May 40 here. So we talk a lot about politics on this show. And what's the point of politics? What's the purpose of politics? What's the purpose of life?  Ken Brown, aka Deep Left Jerkel, is not afraid to ask these deep questions. And recently did a video delving into these profound matters. And I think it raises some important points. So here we go. CES, for you politics only seems to mean method, not goal or purpose. Always talks about power and method, but never what to do with that power. So the definition for me of politics is the organization of people.  In a sense you can think of politics as the mechanics of society. So if I'm a mechanic, I know how a car works. I know how to fix a car.  Where should I go? Oh, you don't know where I should go? I'm taking this comment very. OK, so politics is a way of organizing people. I think that undersells it. Politics is how you try to ensure the survival of your people. Politics is how you protect yourself, those you love, protect your interests, and maybe even protect principles and ideas, but primarily it's about protecting a particular people. My worldview is that we're born into the world as members of nations and tribes. And the normal natural thing is to connect particularly strongly with members of your group and to want to love and protect members of your group against threats to your group. And that's the whole point of politics is noticing the enemy coming into view when the enemy threatens your annihilation. Partially. And I'm basically agreeing with what I'm saying. Yes, politics is the method of power. Goal or purpose is something completely different from politics. And this is. That's bizarre. Goal and purpose is something completely different from politics. Politics is about preserving those you love. Politics is about protecting your people, protecting the interests of your people, maybe even protecting the ideas and the values of your people, but primarily protecting the weight of life of your people, protecting your people from enemies who wish to annihilate them. It's not that complicated. So yeah, there is a purpose to politics. A fundamental distinction that is real, but people confuse it. And people confuse it because they delight in delusion. They delight in obscuring the difference between politics and morality. They delight in confusing the distinction between ontology and deontology. They delight in presuming that a good mechanic is good at deciding stops on a road trip. These are entirely. OK, this is just bizarre. All right, it's like he's asking, what's the purpose of family?  So ontology and deontology, these are metaphysics which are of interest to philosophers, right? And ontology is is about the nature of being. Right. But it's not really necessary to understand politics. So right, that ontology versus deontology, you know, what's the difference, right? Ontology is philosophy. It's a branch of metaphysics that addresses the nature of being. Well, deontology is the ethical study of duties, obligations of rights with an approach focusing on right and wrong actions themselves and not on the goodness or badness of the consequences of these actions. Different things, understanding politics, describing politics. To me, I read this comment and it's it's like a defeated it's an admission of defeat. It's like, OK, yeah, so well, you seem to know a lot about politics, but what would you do if you were king of America, which I've argued against many times, we should not engage in this form of hypothetical speculation. It's almost as if I if I walked up to you and you said to me, you know, I know how to get girls, I'm going to get all the girls, you know, and I say, how are you going to get that? Well, I'm a supreme gentleman and I'm going to be very nice to them and I'm going to stare at them. And I said, hey, man, that's not a good method of, you know, obtaining relationships or however you want to think about that. You know, here's a method that would work for you. First of all, you need to work on your social skills. You need to, you know, approach people. You need to develop male friendships. You need to take criticism. You need to work out your own psychological issues. Kind of sound narcissistic. You kind of sound like you lack self criticism. Maybe you need to maybe you need to metaphorically or even physically get in some tussles. You need to test your own strength. You need to kind of realize that you don't just deserve women. You kind of need to do things to earn that kind of admiration and attraction that the quality you need to develop. And so I give you all these methods and you say, hmm, you seem to have all these methods. You seem to understand all these methods about women. But, you know, what I don't see you doing is drawing pictures of big breasted anime girls. And, you know, what I don't see you doing. OK, so these comparisons just don't really cut it. I mean, they're absurd. And is telling me what you want, you know, I don't see you obsessing over the end goal of what you want. All you seem to have is all these tools about methods of how to gain power, but you're not telling me whether you prefer red heads or brunettes.  No, deep left circle. OK, Ken Brown apparently won't talk to Jews. And he won't talk to anyone who platforms Jews.  That seems to be a problem. Like I'm being very snarky and being very cruel. No, you're not being snarky. You're not being cruel.  But I feel like I have to. I feel like I have to because implicit within the question, the person is asking me for their goal and purpose for their life. And I've said this many times, they're not asking for a goal and purpose for their life. They're asking you what you would do with power, right? Do you actually want to do anything? Or do you want to have real world significance?  Right? It's a basic question. What would you do with power? I would protect my people. I would try to advance the interests of my people. I would try to advance and protect the values that I've learned from my people. It's a really simple question. It should come with a really simple answer. Do you love your family? But I mean, Ken seems to be so disconnected from reality. He doesn't seem to be connected to real people. He doesn't really seem to have any genuine real life connections. And so he's got this desperate need for meaning. And so he's retreated to metaphysics. And at this absurdly young age, what is he about 22, 23? He is sure that he has all the metaphysical answers. Like he has divine truth. And that's a comfort for him, because what he obviously doesn't have is love in his life. Like he doesn't seem to love any people. It seems like not many people love him. Or otherwise, the answer of what he'd do with power or what he'd do with resources or what's the point of politics. But it would just be obvious. It'd just be second nature. It's to protect the people I love and to protect their way of life and to advance their interests and what they stand for. I'm not here to give you your goal or purpose for life. Once I get into that, we're getting into axiomatic commands and authorities.  I can't tell you what your goal is. Nobody thinks of Ken Brown or Deep Left Circle as their authority. They just simply ask them, what would you do with power? It's a question like what do you do for a living? If you had resources, where would you spend them? Like what do you actually stand for? In the real world where people get murdered. In the real world where people get destroyed.  Like in the real world where there's genocide. In the real world where all sorts of horrible things happen. What would you do? Do you stand for anything? Do you have any like real life connections? Do you love anybody? That's the question. When they're asking what would you do with power, you're really asking do you love anyone? Is there anyone in reality who you care about and that you would stand up for and try to protect? The goal or purpose should be in life. Now as far as what mine are, I would say serving God. I would say there are basically three domains of morality. There's priestly. Okay, so he says that his purpose in life is serving God, which is noble and there are certain people who are really particularly well served with that kind of approach that they are there to serve God. But generally speaking, a young man who says his primary purpose is serving God is a young man who doesn't know love. If you know love, then you would be serving God through expressing love with other people and receiving love and building love and forming community and creating a family and connecting with other people and building real life connections. Once you have that, you don't need to retreat into metaphysical certainty that you have this divine truth. It can be a wonderful approach that can make life better.  And this is your response. That indicates that you don't know what it is to be loved. You don't know what it is to care about anyone. You are so disconnected from reality that you have this desperate need for meaning. And so you have calmed your anxiety by believing that you have metaphysical certitude. So I saw some illusions to health problems on his channel. So I have no idea what severe health problems he may be facing. So he may be dealing with something like very severe. He may not have the ability to lead a normal life. He may be staring into a dark future. I have no idea. But this is not normal. And this is not a likelihood, highly unhealthy. Even if you believe in God and you want to serve God, the normal, healthy way to do that is through loving other people. Immorality, which is serving God. Which to me is the only true form of morality because the morality is the domain of the priest. But the warriors have a concept of an aesthetic form of morality, a hedonistic morality, essential morality, an instinctual morality. And all of these things have their origin. They have their genealogy and survival. The merchant distills, through abstraction, the desire for survival. Like I'm all about abstracting things. I'm all about getting into the metaphysics of things and the philosophy of things. But this is someone who's talking like, he doesn't know what it's like to love people. He doesn't know what, absolutely no idea what human connection and living in community is about. Someone who has community and who cares about people doesn't really talk this way. Like when you have genuine connections with people, you'll know that atheists are just as likely to be ethical people as religious people. That religious people are just as likely to be as unethical as anyone else. That there are wonderful Christians out there and there are wonderful atheists out there and wonderful secular people out there and wonderful agnostics out there and wonderful Buddhists and Baha'i. That wonderful beautiful people come in all shapes and sizes and with different levels of metaphysics and no metaphysics whatsoever. That's what you learn when you have genuine real life human interactions with people and you get close to people and you share things with people and you rely on people and you turn to people for comfort and you provide comfort for others and you are there to give someone a ride to the hospital. You are there when someone has lost a spouse or lost a family member, someone who's had their business destroyed, whose prestige has been destroyed, whose opportunities have fallen away, someone at their darkest and most desperate and you're there for them and in turn when things go badly for you and you suffered tremendous loss, they are there for you. When you experience that, normal human friendship, you know that the metaphysics of people doesn't really matter. In the real world, we get our ethics from our ties to other people where we create a shared reality with other people. Out of that comes not just a bond, but always an ethic. You go to yoga with a group of people every day. You develop an ethic with regard to those people. You go to church or synagogue regularly. You develop an ethic. You develop a morality around those people. Religious people don't treat outgroups any better, generally speaking, than secular people. Religious people have an in-group identity and people with a strong in-group identity tend to treat other members of their in-group pretty well. And religion is one form of in-group identity. Quantifies it in terms of money and material. This is the conflict between the warrior and the merchant is that the merchant, through abstraction, has alienated the warrior and for the merchant, the warrior represents this kind of ancestral archetypal werewolf, this kind of, you know, doctor or Mr. Hyde and Dr. Jekyll represents. And looking at the chat, is it possible for Deep Left Jekyll to be interviewed on the Lukeboard stream? I've reached out to him several times. He just laughs at that. So I think it'd be really interesting for the two of you to hash ideas out. I think so too, but he doesn't really want to talk to anyone who challenges him. When they quite and quite challenge him, it's pretty ineffective. So he's a young man who's very sure of himself and doesn't want to be tested. I'm going to comment on Deep Left Jekyll's channel to see if you'd be willing to discuss ideas on this channel. No, he only wants to discuss ideas within a hug box. Oh, this doesn't seem to be someone who has friends. This, like Richard Spencer and Nick Fuentes seems to be someone who only has followers, but he doesn't seem to have experienced friendship. 