All right. Welcome to season five of Inside Mike and Newhead. This is Canadian podcast. It's all about the integration of leading an incredible, awesome life, individual responsibility, individual emergency preparedness, and how do we navigate life's incredible, wild disruptions that we see among a sit back, grab a beverage, and enjoy the episodes.
All right. Welcome back to the Ottawa studios of Inside Mike and Newhead. Listen, this week we're going to talk about violence. Yeah, listen, the world is a chaotic, incredibly difficult place to navigate right now.
We have a lot of state-sponsored violence. We have a lot of state-executed violence. We have a lot of state violence against their citizens, and we have a lot of interpersonal violence happening. And the idea within preparedness that security being your last of your five animalistic requirements has a portion of where you need to be able to physically defend yourself in situations where you don't have an exit.
Today, I think it's really important that we talk about violence, writ large, why it is, where it comes from, and why it can actually serve a purpose. So sit back, grab your favorite beverage, let's get to it. And so we know humans are a violent animal. We are an animal within the environment.
We have to always remember that. We're not a species that sits above the environment. We're part of the ecosystem. But I would call us a constrain and a moral animal, which means we don't abjectly use violence as a course of action at all times against all people.
But remember, morals are collective, right? Individuals like you and I both have a set of beliefs and values, you know, things that we believe to be true are right versus wrong, and things that we value, honesty, integrity, that type of things. Those are individualistic. Morals are collective expressions of value.
So society, we have morals about violence, right? We believe random violence people is wrong. So we codify that in laws and we call them assault charges, right? I can't walk up to a lady I don't like on the street and punch her in the face because I feel like it because I have chosen to live in a society where we have a moral code called the law saying that that's against proper behavior.
And so we don't do it. And obviously I have a value and a belief that that's wrong, but we also codify things in our law, because that's what our criminal law is. It's a codified set of morals that say these are behaviors that we find abhorrent and we choose to make them inappropriate and codify that in our society. Now from a moral perspective, some people require religions.
They follow a fixed set of morals that come from a religion. Most of us learn morals from our society that we're born into, right? So, you know, it's that old joke about the birth lottery. Where did you get born?
You know, where did you pop out happens to be the environment that you're in? It's probably the religion. You don't have a choice as an infant as a young person growing up in a religious environment to oppose the religion. You're basically told that these are the set of rules and morals and the teachings that you must live by.
And then when you become an adult, you go out into the world and realize that your religion is not the only thing in the world. And now you're faced with a whole bunch of collective decisions. And the Jesuits used to say, show me the seven year old and I will show you the man. And this is based upon, you know, human psychology has long since sought out, you know, the rationale behind that.
And it basically means as a human, we're born and we learn how to operate in our society based upon observations, right? It's like this grand scientific experiment that we're in. So as we grow up from say zero to about seven years old, we learn everything we need to know about the set of rules that govern how we operate in society, how we response to anger, how we respond to grief, how we're expected to act in different situations. I mean, that's why human baby is learning up to age seven.
So at age seven, we basically as a human have learned the set of rules and then we from that then operate in the world based upon those set of rules. And I mean, that's a lot behind why the vast majority of human beings will replicate to some degree, repeat the existence, the socioeconomic existence of our parents. Now, rich kids stay rich because they learn about the rich life and they learn about how to behave in the rich life and they learn about how to work in and operate in the rich life. And as do those born into lower ends of the socioeconomic spectrum, they learn about life and how to operate in that and they emulate it.
And this is why statistics are all over the map depending on the piece of demographics that you pick up. Some studies have shown that 95% of the kids repeat socioeconomic standing of their parents, some show 80%. It's fair to say the literature is common, that's a vast majority of young people will reflect the upbringing that they have. So what has this got to do with violence?
Well, in some societies, fighting is a rite of passage, right? So this is both for physical violence when it comes to fighting in a square, fighting for different things, different tribes in historical times have put people, put young men out in difficult, fearful situations. So it's also been the fight against fear and be, you know, that becoming a man, that toxic masculinity that seems to be so horrible now until somebody invades your country and all the sudden you're looking for the big scary toxic masculine individuals to go defend your land. But that will deal with that in a short while here.
But the end, it's about fighting for resources. And there was a great quote from a program that I watched this week. And I can't remember the exact title. So if this is yours, I give you great credit.
It's basically a man's morality is measured by their access to resources. When we have nothing and we are watching our family starve or struggle, we become no different than cavemen access to resources maintains order in a collective society. And I had never really thought of it that way and group sharing resources. So if you look at the tribal way, and I look a lot back to the tribal times of the anywhere from 10 hundreds to 12 hundreds before feudalism really took off, and you think about these small villages, right?
Families didn't starve in a village unless the village was starving, you know, an animal that was caught and slaughtered in a Mi'kma tribe. If they killed a moose, the meat was shared with the tribe. Like this wasn't the families that kill, you know, the hunter that got it, it wasn't his moose, and he would only share with people he wanted to. This was a collective kill, right?
