on with the female boxing situation, and so I thought
that it would be a good idea to talk about it,
you know, maybe to help people understand the general situation
and you know that it's not just really about male
to female boxing, but that there are bigger things at stake,
and so as you can see, I am I'm not
in my usual place. I'm actually right now on the
island of Samos. I'm here for Ralston College. All you
young people in your twenties, if you don't know about
Ralston College, you should definitely check it out. It is
one of the great things happening in our world today,
something that is giving us hope, giving me hope, and
so I'm really happy to be here to support them.
Speaker 2: In any way that I can.
Speaker 1: And so one of the things that happened during the
UH during the opening ceremony was a celebration of gender ambiguity.
Speaker 2: And so that is what we talked.
Speaker 1: About in our last video, that the use of drag queens.
But it wasn't just gender ambiguity, was ambiguity in general,
and ambiguity as a political tool.
Speaker 2: You could say.
Speaker 1: The fact that the reference of the you know, the
whole gender problem that happened, the fact that there's contessation
about whether or not it was the last suffer, whether
it's just the feast of Dionysus, you know, and all
these people fighting over that has to do with the
question of ambiguity. It's an image of the drag queen
themselves as an image of ambiguity, and how ambiguity call
is a drift between categories and causes confusion and a
you know, and that confusion can be used politically because
one of the things you can do is that once
you create confusion and you create uncertainty, you can wedge
that uncertainty and you can force people to take one
side or.
Speaker 2: The other of a question.
Speaker 1: That is of course the culture war, and we're seeing
the culture ward come at full force.
Speaker 2: Within the Olympics.
Speaker 1: Now, what I hope to do is to maybe help
people think through some of the things that are happening
so that we don't have reactionary re you know, just reactionary.
Speaker 2: Approach to the question, and that we don't.
Speaker 1: Just take sides in the culture war just to take sides. Now,
sometimes it is important to fight for things that you
that you think are worthy and are.
Speaker 2: Important to fight for.
Speaker 1: But we have to be careful not to be roped
in and seduced by our anger into our into these
to camps that are set up in a manner to
how can I say this? And there are all these
beautiful ways that it's being set up in this question.
You know, we're being forced to take sides, let's say
in a culture war. So, like I said, one of
the things that happened during the opening ceremony was this
ambiguity that is being celebrated. It is, of course the
ambiguity of Carnival and the drag Queen is a great
example of ambiguity. By showing a person that has ambiguous characteristics,
you are forcing people in there. Let's say, it makes
reality fluid, really in the way that the rainbow people
talk about. It creates a fluid reality to you, a
puzzle to you. Right, So you have a being that
presents itself to you that is showing you different characteristics
that usually don't go together. And what it forces you
to do is to in some ways impose an order.
And it forces you to, let's say, see the world
with a certain lens. It forces you to take sides.
The question is you know, and this is of course
the entire trans issue, is that it forces you to say, is.
Speaker 2: That a man or is that a woman?
Speaker 1: But you know, usually we do that very implicitly, but
now it forces you to do it explicitly. Usually we
don't talk about that. We see men with you women,
we just recognize them. As such, we don't actually have
to make a debate about it.
Speaker 2: It does it.
Speaker 1: It's not part of our discourse. It just is just
you know, experience reality. But when something ambiguous presents itself
to you like a sphinx, right, this is the whole
idea of the enigma.
Speaker 2: Of the sphinx.
Speaker 1: The sphinx forces you to explicitly solve the puzzle and
decide what it is that is facing you. And because
gender is a dual category, by presenting to us beings
that are ambiguous, it forces you to decide. And when
you decide, you are going to decide on one side
or the other.
Speaker 2: Hence the culture war, hence the conflict.
Speaker 1: And so that is why ambiguity can be a very
powerful tool to bring about political change and to force
political transformations that go you know, especially people pushing for
this type of ideology that wedges the issue and forces
people to take sides and something that they never would
have take sides in. You know, think about the question
of gendered bathrooms twenty years ago or thirty years ago
with our parents.
Speaker 2: They wouldn't even have understood the question.
Speaker 1: They wouldn't even have they would have been completely confused
at the idea that we have to decide who goes
in what bathroom. Although it's not like there were drag
queens thirty years ago. It's not like the idea of
sex change operations didn't exist thirty years ago. It is
the use of it in political discourse and the bringing
of this into the public sphere and making it, you know,
a hot button issue. You could say, that is forcing
us to enter into this culture war. And so what happened,
what is going on in the boxing situation is the
mere reflection, the exact mirror reflection of what happened in
the Paris opening ceremonies. It's important that we see that because.
Speaker 2: Look at the issue.
Speaker 1: And so what we have are two characters, two people
that are ambiguous. They present ambiguous signs when you look
at them. They present characteristics that are male, and they
also have other characteristics.
Speaker 2: That are female, or at least the way they dress.