40, getting good here. Luke, the lighting with the dark background serves you. 40, really getting into 40 and theology. Good stuff, Preach. I'm going to post this stream on Ken Brown's comment section, see if he responds. Luke Studio is looking so sexy. I can hardly hear what he's saying. Yes, serious soft lighting today with darker wallpaper, very solid look. I'm going to link this stream on Jekyll's Twitter page right now to see if I can get a response. Believe me, he only wants to talk within his own hug box. He doesn't want to talk to anyone who challenges him. Love is only found in community. Yes, Nazarites had to make a sin offering for taking unnecessary vows apart from the community. Yes, one of the precepts of Judaism is one of the precepts for leading a normal life. Do not separate yourself from the community. Ken Brown has Keith Wood syndrome, different ideology, but at that young age, what should be struggling to understand other great thinkers not offering up one's own thoughts? Love is means never having to say your live stream. This lack of humility demonstrates hubris and a lack of both wisdom and understanding. Yeah, when you're Ken Brown's age, what is he, 22, 23, 24? I mean, this kind of arrogance is unbecoming and it just throws into sharp relief how little of life he's experienced. Love is love, as Joe Biden says. Yeah, it's not neurotypical. Would you rather have love or Bitcoin? Well, it depends on how much. I would be willing to give up some love for a lot of Bitcoin. I don't like Ken Brown's impromptu emoting at bizarre angles. Give me vertigo. Don't give me vertigo while I figure out the truth. Brown rejects racialism and nationalism. Yeah, that's because he rejects being human.  To be human is to identify with a certain group of people. Nationalism is the most powerful political force in the world because it's simply your people is just your extended family.  It's the most natural human emotion in the world. He embraces something he calls minoritarianism. Left-wing liberals and socialists use the outgroup to profess a moral superiority to destroy the collectivism of communism. Yeah, so I recognize in Ken Brown many of my own tendencies towards preferring ideas to other people. That's characterized much of my life. I get so excited about every cumbly idea that comes along that I ride rushard over other people in pursuit of ideas. It's this fascistic, demonic, satanic entity that the Zoroastrians described as devils and demons. So this is the conflict between the two of them. One says, well, no, it's all about aesthetics and emotions and instincts and what you feel and your intuition. And the other says, no, it's this abstracted... And I don't believe in devils and demons. I don't believe that Hitler or Stalin or Mao were devils or demons.  And survival is this quantitative supply of money and material. But ultimately, I have to ask, what's the point of survival? What is the point of natalism? What is the point... I have a person asked, what's the point of survival? If you've held a newborn in your arms, if you've loved anybody, you know what the point of survival is?  I mean, this just sounds so incredibly disconnected from, you know, both it is good and holy and healthy in life. Point of life, it's serving God. And God is the eternal, the perfect and the infinite. And to me, that's what survival evolution, that's what it is grasping towards, is God. And that's a fundamental telos of life. And we can recognize that or we can view that as some kind of like platonic deception or something, but that's me personally. Now, if somebody wants to say that I'm wrong or they have a different view, I don't really care. I don't really care because most of the time... Right. He doesn't really care if people say he's wrong because I don't know, Ken Brown. I don't know this guy personally. I'm just going off his public presentation of himself. His public presentation of himself is someone who does not know love. He does not know what it's like to be loved by someone and he does not know what it's like to love or care for people. If you knew these things, you would care about other people. You would want to know how you were affecting other people. That's the normal thing to do. But I'm speaking here right now. I have certain people kind of in mind. I have a sense of the people who are most important to me and the potential that they might see the stream or might hear from someone who sees the stream because I have certain community and friends and family and relations who are very important to me and so I speak from that place of connection with people I love and who love me. And this idea that I wouldn't care what anyone else says if someone else says I'm wrong but that would just be irrelevant to me, it's self-defeating and bizarre and it's not neurotypical. It's not emotionally typical. It's not humanly typical. It's not human. We think with other people on my own, I don't see the weak points in my own arguments. I only see the weak points in my own arguments when someone else brings them up, particularly in a public setting where it could be very humiliating for me to be totally wrong.  I'm listening to other people's commentaries. I care what other people say. I have history with most of the people in the chat. I have great respect for many of the people in the chat. I know that they have different gifts and that they're particularly wise in different areas and so this notion that you don't care what other people say, that other people might have criticisms or corrections or amendations to what you say but you're just so sure you're right. This is, in a sense, it's very typical self-confidence in someone of Ken Brown's age. So teenagers and people in their early 20s tend to have a vast overestimation of their own abilities and it probably serves an evolutionarily adaptive function in that it gives them the confidence to go out into the world and to try to make something of themselves. Errors that I see in people are not having to do with, oh, well, we just have a fundamental disagreement on what our goal and purpose is. Like that is a very bone-headed avenue for debate. To say, well, we have different goals and purposes. Okay, well, what are we going to do about that? There's not really much we can do. Like if I tell you I want to serve God and you said, no, you should care about your own survival or no, you should care about aesthetics. And I say, I don't or those things are below God or it's within a hierarchy. You know, there's a certain point at which when you're dealing with pre-rational desires and pre-rational conceptions, these concepts of what is good. Yeah, human connection is pre-rational. Love is pre-rational. Lust is pre-rational. The desire to bond with people is pre-rational. Loving your children is pre-rational.  And it's also the very essence of life. It's what's most important in life. What's going to determine your happiness and your effectiveness in life more than any other factor is the quality of your interactions with other people. It's the quality of your relationships with other people. In life, these conceptions are, you know, based in again, pre-rational or irrational justification, axiomatic feelings, intuitions, things that we felt as children, it's almost impossible to argue. And the only way that you can argue with people is within a common agreed frame. Yeah, do empirical studies. There are lots of empirical studies about what affects people's morality, right? So, Ken Brown here is all about the morality what's most important is serving God. Well, we have done extensive social science research about the ethical behavior of religious people and godly people. And religious people and godly people tend on average to treat their in-group members of their religion better than average. They don't tend to treat our groups better than average, right? So, to the extent that religion makes people better, it is only with regard to fellow members of their religious in-group. And still, the overwhelming factor that decides how people behave is their relationships, is their connections and the situations that they find themselves in, right? We behave in alignment with the bonds that we form. The bonds that we form shape how we behave. It's not what you believe about God. It's not what you believe about the Bible. It's not what you believe about evidence. It's not what you believe about evidence. It's not what you believe about evidence. Japanese, in their day-to-day life, are far more moral than any Christian or Jewish country, right? And they don't believe in God. They're not monotheists. They're not religious in the Western sense. Far more moral than any Christian country, any Jewish country. Hey, Mark, a common language. We both have to agree on some principles or axioms that we can refer back to and say, okay, does this concept of morality adhere to X, Y, and Z? The only way to have a moral debate, I should say the only way to have a productive moral debate. I mean, we can scream at each other. The only way to have a productive moral debate is if we agree that there is a process of derivation of morality. That's the only way to have a debate, like just strictly on Ken Brown's terms. Anything that deviates from these very strict terms is just unacceptable. Who is really impressed by loner young men and their proclamations about serving God, absent any community or congregation? Like, what does that even mean? Who should care? Right. So, Ken Brown is deeply alone in the world by all indications. I don't know the real guy. I'm just commenting on his public persona. This is not someone who knows what it's like to care about other people and have them care about him. So, he's deeply alone and he's an interesting thinker and I don't find him at all toxic, but just completely disconnected from the cares and concerns of normal people whose lives are going to be primarily wrapped up in their families and their friends and their community. Life is with the people. Life is not primarily with metaphysical concepts. Moral conclusions or moral claims can be derived from more basic axioms and principles. Furthermore, we can agree on what those more basic axioms and principles are. That's essentially metaphysics. Okay. And metaphysics for me is, you know, if you're not, if for you, metaphysics is a silly thing and what matters is looking cool or what matters is having a lot of money. And I agree, those are tools. Who says that what matters is looking cool? I mean, this is just a straw man. Metaphysics is an interesting intellectual pursuit for a very tiny number of people, but it doesn't have much real-world consequence. So, I know there are all these books about how the metaphysics of this or that just changed the world or just changed Western civilization or just doomed Western civilization. I had a friend who was always promoting these ideas. No, not really. What shapes people are their bonds, their ties to other people. That we can use to serve God, but if you're saying that those are goods in themselves and that metaphysics to you seems like a big trap, it seems like a big... Yeah. Yeah. This idea that loving other