And so we maintain morality and order in our societies and our collective societies because we have access to resources. When you push people beyond the point where they can't eat, where they no longer have the ability to sustain appropriate nutrition, you get into a position where you have a fight. And that fight often occurs simply first between different individuals for a fight for resources, but it quickly through history evolves into a fight between the government maintaining order and the people fighting for access to resources. You know, it's long been said that the billionaires know that the pitchforks are out for them.
And so one of the greatest risks to civil order in modern society has been the wealth gap, right? A wealth gap needs to exist in a society otherwise there's no there's no innovation, right? There's no goal for people to go out and do the hard 18 hours of work in sitting in a laboratory trying to invent new things. There has to be a reward for that and there has to be a wealth gap between the people who are willing to put everything into innovation for nothing and only the potential for earning something and the people who just want to go to work and get a paycheck, right?
So there's always going to be and there always should be a wealth gap. But when that wealth gap gets too big and it gets too broad and the people at the lower end of the wealth gap realize that no matter what they do and no matter how much effort they put in, they're not going to get any further ahead and they only see the rich class getting richer and richer and they're not getting any further ahead that pitchforks come out for the rich. And it won't take more than a mob of you know, 2000 to 3000 poor people to take Bill Gates compound from him, right? I mean, let's be honest, we're not that point in society.
But when you look at what happened in places like Zimbabwe, when certain governments were awarded and they just said just go take go take the crap from the rich people and they did. They literally by hundreds walked up on a farm and either killed the people that were there or chased them off and basically took over their property and all the wealth that they had and the wonderful trappings of being a rich individual. So society maintains order and keeps violence to a very low degree by making sure there is a proper share of resources around. Why is this important?
Well, right now we see on the verge of some saying is going to be a far greater recession than what even the Bank of Canada or the central bank in the US is calling for. We see this gap widening. We see that pretty much every single billionaire and multi millionaire has some form of escape plan or bunker they're building or creating some fortified gated community to retreat through. No, I don't think we're at the verge of a movie like the purge where that kind of violence comes out.
But we're getting close to the point where the people who are living very, very close to the line, if not over the line and can't get ahead and are facing all that mental difficulty of dealing with that kind of stress. We're not far from a point where they simply say, you know what, my family's hungry. I'm going to the grocery store where I know there's food and I'm going to take the food that my family needs and I'm going to bring it back to my house. I don't have any money, but I'm not going to starve because I don't have any money.
You know, we are not that far from that level of society and which is why the wealth gap is again should exist and needs to exist in a progressive modern society, but it needs to be managed. And now it is far too large of a gap, shall we say? So when we look at the violence side of it, right now we have a situation where the state has a monopoly on violence. And I'm a firm believer that the government must never have a monopoly on violence, nor must they ever have a monopoly on the use of lethal force.
If you look at, that's a controversial statement and some of you will say, would, but think about it for a second. If you ever wondering the theatrics aside, Kerry Wedler has a great YouTube channel where she does rant, you know, these really fast talking short rants about the diabolical murderous U.S. government that through drone warfare has killed tens of thousands of people around the world. They use state violence through the application of force by the police on top of people.
We saw that here in Ottawa in February when the the trucker convoy occupation call it whatever you will was dealt with by a violent set of hands by an authoritarian jackboot police force here in Ottawa and supported by police forces all around. Like the citizens were not equipped and the law does not equip them to oppose that level of state violence. We simply as a society have to accept that that's appropriate and have to take and bear the beating of the police were not permitted to fight back with violence against the government, nor am I calling for violence in the government. But when you think about it, just look at the United States example.
And I use this a lot simply because the United States of America is like no other society in the world. And as a social researcher, I understand that you can't compare things that happen in the United States, even, you know, vaccine up takes and all these other things. You can't compare the United States of America along lines to other countries in the world because they're structurally and culturally different from anything we've seen in the human experiment, right? I mean, they swear people who swear and oath, swear and oath to the Constitution of the United States of America, not to the government.
And they swear to defend it against all enemies, foreign and domestic, right? And there are times where that domestic enemy is the state itself. And inherent to the US experience is the citizens of the US have a responsibility to have the skill set and the and the weapons to overthrow an evil regime, right? They have the responsibility to overthrow some like if the US government returns to what the British government was, you know, ruling, autocratically over top of the US people, they have a true belief in either US, you know, the Declaration of Independence, they have a responsibility to overthrow the government with force.
That's, you know, some now we're not going to get into a debate as to whether how you interpret the Second Amendment of the US Constitution. But the end result is is that the US believes culturally collectively that they must be an armed state. The people must be armed to have the capacity to oppose the government should the government become tyrannical, right? We don't know other country in the world, no other cultural set of people in the world hold that belief.
Like I live here in Canada, we have a lot of gun debate going on, but we as as culturally as a society, we don't believe that Canadians should overthrow the government by force or should retain the ability to overthrow the government by force. We believe we should retain the ability to overthrow the government through the ballot box, right? Through the use of democratic processes, and we should do everything to prevent a government from gerrymandering or jury rigging, that process to ensure that they stay in power. But the US has that responsibility ingrained in their culture, that their citizens have that responsibility to overthrow a tyrannical government.