Speaker 1: And you know, the idea maybe their genitalia might not
be might not be male, but we're not sure. And
so the person presents themselves as ambiguous. And what that
does is it forces organizations to have to judge whether
or not they're male or female, especially if they're going
to enter into the public sphere. You know, usually in
the past, gender ambiguous people kept that private, and you know,
this is something that has existed. You know, people have
ambiguous sex, for example, who have deformed sexual characteristics, who
when the child is born, and this is very rare, right,
These are very rare events where someone is born and
then you have to decide whether or not it's a
boy or girl depending on the characteristics they present. It
seems like, you know, maybe one of these people at
least has some kind of condition that is simply we
don't know.
Speaker 2: I don't want to decide what their condition is. And
that's not the point, and that does what It doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: But when you put someone like that into the public
sphere in a situation where someone is beating on someone else,
it forces us to take sides. It forces us to
decide which way this goes and the way that it's
happening is going to be done with the culture war.
Speaker 2: And so either you're a progressive and you.
Speaker 1: Believe that gender is fluid and that people can decide
their own gender and that you know, gender is a
social contract, etcetera, etcetera on this side, or whether you
think that it's x Y chromosomes or it's very sm
pecific ways of dealing with this. Now, what's amazing about
this situation is that the people that are being presented,
at least one of them, the Algerian boxer, is truly ambiguous, right,
because there are rare occasions where that true ambiguity happens.
But that true ambiguity is being used as a political
tool to move an agenda forward. If you look at
the issue, you can see what's going on. First of all,
the organization that had judged that this person was not
eligible for boxing. We're being told by you know, the
Associated Press that this is a Russian organization or an
organization with Russian tides. You have to be able to
when you hear you have to be able to see
how things are stuck together on one side of the political
war in order to make you realize which side you
have to take.
Speaker 2: And it's unconscious for some people.
Speaker 1: And so if I hear Russian, and I hear you
know that they're deciding that this person is not a
female for biological reasons, then all these things line up
and I can see, oh, far right or whatever whatever
word you want to use, a reactionary, conservative, transphobic. All
these terms now appear in my mind because these things
are brought together into one little into one nice band.
And then and fight see on the other side that
this that the gender of the person is decided by
what is on their passport. Uh, and that it's a
it's a it's a a globalist organization like the Olympics
and everything around it.
Speaker 3: Ah.
Speaker 1: Then I see nationalism, Russia, right wing, and then I
see globalists, open, left wing and progressive and.
Speaker 2: All of that stuff. And then I know which which
place to go.
Speaker 1: I know, and people don't do it on purpose again
most of them, but then I immediately intuitively know which
side to take and also who my enemy is.
Speaker 2: And it truly is the case.
Speaker 1: Because it's interesting that the press has been announced. The
Olympics announced themselves that they used what was written in
the passport in order to decide which gender someone is.
Speaker 2: And that raises alarm.
Speaker 1: Bells on the other side right away, because you think, oh,
so it means that now all the countries that believe
that gender is fully a social contract construct and that
anybody can change their gender in any way they want legally,
that means that those people will in the next Olympics
be permitted to fight or to do whatever they want
and to be on whatever side they want they want,
And that's what it's signaling. Now, whether or not that's
exactly what's going to happen, but that's what it's signaling.
And the same is with the other side, is that
you know, these Russian people that are actually banned from
the Olympics and don't want to participate in the globalist discussion.
These these these right wing nationalists. Now these people are
the ones who do not want to accept someone who
is an exception like the Algerian fighter and therefore is
a bully, is excluding, is whatever, transphobic and all the
words that.
Speaker 2: You want to use. But this was already.
Speaker 1: Announced in the opening, in the opening ceremony of the games.
Where this situation think about it, the situation of ambiguity.
Here's a tableau. It looks like Leonardo da Vinci's last supper.
Some people have said that it references Leonardo da Vinci's
last supper in the organization, some of the people in
the tableau themselves, even the organization mentioned that, and then
all of a sudden they're saying, well, no, it's not.
It's actually referencing this other painting that is the feast
of Dionysus. So create ambiguity and now force people to
take sides. And then what happens is you create that
divide in the cultural war. Some people will take the
right wing sides, some people will take the left wing side,
and everybody will feel like they're completely justified. But that
is the uh that has been in some ways the tool,
and now I am going to take sides myself to
some extent that has been the tool of the left
wing since the post war era. That is, push against
what people find acceptable. Push as hard as you can,
and if people don't react, keep pushing, keep provoking, keep
provoking the categories, keep pushing.
Speaker 2: Against people's standards.
Speaker 1: And then when people react too strongly, then say no, no, no,
it's ambiguous. That then open up the ambiguity, say that's
not what we meant, that's not what we're actually referencing,
you know, open up the space so that you don't
have an enemy to punch. And it's all very fluid
and all very very ambiguous. And then but what you
want is to find just enough reaction to be able
to wedge and if you can wedge in gaslight at the.
Speaker 2: Same time, it's even better.
Speaker 1: So then you can wedge and you can create two sides,
and you can force people to take your side and
then force people to be against you.