people is a good thing in and of itself, that loving your children is a good thing in and of itself, that loving your spouse, that visiting a sick neighbor, helping out someone who's just lost a job and lost confidence that goes with that, giving someone a ride to the hospitals, picking someone up from the hospital. Yeah, I think those are good things in and of themselves without respect to metaphysics because I have had the pleasure of loving people. I have experienced what it's like to care about people. Now, I may not be the most neurotypical guy. I have struggled with human connection. I have had vast deserts of loneliness, but in all that loneliness, there's been some genuine human connection. And once you experience human connection, you don't question whether good deeds are good in and of themselves. You know, bureaucratic, made up fantasy world of illusions used to distract people from what's truly valuable used to enslave people. I would agree with you that false metaphysical arguments can be used to achieve the aims of controlling people. Religion is used as a mechanism of control. And you can reject that and say, well, I'm an egotist or I'm a solipsist and I just want to do what I feel is right or what I feel is best. I want to do me. Then there's no debate worth having. Like if you don't believe... This is bizarre. Like anyone who actually knew something about metaphysics would just tear this guy to shreds. He has his vast overestimation of his own level of learning. He's tremendously certain of his ignorance and has absolutely no concept of the labor of people who actually know something about metaphysics and how they would slice him up if he engaged, but he went engaged with anyone apparently outside of his hug box. Looking at the chat, religion only makes someone better if they draw the right things from it, put them into practice. Some people say twists that they simply cannot draw any proper morals from religion. But even if they can't draw proper morals from religion, that's not what shapes people's moral behavior. It's not abstract teachings from the priest, the minister, the rabbi or the imam. It's not reading a religious text that primarily shapes people's behavior, but shapes people's behavior is who do they love and who loves them. We should not, in assailing his extreme, take the anti-intellectual polemics root. Isn't it possible that he's just young and working through some ideas? Yes. I see Ken Brown as a reaction against the toxic culture absent any religious or community outlet. That isn't just being into family life, jobs, random community, among the so-called normies, not dealing with real revolutionary ideas. Yes. If you love people, you're not likely to mount a revolution in most situations. I like the Ken Brown videos, gives Luke good material to bounce off. I think our behavior is shaped by the stories we tell. Sure, but not nearly as much as the people we love. People we love are 20 times more significant to our behavior than the stories we tell. If that there is, if there are common principles or axioms of morality that we can agree upon, then there's no point in having the discussion. I'm not going to debate a narcissist, egoist, solipsist at their position. Ah, so if you don't accept Ken Brown's basic metaphysics, then you are psychologically deformed.   If you don't accept his metaphysics. And so what I'm saying is that you can't just ask a question like that of what's your morality. You won't even acknowledge. You don't even recognize. Oh, wait. Why can't you ask what's your morality? Seems like a reasonable question. Not that people would know what their morality actually was. For example, pretty much every man with the opportunity to have sex with a beautiful young woman will risk absolutely everything to get it off, right? The domain of debate that's being had when you say, well, what's your goal? What's your purpose? We have to talk about morality. And so there's so much implicit in that question where you're making me do the work of explaining. You don't even understand your own question. It's very presumptive. And so I'm doing all this work to explain this to you. And yet I'm not being. No, you're not doing all this work to explain or answer the question, what would you do with power? But you're asked a very simple question.  And you're creating these intellectual sand castles in the air that have no foundation that anyone with a grounding in metaphysics would shred you. But you've gone off on this delusional track, which is entertaining because it reflects the certitude of young people who don't have much learning. And it reflects someone with absolutely no experience of love. Like if you loved your family, you wouldn't be ranting like this. If you had friends, you wouldn't be ranting like this. If you had a church community, you wouldn't be ranting like this. And granted any kind of authority, which, okay, fine, maybe I don't deserve the authority, but I'm not even being given your concept around. What are your goals? Yeah, Ken Brown doesn't look a lot like Nick Fuentes. He's very similar in personality to Nick Fuentes, right? For both Nick Fuentes and Ken Brown, Christianity is a sword. Christianity is a way that they can show they're superior to everyone else. Christianity is a way to assert that they are saved and everyone else is wrong. But are they willing to pay any price for their Christianity? Do they actually give up anything for their Christianity? Is their Christianity real? Or is it just an intellectual concern? Or is it just a sword with which they get to slash other people? Because I've known a lot of Christians and they don't usually speak this way. What are your purposes? If it's so easy and it's so simple, right, you say, okay, well, you've made a 40-minute video or something on how politics works, and I'm just going to dismiss all of that saying, what are your goals? What are your purposes? How about turn the question back on yourself? State your goals. Well, they just want to know if you care about anyone, Ken. Do you actually want to make a difference for anyone in real life? What would you do with power is the most normal question in the world? Look, do you think the higher IQ someone is, the more capable they are of abstract thought? That's the more capable they are of rationalizing being a learner, the more they can convince themselves they are above the fray and have just higher quality stock. Yeah, that rings true. Ken reminds me of Quentin Tarantino with a slight Ben Shapiro pinch. Your purposes, is that contradict with anything I've said? No, then I'm happy for you if it does. So he's like Richard Spencer in that he despises nationalism. And to despise nationalism really is to despise ordinary human connection, is to despise reality. The reality is that we are born into nations. We are born into tribes. And the normal thing is to care about the group that you're born into. Because they're just an extended family. So Ken Brown and Richard Spencer, they both despise nationalism. They believe in rule by experts. They believe much more in grand sweeping metaphysical ideas than they do about ordinary human connection, building community, building a good life and protecting your people from threats to both their existence and to their way of life. Because if you feel that there is some kind of fundamental contradiction between Mike, concept of the mechanisms and methods of politics and your goals and purposes, well, if what I'm saying is true, then your goals and purposes are perverse. If you're like, well... And yes, Ken Brown did go on a road trip to meet people. That he did.  Well, I don't want to be king of America, but your concept of politics says, you know, I can't do that.  And that's why you're wrong because your description... He can't deal with people's questions or responses or points as they are. He has to turn them into straw men. Because if he dealt with human reality, if he dealt with human fallibility, if he came to terms with his own fallibility, if he came to terms with his own vulnerability, we're all incredibly vulnerable. If he experienced love, then he wouldn't be speaking this way. Description of morality doesn't fit my wishful thinking. Well, then you're just a baby.  You're immature. We have to understand reality first before we can... Sorry, breathe in some grass. I'm always breathing in nature. I need a steam bath. So before we can really say, like, I want this or I want that, like, let's say you meet a girl and she's attractive and she seems nice.  And like, what can you say?  I want to have kids. Or you can say, I just want to have fun. Or you can say, I want to get to know you. And the third one would probably be the correct answer. Unless you've already gotten to know her, like, we're presuming, oh, she looks attractive. She seems nice. These are initial first impressions.  The correct answer is I'd like to get to know you. Meaning I need to understand objectively who you are and what I'm working with. I'd like to meet your parents. I'd like to go on some dates. I'd like to figure out, you know, some of your personality. Here's a Myers-Briggs test. Please take this IQ test. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Am I? I don't know. But you need to get to know her one way or another. The idea that you're simply going to say, oh, I know what I want with this girl. I just want to have fun with her. I want to get married or I want to have kids. The idea that you presume to know your goals and intentions and purposes. Previous to your knowledge of the object of affection. That's not how love works. Right.  You're not working out metaphysical certitudes with regard to the one that you love. You're not developing like a 13-point philosophical approach to the one that you love. I think is twisted. Now everybody has a concept, a working model of reality. Everybody does. Babies have a working model of reality. We all have a working model of reality of how material reality functions We have a working model of reality. Yes. Everyone has a different rule book. I have my rule book and I get upset when people don't follow my rule book. Right. We all have a tendency to want people write them up, write them up tickets for violating our rule book. Look, did you ever give a check at Myers-Briggs tests on the first day? No. Myers-Briggs is bogus. Just a money-making scam. It presumptuous of Ken Brown to convert and correct as though conservatives are damaged goods and he is Christ version 2, 3 and 4 walking on bottled water. Ken will coast above all of us on brain power alone. Ken has a meaningful connection to data.  Okay. Everybody has a model of politics, right? And it can be truer, it can be false. You know, we could have the bell curve with the midwits are always wrong and then the high IQ, low IQ people are correct, whatever. Now one says that the high IQ are always right and the midwits or midwits or low IQ are always wrong. I mean, again, he can't work off reality, right? He has to create a cartoon version of reality so that he can shore up his own sense of righteousness and certitude. Nobody says any of the things, any of the things that he attributes to other people. Like all the things that he says that are really common approaches of other people. Nobody says these things. Nobody believes these things. He seems to be as disconnected from normal human connection as an extraterrestrial who's just visiting Earth. Nobody says the things that he attributes to people. Nobody, he can't interact with real people. He can't interact with any challenge. He can't interact with reality.   