So violence is very much part of who we are as an animal. We all have the inherent capability. I mean, Jordan Peterson says it famously, you know, toxic masculinity is a joke. The fact men should be capable of great levels of violence.
He says you should be a monster. I just believe that the humans should have the capacity for great levels of violence, yet keep that under control, because there may be times where you need it. And the old adage goes, you know, I'd rather be a warrior in a garden than a gardener in the war. And then you look at national armies, you know, no other, and I did, and I was in the army for 28 years, no other group has the legal and moral authorization for the application of deadly force on behalf of the state than a state's military, which is why they must be the most tightly controlled and managed organization within a free and democratic state, because they are by definition, the only organization that has the capacity and capability to overthrow a democratically elected government.
I'm not sure how that would work in Canada, but the Canadian military is the only organization in this country that actually has that force capability. And Adam Smith famously says in his wealth of nation's book, that the first thing that a democratic nation needs is a standing army, even before you get into welfare and food lines and anything else. And the reason for that is it's not to control the public, a standing army's job and responsibility is to keep other countries out. Now, when you live in a country like Canada, the United States, we have the two biggest anti-tank ditches on either side called the Pacific and the Atlantic Ocean.
Nobody's going to invade us other than each other. We tried that in the 1800s and we just figured that wasn't a good thing. So we haven't done that again. But the point being is when you live in Europe, and Europe is a prime example right now considering what's going on in Eastern Europe, countries have the ability and have a history of invading each other.
There has never been a long-gated peace in Europe, permanently. It hasn't existed. Now European powers from 1400 onward, right up until the rise of the American Empire have conquered the world. I mean, literally, vast portions of the world, but they've never been able to maintain peace in Europe.
Peace doesn't exist in Europe. It hasn't for humanity and it probably never will. There always will be some state of conflict in Europe. So each European country has the responsibility to its citizens to maintain a large, capable standing army that has both the authority and the wherewithal and the culture to fight if necessary.
And what that does is it makes your enemy think twice. I mean, Ukraine's army didn't look all that tough until the Russians ran into it. But the idea of having a standing army is you turn somebody else's intentions into a really, really bad day. So when we talk about violence and preparedness, we've talked about it before as that animalistic requirement of security where you as an individual need to have skill sets.
And I'm not going to advocate for one martial art versus another. But the point here is that there is there will be a time sometime in your life existence where you are put in a position where you can't escape the threat or actual application of violence against you as a human being and picking out a cell phone and dialing a number and magically waiting for some force to come help you and rescue from that situation. You may not be alive by time that force arrives. So the point being is you as a human animal on this earth have a responsibility to yourself and those for whom you're responsible to have the physical ability to defend yourself against a threat.
Now most good martial arts simply teach you, listen, I just need to fight to create a hole a hole through which I can escape and get away. And that's it. That's the whole point. It's not about getting into a boxing match and going 10 rounds with somebody.
It's about being able when somebody is standing between you and your escape route to be able to physically remove them from the escape route and for you to leave. That's the whole idea of having a skill set. And you have to be able to do it. You know, what do you do if somebody threatens violence against you?
Do you get on your hands and knees and beg them not to hurt you? I mean, that generally doesn't work. So we live in a society that is morally kept away from violence by the distribution of resources. We're having problems with that right now.
We have to be very, very collectively aware of the fact that we need to take care of each other and ensure that everybody has access to resources. Because I'll tell you this, I have no problem using violence to get the resources to feed my family. If I was unable to feed them, and I'm pretty sure everybody else would concur with that. I train.
I'm not that great of a fighter. I used to be a lot better. I'm a little bit older now and I've realized I have to start picking up on that skill set and getting bad in my fighting skills. The point being is that I have a responsibility to myself that I'm out for a walk at seven o'clock at night and some guy or some group of people decide that I look like an easy target.
I've got to change their mind in a very short period of time that this is probably not a good idea and to move along and carry on and find somebody else and not me. So hopefully today, this little discussion on violence and how it exists in human society, the importance of your ability to defend yourself and understanding that we simply should not in any way shape or form underestimate the human animal's ability for violence, nor should we just assume that our state governments will use violence in the most appropriate manner. Over this pandemic, we have seen far too many instances of state application of violence against citizens that has been both at Horrent, disgusting, and very few have had the ability and the skill set to fight back against the state and those times are coming. So thank you very much for listening this week on Inside Mike Newhead.
We're at a bit of a shorter summer schedule. That should wrap up at the end of the month. We'll get back to full episodes a couple of times a week. Thank you very much for the ongoing contributions that everybody is making to ideas for this podcast.
If you got something you'd love me to talk about, then throw it out there. If you've got something you'd love me to do a video on, shout it out there. So thanks again, take care of each other and remember to do your daily push-ups. Whoa, pro-patria, take care.