Alternative Educator Two : The Baptist

Life is arguably meaningless. It is especially meaningless for those who have not found their own meaning in it. Life is less meaningless if you have found something to enjoy, take care of or work for, but that’s neither here nor there. On the day-today basis we are definitely tired of our unfulfilling jobs, feeling alone, and advertising that tells us that it’s our fault we’re unhappy.

This time we have a proper academic to tell us how to deal with it all.

Alternative educator 1: Thrown to the Lions.

The old establishment ™ is outdated.

Recently, on the fringes of the world wide web, thoughts have been stirring: dark, radical thoughts.

They are thought by radical, alternative thinkers.

One of them is a dude that will teach you how to use this alternative knowledge to make sense of the world.

Since nothing is created in a vacuum, let’s see this dude’s credentials. Where does he get his inspiration from? Who has influenced his ideas? Why should I be persuaded by his argument?

According to his website he has an eclectic educational background, mostly from outside of academia, in sciences and philosophy i.e. self-taught, with no scholarly training. Now, we are not education snobs here, so hey, let’s take a look at the books he learned from and now recommends to us:

  Pop science, pop science, weird esoterics, another book by the same author (what’s a “social architect” anyway?), Chinese philosophy, more Indian philosophy, Feynman lectures (oh hey, actual science, but hardcore physics), Dawkins (obviously), Markus Aurelius’s Meditations (obviously), Art of War (double obviously)[1], more pop science, literally one book by a woman (out of 48 other recommendations), metaphysics, metaphysics, one book on stat related economics… Some of this is pretty heavy stuff. The man can certainly read, at least.

  But can he write? Well, he has written 4 long essays on “economics”, and my academic senses tingled in excitement because, dear reader, I have had the pleasure of studying econ up to my second year of uni, and I know a difference between words such ‘neo-Keynesian’ and ‘neo-classical’, innit.

  That didn’t really seem to matter, as I read on through very verbose text and got really annoyed as all of these essays require a massive “citation needed” stamp across each. And why the hell is he referring to a very common term of “zero sum game” as “win-lose system”? And why is he simplifying systems of trade done in the ‘ancient times’? Why is his picture of the ‘current economic system’ doesn’t talk about economic things like cycles? Why doesn’t he refer to real-life examples of change to support his propositions? He keeps saying that we need to build a new model of economics that’s a win for everybody but doesn’t offer solutions. Aren’t these essays supposed to explore that? I could go on.

  After finishing reading all this new & revolutionary thought what struck me, is how much of this comes across as trying to re-invent the wheel, based on never having seen the wheel but hearing about it from someone who has seen it couple of times. I must stress, the intention of these essays is to… I am heavily assuming, because I am not very clear, is to present the idea that the world is kind of shitty right now[2], but could be made better. That is a very decent idea.

But… is it worth to pay a £250 to listen to that idea?

Well, the thing is, you could already listen to a lot of his ideas for free. The comments on his youtube podcasts are very enthusiastic along the lines of “this is pure knowledge gold” and “everybody needs to listen to this man”. I have also listened to a couple of the casts, but the thing is…I don’t remember much about what he said. I remember that he sounded very clever at the time, but I couldn’t tell you what was his point. Like his writing, it’s a lot of unsupported statements that lasted hours, and provided little to no solutions to proposed problems, if it acknowledged any. History that led to these problems is unscrutinised or presented so out of context in “in the olden days there was” format, as if the olden days are completely unrelated to the current day. 

The general idea of that things ‘could be made better’ is sort of good in itself, isn’t it though? Do you know what, I might be unfairly tough on the guy. If he wants to make the world better, maybe he has practically done more than just Edu-tament pieces on a bro platform for bros. Let’s check out his LinkedIn. What has he done to advance economics and reduce capitalism?

Oh, he founded an expensive nootropics company. Oh. 

[1] Yeah, I have read it as well, at this point who hasn’t (and if you didn’t, don’t bother).

[2] I also love how he defends himself at one point “I’m critising capitalism because it’s what’s on rn, I am not a dirty commie, I promise” – I am heavily paraphrasing, but like, that’s so indicative of the audience he is expecting.

‘Conspiracy Theory’ – a theory about some events that have/are happened/ing but are being either kept in secret or covered up ex-post.  

Conspirator – a person taking part in the conspiracy.

Conspirarist – a conspiracy theorist that theorises that a conspiracy theory exists.

Couple of months ago, I started getting into conspiracy theories no-not-like-that, as in – it fascinated me why people believe them. This was triggered by a gym member posting an ‘interview’ on the gym group chat and urging us to listen. The interview was with a (in?)famous anti-vaxxing quack who was basking the light because of the Covid19 pandemic extravaganza.

This in turn led me to explore the rabbit hole of who was the podcast host and why was he ‘interviewing’ (what a joke, he was asking leading questions, not interviewing) people who effectively contributed to scaremongering and fearshovelling in times when people needed clarity and comfort.

It was interesting to see that earlier in the career the podcast host [1] interviewed slightly kooky yet ok people but as the time progressed the interviewees became more and more…questionable. Let’s call this PodcastPlatform1. As I was looking through all of the content, an interesting pattern emerged:

1. There is one bitcoin ‘expert’ [2] that came on regularly to persuade people to sign up to either a pyramid-scheme or a make-money-quick scheme or possibly both.  
2. There’s one ehh…drug ‘expert’ whose main topic was that ayahuasca and its potential to “Kill Your Fears and Alter Your Consciousness”.
3. Also, rarely, but persistently an old Taoist man who talks about sex and multiple orgasms that you can reach or whatever. Orientalism? Never heard of it.

I’d joke that this place is Men’s Health on steroids, but that would be offensive to Men’s Health. However, PP1 does read like a men’s magazine on ayahuasca. Also, I was initially confused as to what exactly this place is about because it advertises “Business Masterclasses that are serious about your potential” in the banners surrounding the podcast window. The business class is led by your humble podcast host – Skeletal Man.