And if he wasn't metaphysically sure of being right and righteous, his whole world would come crashing down because he has built everything on his desperate search for meaning. When you have love in your life, you're not desperately searching for meaning. When you have normal levels of human connection, you're not desperately searching for metaphysical certitude. As a model, so we all have models. And once we have those models, we start making goals and purposes. And what I'm saying is that people's goals and purposes are very flawed if they don't agree with me. I'm saying if you're envisioning a problem. People's goals and purposes are very flawed if they don't agree with me. I mean, the Hutzpah. For two-thirds of the population, their goal and their purpose is to love their family, protect their family, create a family, build a family, spend time with their friends, earn a living so that they're not dependent on other people, spend time in community, pursue their hobbies and their interests. Those are the goals and purposes of the two-thirds of the population that's basically healthy. But everyone else is just doing it wrong if they don't share Ken Brown's metaphysics. Politics doesn't match my vision of politics in terms of the mechanisms and methods. Then your goals and your purposes are working off a false reality. It would be like if you're dating a girl who's cheating on you and I say, hey man, what are you doing here?  You should probably break up with her.  It should be to break up with her because she's cheating on you. And you're just in denial. I say, no, she's not. No, she's not. She's loyal. And I'm like, bro, I got receipts. Say, no, no, no, I don't want to see that.  You know, this is how I feel like I'm talking to the audience sometimes is I'm laying out. I'm like, okay, there's all these grifters. Yeah. Why do you think you feel that? Because interacting with reality must be incredibly painful for you. It must be incredibly disturbing for you to interact with reality. And so you have to create a cartoon version of reality. You have to make up all sorts of ideas and comments and commentaries that nobody, nobody would ever say. There's narcissistic people, people who are attention seekers, political pornographers. Yeah.  That's the foundation of his worldview. That's how he sees reality. You don't share my metaphysical certitudes.  And those children who you create and raise and love has no meaning if you don't have Ken Brown's purpose and metaphysical certitudes. That sick parent that you care for, it's just pointless if you don't share my metaphysical certitudes. That technological innovation that you're working on that's going to make thousands of lives better is totally pointless if you don't share my metaphysics. And Chat says, even though two-thirds of the population is leading a normal life, committed to family, home, friends, and hard work, do they still need a priest or a shaman class? Yes, particularly in modernity, people are incredibly disconnected. All right. In Europe, people will typically live for generations in the same basic geographic area. And so they have real ties. They have real communal ties because they're around people.  But in America, in Australia, in the Anglo nations, people move a tremendous amount. And so religion is one way of forming a genuine community. And so most people need community and people need comfort. The modern world has been incredibly drained of the magical and the mysterious and the transcendent and the comforting. And so religion is far more comforting for you and probably more effective form of comfort than many alternatives. Now, other people, they have more effective comfortable alternatives than religion. So I'm not one who proclaims everybody needs to be religious. I think a great number of people get comfort and additional purpose and they get community and they get a lot of good things from belonging to religion. Wherever I go in the world, there's a Jewish community that I can go join. In loyalty, I swear allegiance. You're doing all these things, you meaning the dissident right. And the left does this in terms of they're more priestly and so they're swearing allegiance more to ideologies and concepts more than particular individuals most of the time. And that makes them very cannibalistic in the sense that the dissident right is also very cannibalistic. But you're doing all this and you're wasting your time because your goals and your purposes are based off of... How is swearing an allegiance cannibalistic, right? If you're a good person, then you have an allegiance to a certain way of life. You have an allegiance to a certain community, a certain people. How is that being a cannibal? Right, there are people that I love and that I care about and I have an allegiance to them. Does that mean I really want to eat them alive? False reality. So let's agree on a picture of reality. And if you disagree with my picture of reality, let's have an argument. Let's have a debate. Ask a specific question. But don't just say, oh, you have... Okay, I'll ask a question. Do you love anyone? Has anyone ever loved you? Do you know what it's like to have a girlfriend? Do you know what it's like to have friends? Do you know what it's like to live in community? Have you built anything with anyone? Have you created a shared reality with people? Have you joined with people in, say, volunteering to take care of the less fortunate? You have all this theory of how the reality is, but you're not telling me what to do with reality. There aren't many people who are seeking Ken Brown's advice to what to do with reality. Who are these people? Ken Brown's a smart guy, but these questions that he claims people are asking, I suspect that no one's really asking any of the questions that he purports to being bombarded with. Doesn't it follow that you could only know what to do? In the ideal perfect sense, if I said, what is the perfect goal? What is the perfect purpose of life? What is the perfect goal? What is the perfect purpose of life? How will you know what to do? If you've got kids, you know what to do. You need to look after them. That's the normal answer. If you've got parents who are getting old, you need to look after them. If you've got siblings, ideally you enjoy spending time with them. If you've got friends, you want to spend time with them. If there are people that you love, you want to protect them and you want to spend time with them. And I say something like serving God.  You know, that could mean anything. Are you talking about, Judy? Serving God could mean anything. It could mean absolutely anything. And when it's disconnected from service to other people, it can particularly go off in any direction whatsoever. So, Ken Brown's got these metaphysical certitudes about Christianity, but has he ever lived in a Christian community? Are there people who depend on him to sweep the floor or to cook food or to bring food to shut-ins? If you have genuine people who are counting on you, then you wouldn't talk this way. If you mattered to some people, if people were looking to you for real life help, if people were depending on you, you wouldn't need to get lost in these metaphysical matters. Islam, Christianity, Platonism, what do you mean? Who's God's our aspirant? What are you? What are you, a Hindu? What do you believe? So, all of that is concerning with knowledge. That's the knowledge of what does it mean to serve God? So, we have to know the nature of God and we have to know the nature of the relationship between... We cannot know the nature of God. Belief in God is a leap of faith. There's no belief in God without a substantial leap of faith, and that is, in large part, non-rational. It can't be debated. It's just a leap of faith. There's no rational basis for debating people's leaps of faith. We cannot know the reality of God. We can believe certain things about God, but that's based on a leap of faith. It makes no sense to argue over your leap of faith or my leap of faith, because there is a huge non-rational component for these religious leaps of faith. Human beings and God. If we don't know those things, then we're pretty much lost, aren't we? If we don't know the nature of God, then we're lost. Well, we can't know the nature of God. I mean, how delusional is this guy thinking that he knows the nature of God? We have various religious teachers and religious texts which give their insights into the nature of God, but to regard these teachers or texts as authoritative requires a substantial non-rational leap of faith. And if you want to go making these non-rational leaps of faith, which I think are great. I think a lot of non-rational leaps of faith are fantastic, whether the non-rational leap of faith is towards religion, towards God, or there are all sorts of other beliefs that are just wonderful to have, even though they're non-rational, such as I am right where I'm supposed to be. That's a wonderful belief to have, that I am right where I am supposed to be. If you can go through life with that sense that you are right where you are supposed to be, it's a non-rational belief, but it's a wonderful belief. All sorts of non-rational beliefs serve you. I am going to let God demonstrate through me what he can do. That's a wonderful non-rational belief to hold.  That's a great non-rational belief that will fill you with energy and power and enthusiasm, probably inspire you to do a lot of great things. So there are all sorts of non-rational beliefs that serve you, but they're not based on metaphysical certitudes. So you have to understand the nature of God, you have to understand the nature of our relationship with God, you have to understand therefore the nature of our reality. And if you don't, then you can't love your children, you can't love your parents, you can't love your friends, you can't volunteer, you can't work on technological developments that will make people's lives better. You have to understand the nature of politics, you have to understand the nature of all these things in order to properly describe your goals and purposes. If you say, you know, I want to be happy, but you don't know the mechanism of how to be happy, then it's kind of a moot point, right? Oh, you don't know the mechanism on how to be happy. Well, let me try to figure that out here. For most people, they experience happiness loving their children. Those people experience happiness loving their family. Those people experience happiness loving their friends, spending time with their friends, doing work that they find meaningful, or doing work that enables them to provide and protect those they love. Right? There's the mechanism for happiness. The primary mechanism for happiness is loving people and being loved by people, having friends and family. You've never wasted time. You've really said nothing, haven't you? Wow, you've really said nothing. You're just wasting your time unless you share Ken Brown's sortitudes.    You don't share Ken Brown's metaphysics. You really just wasted everybody's time. You've just wasted your time, right? You've raised seven good children, right?  You do fulfilling work. You have various hobbies, but that's all meaningless. If you don't share Ken Brown's metaphysical sortitudes. If you say, well, I want to have political power so I can be king of America and I can build statues of myself or I want to be king of America. I've never met anyone who wants to be king of America. He just creates these absurd straw men. I want to be happy or I want to be king of America because my ethnic group needs to rule over the other ones. Whatever you think is your goal or purpose. If you love people, then you don't want the people you love to be wiped out, right? We live in a world of infinite desires but limited resources. So the best way to ensure the survival of your people is to become as strong as possible. Financially strong, militarily strong. That's the best way to ensure the survival of your people. And that just doesn't matter. That has no importance to Ken Brown if you don't have the right metaphysics. And you're saying, well, you're wasting a lot of time on the methods and the reality of politics. You need to focus more on goals and purposes. No, you've got it wrong. You've got it completely wrong. The idea that we're simply going to have a cult around our goals and purposes. I want money. I said this in the video. But Ken Brown loving someone is being in a cult. Like normal human connection is some weird cult-like thing. I literally said this in the video. You don't watch it. See, it's disrespectful. You have porn in one tab. My video is in another tab. You're letting the video play. You're not listening to my words. And you're asking. I don't think there are many people who watch Ken Brown videos in one tab and porn in another tab. I'm going to wager. That's pretty rare. I don't think a lot of people are stroking with one hand to Ken Brown videos. Like just listening to Ken Brown on the audio while watching the porn with the sound off so that they can get two things done at once. I don't think that happens a lot. Questions that are presumptive and disrespectful because you haven't listened to the video.  