Speaker 2: And then, like I said.
Speaker 1: If you can gaslight at the same time, it's even
better because then you can say, they have no reason
to attack us. Look at how defenseless we are, look
at how we're victims. You know this, they misunderstood us,
and even though and although they misunderstood us, they're attacking
us anyways. And so now you know, we feel morally
justified to continue to push. And so this is exactly
what we're seeing, you know, when you look at the
boxing match, it is you know, and also because we've
seen it in other sports already.
Speaker 2: You know, if you guys.
Speaker 1: Remember in MMA, there was a fighter fell in Fox
who was a man who transitioned to be a woman
and was beating the crap out of out of women,
and that created so much controversy. And now we feel
like there is a repetition. But now this repetition is,
you know, and it's too bad because this person and
like the person that's involved in this this box are.
And I'm not going to name names because they don't
want to. I mean, you know what their names are.
But I don't want to participate in this. It's not
their fault, like it's not this person's fault. You know,
they're just a regular person from Algeria trying. You know,
she's just trying to make her way in sports. Possibly
she should have not been allowed to participate. I'm not
an expert. I don't know, but that's the thing. That's
the whole thing about the ambiguity of the situation, the
fact that one organization has vanned her and another organization
is letting her in.
Speaker 2: But the quality of those organizations is important.
Speaker 1: To see that all it is is a continuation of
the culture war, and so you know, I would say
it's important to see this. It's important to be able
to see so that you can keep thinking because one
of the problems, and I see it happen every time,
is that people just take side to take side. They
actually stopped thinking about why they're taking decide. They're thinking
they just have a way to associate certain things together
and then and then they just take political sides and
then fight their enemy, and it prevents thought it makes
people stop thinking about the actual issues.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: It's like you can you can, for example, be against
the war in Ukraine and still agree with some Russian
organization's judgment that these people shouldn't fight. But the fact
that we say that in the news, that it's related
to Russian is because someone is trying to stick it
all together. Someone is trying to make you react in
a way that if you're against the war in Ukraine,
therefore you should be against this organization and you should
be for this other, you know, organization. And that's why
we have to be careful and notice these strategies, and
the strategies, by the way, are used by both sides,
let's be honest. And so we have to be able
to be attentive and to be able to continue to think.
But one of the problem is the problem of ambiguity,
which is that because things are set up in a
way to celebrate ambiguity, makes it very difficult to think.
Speaker 2: Because we're not experts, we don't know. But we see
that the.
Speaker 1: Olympics are saying anybody who puts a certain gender have
a certain gender on their passport. They're communicating that to
us that they'll be able to participate in women's sports,
and so it feels like, can I say that it
feels like what we're seeing is the slow disappearance of
women's sports.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'm not actually that interested in the subject of sports,
but what we're seeing. The biggest surprise in all of
these questions is how ultimately.
Speaker 2: A lot of these issues.
Speaker 1: And these ambiguities will force the world to decide and
it will recreate a rather strong manifestation of gender. Even
if it is men who come in to the ring,
you know, or male types who come into the ring
who are feet or women but are male in their
presentation and.
Speaker 2: Everything about them looks male.
Speaker 1: That now you see these these characters beat up women,
what it will do ultimately is reify the notion of gender,
reify the difference between men and women.
Speaker 2: There's no doubt about it.
Speaker 1: It might take a little while, it might be a
little bit of a roundabout time for us, but that
is the last That is the inevitable situation we'll find
ourselves in, because the reaction that you have of watching
a man beat a woman is a very deep, deep
one that it will be difficult to suppress in people,
and even if we accept consciously and people accept consciously
that oh, it's really they're both women and that you know,
it'll still reify that there is such a thing as
masculine characteristics, and those masculine characteristics they have an effect
in the world, and there's a reason why we separate
men from women. Even if whatever chever side you take,
that is the final path towards which this will lead.
We might see a lot of chaos in between, but
that is definitely where all of this will end up.
And so hopefully this is good to help you think
a little bit and to consider and to not let
yourself just be taken up by emotions, but be able
to think through these issues and to notice the strategies
that are being used in order to create narrative. We
need narratives, but we have to be attentive and recognize
the narrative because sometimes narratives are very useful for political control,
and we want to be as clear minded as possible
as we see the story that's being presented to us.
Speaker 2: So I hope it's been useful to everyone.
Speaker 1: Don't forget to go to symbolic world dot com and
become a member if possible. We are getting ready Richard
Rowland and I to start Purgatory Dante Purgatorio. We just
finished Inferno about a month ago and it was amazing,
just so much insight.
Speaker 2: Coming out of this class.
Speaker 1: And although people don't know Purgatorio so much, it's actually
where a lot of the meat of you know, the
thing that's the most applicable to your life, and how
to understand how Dante's comedy can apply to your everyday life.
Speaker 2: It is in Purgatorio. So come join us as we ascend.
Speaker 1: The mountain of Purgatory, and for everybody else, we'll talk
to you very soon.
Speaker 2: Bye bye,