Ah, so if if people differ from Ken Brown, not only the mentally ill that they differ, that just shows they didn't listen to him. Because if you listened to Ken Brown, then you would have no choice but to agree with him because he is the metaphysical master. He is the Ascendant Master among us. All hail Ken Brown. Another argument. You're not saying anything that disputes anything I put forward. He reminds me more and more of Nick Fuentes. It's like concern trolling. And you know, a lot of people do this. And I think a lot of people do it accidentally. I think there are people who don't do it maliciously. I think there are a lot of people who do it accidentally because they're very much confused and they want to offload this problem of the purpose of life onto me without providing me any information. Is there one single person in the entire universe who wants to offload the purpose of life to Ken Brown? The purpose of life is not something that normal healthy people need to concern themselves with because it's obvious. The purpose of life is their family and their friends and their community and their their interests. And loving and protecting their people, right? It just goes without saying for any normal healthy person. So if you have to ask what is the purpose of life, that means you don't know what it's like to love someone and be loved. Like they want to know what the goal and purpose of their life should be. And I know nothing about them. Nothing about their skills. Nothing about their skills. Really? Seriously? Is there anyone out there who expects Ken Brown to tell them the purpose of their life, of their individual life? He is living in in a fantasy world. I don't think anybody is out there looking for Ken Brown to give them a bespoke, any individualistic, especially suited for them, purpose to their life. I'm talking about their disposition. Nothing about their character. I know nothing about them individually. And they have this idea that I should come up with some kind of universal goal or purpose that we should all be universally working together in the same group, in the same self-conception, the same political. Someone asked him what he would do if he had resources, if he had power. And then he just goes off all this, you know, bizarre and, you know, meditating and revelatory rant, which is entirely disconnected from this innocent question that he was asked. People movement, when that's absurd. There are a lot of people in my audience who are completely opposed to me and want nothing to do with me in a very real sense. And me trying to convince those people that people who oppose you and want nothing to do with you in a very real sense, really, I think, I think people notice that you're a smart guy and these sometimes say some really funny and insightful things. And you also say a lot of nonsense. People laugh at you, Ken. I'm sorry. People appreciate you and people laugh at you and people are entertained by you. But no one's upset by you.  It would be like getting angry at the ranting homeless man who is absolutely convinced that the Illuminati run the world or that lizard people have taken over our civilization.  Nobody envies Ken Brown's life. Nobody wishes, oh, I wish I had Ken Brown's life.  Now, I've got him on a pedestal. Gosh, if I could just live like him.  But Ken Brown's not going to hurt anyone.  Ken, people enjoy you. People laugh with you. People laugh at you. But nobody's angry at you. Nobody's upset with you. Nobody hates you.  But we're really on the same team would be a waste of my time. So I think that I can be harsh and I can be cruel, but that's... You're being harsh and cruelty yourself. Nobody else is hurt by your purported harshness and cruelty to them because all the other people who you are rejoining, all the people that you've created in this stream are saying certain things. None of them exist. They're all completely disconnected from reality because apparently dealing with the reality of people and dealing with the reality of opposing or supplementing points of view is too disturbing for you. So you have to live in this imaginary world. At some point, these questions come up over and over again. And so I'm not attacking the individual who asked the question.   But I would love to talk more about this. I mean, so when we talk about what is the goal and purpose of life serving God? Okay, what does it mean to serve God? What's the nature of God? What's the nature of the relationship? That's theology. That's religion. That's something that people have been writing thousands of pages about for thousands of years. And so for me to encapsulate that in a single video, it's like, do you even believe in God, bro? Like it's going to be a waste of time for me to talk about goals and purposes if you don't even believe in God. If you just- Right. So how could anyone ever have a goal or a purpose, such as loving their children and caring about their friends unless they have a particular theology? To agree with the initial premise. So there's so much here. There's so much to unpack. I mean, it would be like, you talk a lot about, it's like I would have a channel about gardening. It's like, well, you talk a lot about gardening, but do you even have a political theory or whatever? It's like, but it's even bigger than that. Because a lot of the things I say, I try to keep the applicability very wide. I'm trying not to- I mean, I know in a sense by responding and attacking the dissident right, two things happen. One thing is that because I don't use the language of- If you weren't responding or critiquing or discussing the dissident right, and I can say the same thing is absolutely applicable to me. When we engage with the dissident right, we get triple 10 times, 20 times, 50 times the number of views that we'd get if we simply streamed about metaphysics. Ken Brown, you would have 5% of your audience if you weren't constantly engaging with the dissident right. Very few people would tune in to listen to you talk about metaphysics because you really don't know very much. But when in a land where there is no king, you can be the king, right? Normal, healthy people don't want to talk about the dissident right. And so those eccentrics, such as myself and such as yourself, we get to grab an audience considerably bigger than what our own natural talents would otherwise allot us if we talk about a topic that is incredibly underserved, right? Normal people, normal journalists, normal commentators, normal pundits don't talk about the dissident right. So we get the devil's playground. We get viewers and we get a community and we get an outside level of attention and reaction because we're talking about something that normal healthy people, the mainstream, won't talk about. If Ken Brown, if you just talked about metaphysics, if you stopped talking about the dissident right, you'd have 5% of your audience, right? When I do blood sports, I can get 1,000 live viewers. If I want to talk about the politics of expertise, I'll get about 10 live viewers, right? The choice is mine, right? I can do streams with hundreds and hundreds of live viewers that are often trashy. Or I can do an elevated stream about complex ideas and I can have 5, 10, 15 live viewers, right? That's the nature of reality. Every intellectual magazine has to be subsidized, right? National Review, New Republic, they cannot survive on their own. So you want to talk deep, meaningful ideas and you're going to separate that from your commentary on the dissident right, you'd get 5 views. You'd get 50 views. You wouldn't get videos with hundreds of views. The primary reason you get a community, the primary reason people watch you is because you have an entertaining critique of the dissident right. Without that, your words, like my words, would be heard by almost nobody, right? Ken Brown and I and other people who talk about the dissident right in their live streams, we get an audience far in excess of what we actually deserve, far in excess of our real talents. And so we could be deceived that like, oh, you know, we're some really important social commentator, but we're dealing in the devil's playground where normal healthy people won't touch the topic. So we get a distorted view of our own importance and our own abilities. I'm trying to think of like the most offensive. I'm not using the language of Bernie Sanders or something. I'm not using the language of Barack Obama because I don't think it's effective. I think if you want to reach people where they are, you have to use their language. You have to use, you have to make references to things that they find familiar. You have to be able to pronounce their shibboleths and you can't impose a foreign language on them that they reject in this tribalistic sense. And so you kind of have to speak in their terms. And because of this kind of like tribalistic thinking people engage in, they presume that if you speak a certain language, if you use a particular political vocabulary. So tribalistic meaning that you love your people, all right, that you love people that you appreciate your family and your extended family, all right. That's all it means to be tribalistic, that you have an in-group, you're a normal, natural, healthy human being. Popularity, then you implicitly have to agree with the goals and assumptions and purposes of that subculture, which is a reasonable stereotype but I'm not a stereotypical guy, okay. I'm not like... Tribes and subcultures don't need you to affirm any ontological or metaphysical or political opinion. As long as you're not actively working against the interests of your group, they don't really care.   And if they want to take in a live stream, they'll take in a live stream by people who are far smarter than I am, people who are far more educated than I am, people who are far more accomplished than I am, people who are better read than I am, like people with more credentials than I have, that's where they'll go. Like the others. I'm built different. And I can use vocabulary and I can speak and I can code switch into dissident right speak and I can talk to those people and I understand all their memes and I understand all their history. And I want to go to a comment. I want to go to a comment by Claire and Claire says, I've gotten into the video yet but I think the reason people think you're right wing is because you have seriously absorbed and considered it instead of being emotionally reactionary against it. You ultimately say no to it from a place of understanding but folks misconstru understanding with a green. Thank you, Claire. Thank you, Claire. Perfect comment. Perfect way to. Yeah, yeah, it's a flattering, flattering comment. So Claire must be right. I would say end the video.  I'm heartbroken that I cannot give you an entire theology in a 40 minute video. Like I can't totally encapsulate and people will say like Christians. What kind of person is sad that he can't give you an entire theology in a 40 minute video? Like what type of person is heartbroken about that? Only someone with delusions. For example, or even Muslims or whoever, they'll say, well, I can do that very easily. All you have to do is believe in Jesus. And well, what does that mean? Who is Jesus? Where do I learn more about this Jesus guy? Well, you can read the Bible. Well, the Bible is a pretty big series of books. It's like 66 books or 62, whatever, Protestant. There's different canons, but it's over 60 books. And you're telling me it's simple. You're telling me it's simple. You're telling me there's no depth to it. You're telling me it's just the superficial. Oh, just say the name of Jesus and say, I believe in Jesus. And that's it. Well, I don't even know who he is. What's the metaphysics behind this? Well, guess what? There are simple versions of Plato and Aristotle. And there are simple versions of biblical perspectives and beliefs about religion. So yeah, you can boil down Christianity so that a little child can understand it. You can boil down aspects of Judaism so that a little child can understand it. There are different levels of IQ. There are different levels of religion. There are different levels of understanding of a text depending on someone's intellectual capability. This Christian thing. There's so much pregnant in there. There's so much implicit in there. To then turn to me and say, well, you should have a false and opposite of all your goals and purposes. Nobody says that. Who are these fake personas that he keeps inventing? Nobody has ever said this to Ken Brown. In a quick little 40-minute video, it's like we could spend a lifetime on that. I mean, literally, that is the purpose of our lives is to spend as much time on... Look, if you have something serious intellectual to say, you write it up, right? You publish it in a book or an essay, or at least in a thoughtful blog post. No one's looking for theological or metaphysical profundity in a live stream. A live stream may have elements of that. It can touch on it. But if you really want intellectual fiber, you got to read the written word. Possible, refining and being clear about our goals and purposes. Now, also, there's time for action as well. But again, you could spend a lifetime subdividing goals and purposes into smaller goals and purposes. And I think this is... I think Kino Casino needs to start adding some commentary to Ken Brown videos. I mean, they've done such a great job with Nick Fuentes. I'd like to see what they do with Ken Brown. This is what really successful people do is they take really big things that they want in life and they subdivide it into little goals and purposes. And down to the, okay, what is... What are the 12 things I want to get done today? I get 12 hours in the day, approximately. I'm going to subdivide the day into little chunks and I'm going to get all the things done. You know what really successful people do? They love other people. They get along with other people. They get energy from other people. How do you get energy from other people? You create a shared reality with other people.  You say, hi, Veronica. No, you look happy today. Oh, hi, Veronica. Is everything okay? Oh, hi, Veronica. How's your, you know, how's Sean? You create a shared reality with Veronica, the receptionist.  You say, Jim, we've got to go to lunch. And then you see your assistant and you say, Jack, man, I really need your help today. And I'm so grateful for that report that you did for me last week.  That's how people get pumped up. That's how people get things done because they are constantly being filled up with the energy that comes from being on the same page with other people, from creating a shared reality with other people, from getting rhythmically entrained with other people through participating intensely in activities with other people. The more intense the participation with other people, the stronger you're bond with others. That's how people succeed. They have ungodly amounts of energy. It's really, really hard to succeed if you're not high energy. And where do you get energy? Primary source of energy is from getting on the same page with someone else, creating a shared reality, getting into a rhythm with other people. And you know how you don't get into a rhythm with other people? You know how you destroy any possibility of getting energy from other people? And that is denying their reality, reality of the things they say, reality of who they are. And everything that Ken Brown has said in this video shows he's completely disconnected from other people. There's not one person, there's not been one comment that he claims he hears from people. That is true to life. These people that he's referring to in this video don't exist anywhere in the universe. And when you're unable to assimilate the reality of others, when you're completely incapable of getting on the same page with other people, when you're not caring enough about others to interact with them as they are, you're not going to succeed, even if you come up with the 12 things that you need to do today. I think that's what successful people do. I think what unsuccessful people do is they're very confused about their goals and purposes and they merely... Now, what unsuccessful people do is that they're very confused about the reality of other people. And they're unable to get on the same page with others and they're unable to connect with others, they're unable to love other people, they're unable to receive love. People make bids for our attention. And let's say they ask you out to lunch or let's say, hey, Luke, how's it going, man? What's new? If someone makes a bid for my attention once twice and I blow them off, they're not likely to make a third time. People make bids for our attention and if we ignore those bids, then they're not going to try anymore. They may well be... If you exhibit this Ken Brown attitude towards people at work, towards people at the stamp club, towards people at the gym, towards people at church, all these people are just done with him. They're not going to make any more bids for his attention because he is so oblivious to what normal human connection is all about.   Then no one's going to want to do anything with you and you're not going to be successful and you're not going to be happy. You're not going to be effective. You're not going to be a good representative for your point of view and for your metaphysics, for your religion. You're not going to bring people to Christ. You're not going to bring people to salvation. You're not going to shift people politically.  I'm critiquing other people's goals and purposes. I don't critique people's goals and purposes very much. Oh, no, no, no. You don't do that, Ken. Oh, no. Critique people's methods. I critique people's vision of reality. But look, if you want to be the best rodeo cowboy that you can be, I'm not going to critique that goal or purpose. It's not really my place to critique that goal or purpose. You know, if that's in your heart, what you feel you must do, look, the world needs rodeo, uh, rodeo, cowboys, whatever you, whatever floats your boat, man. You know, if you want to make a lot of money, hey, there's, there's HP. Okay, great. Thanks a lot, Ken. I really appreciate it.


this meeting of the Senate, Senator in the Water District for April 6th, 2023, I'll let you take roll, please. President Smalley. Here. Vice President Hill. Here. Director Ackman. Here. Director Fultz. Here. Director Mayhood. Here. Close the session. Council is going to ask that we move I-O for B. Correct. Thank you, Rick. Okay, so you can hear, do you want to go ahead and say, I don't know if you can hear. Sure. Well, that's it. I'd like to pull item 4B and reserve it for discussion at the next board meeting. Okay. So I want to change the agenda. For all communications, would anybody from the public in attendance at this one? All of you. Dave McNair is still in attendance. Okay. Dave, if you have anything to say about what's on. Anything that's on the closed session agenda, of which there's one item at this point. The closed session. Can you hear us here? Are you? Can you hear us? Yes, I can hear you. That's good. Let's start and see if Corby can hear us. So. No requirements for questions. Yeah. We started with Rick said there's just a number of details. Comments on this? That's not a great. Okay. Okay. Well. That's. That's not a great. Just a number of comments. Okay. So. It's always interesting to hear what you said. So. Okay. So. So. Okay. Yeah. So. Okay. So. Yeah. So. So. Okay. So. So. Okay. So. So. Okay. Okay. Okay. So. to participate in a lot of what you've done so far. If I could jump in, I think that we focused on the art itself. I also want to go through the process once we are done. And I think we as a board need to have a conversation about it. Nothing, Jeff, I wanted to present on that without having conversations to go over. I heard that. I can hear you. And do an initial review recommending a preferred subset of the proposal. The full board for discussion. Well, I wouldn't say that. Okay. I didn't hear any. Three friendly amendments to the motion. We're going to address. And then the third is that we are going to include language in the proposal. Ask the proposers. Identify how they will. That's local candidate. In terms of, you know, overall, do your best to capture that. And then if you want to send what you think that you got there to us, we can let you know. So we have a motion on the table. Okay. Any comments on that? Yeah, I'm. I'm just letting you know. I don't know what you guys have been doing for the past 25 minutes, but there's been no audio. Now there is audio, but it's only intermittently. I mean, it's sometimes it's, it's clear, but it's sometimes at low level and not really cutting in and out. So I'm just letting you know that. Well, so far I was able to hear Jamie. I couldn't hear Bob and I can hear you. Yes, it is. What Mark said, I haven't been able to follow anything up till now. I don't even know what the agenda item is. That you're asking for comments. The sound did get a little better, but it's still very intermittent. We need to hear more about the cash consultancy services contract previously signed by the district manager. December 23, 2023. The disaster. The district at grade main connecting the low rate main is versus our, I moved my slope. There was a lot of comment. So that was active again during the school period. to some of the in-line installation of the district. They're going to do an emergency check with Anderson. They're in the board ratified emergency services contract to Anderson. Is that your call? Yes. Great study. Request for proposals. 17 that resulted in a five-year rate increase while revenues and fees are honored on an annual basis. As I usually do, I'm going to select a new proposal for the two that was published every night. We solicited seven consulting firms that worked in California, but in California they received NBS and Apatels. We have reviewed the proposals and scoring as noted in RIP. The firm has shown an overall understanding of the district's needs. For the re-study, YNBS worked with the district and conducted the last re-study in 2017. Apatels' proposal addressed specific issues and concerns that the district first currently facing. This item is taken to the budget and finance committee to review the last budget and finance committee. The budget and finance committee gathered an entire meeting to discuss a thorough discussion. In the end, the committee agreed with the recommendation to review Apatels. Overall, the committee was impressed with Apatels' up-to-date legal expertise in setting water rates and their local and local experiments. The latter experience includes 21-rate studies for the things that are up-to-date with the local challenges facing. One of the main reasons for choosing Apatels is that we thought the district would benefit from a fresh look at its rates. The other firm, NBS, conducted our 2017 re-study proposal. It sort of seems quite similar to what might have been written when applying to do that. It was a state-of-the-art play regarding how the district respond to the following regard to allocating costs across different types of rate payer classes. In addition to some members of the committee, we had the presentation 2017, not effective. In contrast, when we read the materials that the NBSA-21 rates were also undertook, they were designed to communicate effectively with the NBSA-21 and the factors describing the proposal. The proposals that were submitted also account for the difference between the two. The number of on-site visits and providing a self-supposed floor and in-person meeting. In their descriptions of the visits, RAPTELUS demonstrated a recognition that solicits to go from the community to fully in the process before decisions have been passed. The only on-site meeting in the NBSA was the 2018 hearing itself. In fact, if you go over with the public, the public outreach makes a difference. RAPTELUS' proposal includes a voice of user-friendly Excel and web-based learning, rate-studying, and after-use to circulate financial scenarios based on changes such as different rates of error consumption, labor costs, and other expenses. RAPTELUS' proposal includes a voice of user-friendly Excel and web-based learning, rate-studying, and after-use to circulate financial scenarios based on changes such as different rates of error consumption, rate-studying, and after-use to circulate financial scenarios based on changes such as different rates of error consumption, rate-studying, and after-use to circulate financial scenarios based on changes such as different rates of error consumption, rate-studying, and after-use to circulate financial scenarios based on changes such as different rates of error consumption, rate-studying, We had praise from the last couple of years and we highlighted the understanding of the legal framework and policy issues regarding prop 2H. Something that Gina has been concerned from our own point of view. We now also concluded that given the particular nature of the professional, by a race to contract work, we thought we would direct the district. The contract was reptile in an amount of $9,035. I'll just repeat the question. No, they did not do a demonstration of the legal framework to us. However, Kendra did go online and use their website tomorrow for user-friendly access to it, with the only thing that's available from NBN. It's a cell program for a cumbersite. I prefer it. Is it as in proprietary or web-based as in, I can still export to Excel or import from Excel? I don't know the details about that, but we made it, it was clear in the RFP that the Okay, so they weren't providing long-term access to the model to Excel and then working at Excel afterwards. I'm asking that, is if they're offering a SAS model, like in perpetuity, that's a significant input into my decision. If it's a one-shot deal, they're going back to Excel. It's like, no, that's not as attractive because we still have to go back. What is the contract saying? Because I think you're right, Gail, in that the modeling is the thing. Because without that, I think NBS was responsive. They've done it before. They're certainly a lot cheaper. And, you know, I'm all about money. But if there's a value here that's significant for the long-term, then that 15,000 or roughly is worth it. Without knowing that, I can't... Well, I think what I would say is I can't answer this part in the matter of... Kendra is listening and if she knows the answer to this, what I can say is that the availability of the web-based is that we're only requiring the course of doing the right study is very valuable because it means that this is a different area usually that we can then communicate on ourselves. So that means that the community would have access to this web-based tool as well? No, no, I don't think so. I don't... Okay, but this is the clarity that I think we need. I mean, I can certainly vote on it tonight, but in terms of me voting on it, that is the key. That is the entire lens pen. I did have one, and so I'm glad you addressed it, but I still have questions about it. I just also say that the difference also includes an additional that's early in the process. There's information to communicate at the same time. A lot of what the factors are that might be put into that communication have not really been presented to the public. A little more structure about what that outreach would be communicating that there's much value in it. And on the last rate increase, I mean, I felt really sorry for NBS. I was actually involved with the web-based. No one could have communicated effectively around that because of the manner in which the board actually went about doing it. So I don't hold a slack on that. The other key item, though, that I wanted to query a little bit more about, say that three times back, showed more relevant experience in what the district is, specific items. I didn't say that. I think that what I said was that their response, they were more responsive to the things. I'm just reading off the summary sheet here, which says, Raffatellis showed more relevant experience to what the district is. I was wondering what those... I think that was Kendrick's point. I wouldn't say it differently. Well, okay. What we're talking about is they brought up more specificity. There's a great time you deal with different ways to think and because Raffatellis basically had to say it was an exploration. Probably strongly that we did a fresh look that was an exploration. All these other ways I would want to structure our phrase, NBS remains in the box. Raffatellis was thinking out of the box. Looking at this from an unbundling point of view, to the rates in terms of charging, rather than charging just one lump sum for fixed and, that they were going to unbundle the rates in some way, to the capital infrastructure, payment and delivery, et cetera, that the community might get a better feel of where the money's going for each area. I don't think it's the same thing, exactly. We ought to take a look at it. I have to say, at least that was one of the things all of you in their presentation was communicating with regard to lots of charges. They definitely had a point for assuming that to do that, they obviously had to give them a California one. It's a really important relative to our district, and at least the last couple of years, virtually 100% of the rate increase has been operating expenses. They really get that feel of, well, what's going to capital versus what's going to trading, and those are very different buckets that also the community needs more information about, so they understand what the rates are all about. Particularly given where we are with our capital infrastructure. I really need to have more information on that. I mean, if you guys are comfortable with going forward, great, I can. Because of that, that is to me the linchpin of the entire particular proposal, what format, criteria or not. Really? No, I don't necessarily think so. I think, again, it depends on whether or not this is used as a loss leader or an entry level into the sale, or whether this is really something that's part of the offering. This is a very different thing, and I've seen SaaS vendors do both kinds of things. I don't know why they'll play not in specifics, including Microsoft, ExcelBase, and WebBase tools that are developed with the expectations, obviously. Yeah, and whether there's a SaaS charge for it as well, which might be okay. But has any of that addressed specifically in the proposal? No, I didn't see it. So, to me, that is... My concern is that if the 99,000, again, it's the loss leader type thing, if the 99,000 is just for the work that they're going to do to respond to the RP, but in order you get the model, now you need to spend another 15 to 20 days every year, or even now. I want to know that. Are you comfortable with going with reptiles despite of the difference? Not knowing the difference about the question. If we could, it was possible to put some language on the motion of 30,000 financial recommended by the $500, if we're saying we have to go back and negotiate. In terms of the rate for the reptiles, including access to the model for not to exceed a amount of $100,000 when it comes to that. I would say I think that's a value in spite of the fact that it's more because if we get four community meetings just standing up with communities and trying to provide help once, is it... How do we do a generic project at the board level? Is there a linkage into there's an import export? I mean, Excel wouldn't... I can't answer that. I mean, I agree with Jeff, but I would probably find that out. I hope so. If you have not, it's going to feel a lot of work here. The only thing I would say is that negotiating from drag is very different. In the local area, and what we do need to hear from the public are participating remotely with Mark Dolsens. Yeah, thank you. I'm sorry, I know you guys are trying. I know now that I should be there in person, but I do want to give you some feedback in case you're able to adapt your behavior at all in real time. The audio is getting worse and worse, and it correlates strongly with people leaning back in their seats or lowering their voice. Anybody that forgets to essentially shout into the microphone is inaudible, and that means I haven't been able to hear most of what Rick has said, what Jeff has said, what Gail has said, and now even what Bob is saying. And somebody, what you said, Mark. Just letting you know. I've been trying to follow, and I've had the same trouble that Mark's had. I am on the Budget and Finance Committee, and I thought I would just, unfortunately, I did not understand, I just couldn't follow what the conversation was and what the concerns were that Bob raised just didn't come through. But I just wanted to say that one of the things that made me very positive about Restelis is the public outreach aspect of this. I took a pretty careful look at how Santa Cruz Water District handled their relationship to the public, to get the public involved, to get them to understand, to break down the rates. They did a very good job. I don't know what the contractors role in with that was, but I was less than impressed with the other proposal in part because I felt that how they handled the outreach to the public last time, and it could have just been a poor problem, but I felt like we have one contractor who really did participate at least behind the scenes in a very positive way in terms of outreach to the public, and I think that is just going to be critical as we go forward. Thank you. I think everyone kind of beat me to it that we can't hear anything. I could hear Bob a lot better, and as far as Jamie saying the closed caption, like there was like no audio pickup, like there's just complete blanks. So for some reason, Bob I can pick up better. In order to conduct the 2020 study, not to exceed 99,000 contingent on acceptable clarifications that the access to the link tool through the entire rate study is available. I just want to be sure. Well, I'm going to leave that to you. It might be that there will be some cost, but it's just for you and camera. If you have some questions about it, I think we can serve us for the next 30 years. We could say to read how well we are. How would you find Director Fultz? I have the same. Valley Water District's representation on the Santa Marta Rita groundwater agency. One of the board members that requested this will start sifted by an article that Director Fultz published in the San Lorenzo Valley Post agencies that are partners with us in Santa Marta Rita agency. Comments that he made I feel make it difficult for the district to work cooperatively with our partner agencies that created an antagonistic environment within the agency. And as such, I don't feel that he can effectively work with the board members in the Santa Marta Rita agency. That's why I requested to discuss that this evening. I requested this slide and she is currently on the Santa Marta Rita board. I'm the agendist with considerable reluctance. I met with Fultz before in the first Santa Marta meeting and I don't know how I was looking forward to him because I was engaged with the technical aspects of the topic. For the board, I had a great discussion and so I was blindsided when I read the article that Fultz published days later in the Santa Marta Rita office. It will be expressed views about proposed Santa Marta Rita projects and needless discussion about Scotts Valley and its water data. In the article, I explained the reasons why. Automatically clear to me that he does not intend to stop writing articles expressing private views. I agreed to disagree outside the confines of board meetings on the topic that it would be ill-advised for our board to address. However, I do think it's the responsibility of the board to consider whether a lot of board members representing the district can participate outside of board settings based on their antagonistic towards the side of this. I do not. Unfortunately, this prompts whatever other beneficial attributes that the board brings as well. I'm thinking about this to understand how unusual the powers are that the representatives are like members of Santa Rosa Valley water district committees where any decision has to go to the board of the recommendation and then is active outside of board. Our Santa Marta Rita representatives of the Santa Marta Rita bylaws for better or worse provide veto power on important issues in which any individual board member from the three founding agencies can veto those actions in adopting significant reform, improving grant proposals and finalizing the budget including what is suspectively a line item veto of expenditures potentially being a single representative from our district unusual powers. I think it's important that the board has to have confidence that their representatives will act responsibly and criminally in their district. The part is that given Bob strongly held beliefs to use this veto power to make what he considers principle public statements marked that Bob's behavior complicates the lives of our staff who have to work by Santa Cruz and the county on Santa Marta Rita and many other issues. It also undermines my ability as a district. I worked very hard two years I've been on the board I've been in two years before that when I went to public members for staff and I felt like other consultants or members of other agencies were representatives that were detrimental I restricted my remarks to those Santa Marta Rita board meetings or to I did try to find common ground where I took leadership at Scott Valley it has emerged that there's really an alignment of interest between our district and many issues. I share an optimism that we have within the council. And for that reason I found Bob's agonistic and frankly factual comment concerning Santa Rosa Valley coast which makes it ill suited to represent our district and I reluctantly concluded with another board member I've already been decided and I did attempt to look at Gato I hear you but you know this is there's so many things here to unpack there seems to be a sense of board members place of board member they believe inside a board meeting only anti-democratic and American contrary to our system of government if you're obligated to communicate with our constituents on matters of supreme importance that isn't just in board meetings because what do we have five people and there'll be a handful of people a notion of a board attempting one way to find the free board members extremely disturbing I think anybody in the community looking at this would have to ask themselves what was said that was so for the top there were nothing more than I had expressed in previous articles in one campaign recently board meetings in conversations with the community a lot of people would go oh my god not a single person a single person what we have here are folks with whom who are these people are they in the shadows or they won't come out and actually debate just in public something that is of vital importance to the environmental risk associated with ASRs and ejection modes kind of behavior that reluctance that are productive to the best interests of our community best interests of the salmon agency community is not good I'm a free speech advocate maximum transparency and total transparency and everything that's been said so far in that aspect here that I just don't understand we have Santa Cruz does sit on the Santa Margarita water agency according to the lecture that I got on the work together as a team we have differing opinions among the opinions that Santa Cruz brought to the table was their objection to our ISM and D which have accelerated the ability of our districts in the surface water resources that we have in a better fashion to be able to address the groundwater issue that teamwork that representative remaining on the board to me that was one of the most unbelievable things that could I'm not going to sit down as members of that agency and negotiate that but my article I made no secret of the fact even before this board voted to appoint me I oppose and will never vote for has to do with an ASR that comes out of power community pocket anyway disturbs our quiet enjoyment aquifer resources that is publicly before every groundwater agency should be putting all of its emphasis behind maximum utilization of surface water during those months that it is available in order to rest as many wells in our area as possible to do that for a period of time see what that impact is aside any of the stuff to do with the ASRs until later those are last resort items and the fact that there is still an enormous amount of emphasis being placed in that need also deviates on the concept of teamwork as a team how about if we work together on those things that we all agree upon not try to force people into accepting through one way or another things that we don't agree upon and I don't think anybody has talked about that in the past but we were blocked from being able to move forward because of the action taken by one of our team members on the Santa Margarita groundwater clear that if they wish to pursue those on their own nickel that's great they may have more of an interest in doing that than we do this is not something that our community needs I think if we take a look at the recordings the last two board meetings they normally do I ask questions at a policy level at the last meeting I did not disparage any group or any small group I self up to some arbiter between two groups that I am uniquely capable of understanding that in the board meetings and at the end of the day what we're trying to achieve here is nothing more than groupthink not participating in that before you voted for me the first time I readily had the courage to come talk to me happy to talk to you other than Gail happy to talk to anybody listed in the book I have my email published so I'm really actually not convinced that it was that much of an issue as it's being about to be because I have no first-hand knowledge of it it's pure hearsay even if somebody didn't like what I wrote there's a lot of things that other people do that I don't like either but I don't try to shut them down and say well you can't do this or you can't do this I believe in the fact that if we understand where people are coming from and we'll be able to get to a better resolution fear is a police what it is that they say if we can't do that as a community then we have bigger issues if my article is so bad that everybody goes oh my god and we're going to clutch curls we have a bigger problem in this community to communicate issues of vital importance and I'm not the only one doesn't like that you can make it 4 to 1 vote responsibility it may not be something that everybody shares but I get a lot of people thanking me for the fact to stand up and talk about these things you're not just in the board meeting I'm here for the other two directors I don't need you to hear from the public on this but I don't know I'll just put it out there and be an element I think it's both a larger principle first of all I think the idea that we can put those upon a board member for doing so the real problem for me because we didn't know that Bob likes to express himself in writing we didn't know that he can be a cervix but he does that and we didn't know there's nothing that I recommend so I can disagree with the way that he characterized City of San Francisco the idea that we will remove him so quickly if he's done the things that we don't like the reason for everything that we like in a manner in which we don't like it to be done I mean gosh to be honest the national environment that we are operating politically I find this to be a little specific first of all I'm saying to remove direct polls I've written an article in a local paper to inform the public about water issues in our area if there is any disagreement about that article people should make their own argument about the issues that is how our government is supposed to operate free and open debate about the issues Bob would have a chilling effect on the citizens who may have legitimate differences it's not the way to win it's been twice collected and it's the longest serving member in the SLP post written by Bob Solt regarding the Santa Margarita groundwater agency along with their code of conduct the code of conduct of the SLP water district and I don't think that the article is demeaning the most important the agenda item is in connection with concerns that publications like the post article are inconsistent with the SLBWC that participation and leadership on the Santa Margarita groundwater agency and once you move direct and full and fill the vacancy by making another appointment there are protected speeches involved goes on to say you have this speech any censure of other punitive actions against this director would be and you're right it would be director Solt has written regularly and can on various matters in other local newspapers or in his constitution from this point of view they are his own and they don't represent the board as the same article included that you're all concerned about right now are these letters from Exkerson, Panetta Eschew and John Laird all being singled out and I've got to tell you this is important on the demographic to me so this revolves both twice to represent it and thank you and when Mr. Solt is fulfilling that instead of supporting him you're sending to the will organization all right business-owned guiding principles state quote, discussions between men and other users and members maybe challenging in time here we are, but they should be in a collaborative manner respectful to civil discourse between all participants of this course this is gender knowledge and that's what we're getting out of those doors and to Santa Marta v. Groundwater Agency having availed admonishment of Mr. Solt's informative piece of valley city and SLD water are mandated to get a law and then have their own board members reference horrible South Valley builders and those mountain monkeys removed Bob Solt for having an opinion and earned an opinion this doesn't look good and what you do here tonight will riffle through the valley Bob Solt has been worked on for twice by voters in the San Lorenzo Valley he's skeptical I suggest that you discuss this and fall back to a position of civil discourse with the expected member of Bob Solt if no action find another way any member of the public who's participating remotely like to comment yes I feel that I'm at a disadvantage because I haven't been able to follow the conversations but I just want to say that I don't see this at least as an issue of free speech it's a matter of strategy whether Bob is the right person or not I think it's a matter of strategy we need to build alliances in order to be able to get what's best for the valley I ran into this kind of problem when I worked to get the Felton library where we had similar kinds of demeaning comments about those of us in the valley but we needed to get an alliance to get that library we had the Scotts Valley and the city of Santa Cruz fighting against us and we had to be very strategic and I have not been attending the Santa Margarita meetings but I know Bob can be very forceful with his opinions it may not be the right assignment for him and that's the issue here it isn't to me a matter of free speech it's a matter of strategy and tactics we need to build alliances in order to be thinking about who will represent its best in these delicate negotiations right now thank you we want to start writing articles and in fact the article that he wrote is probably the first two thirds of it I would have absolutely signed on to entertaining our public which I think he has to do and it's a good thing that he does all I'm saying is however the comments that were made by one of the people in direct response whoever in the article they were making to what he thought was Bob's discord coming to do administration I think we just need to start and whether it's Santa Margarita saying it's a clumsy joke or whether it's Bob attributing motives to the U.S. Valley or Santa Cruz to work together problems that we're trying to refer to if I should say we're trying to venture someone by response to what I do not writing what they say I understand that you see it the lens in which I see it is not going to be persuaded that it's not you know, a case of abduction because as I said earlier there's nothing that surprised me in Bob's actions based on who he was before we were going to come that being said you know I think that I agree we should also but being central within the boundaries of things that really need conversations to be had now I can disagree all day it's the way that Bob characterized the U.S. family but I can't say that I want to take it on my disagreement with the way that everybody wished to pull anything from that towards the district managers report apologize for this audio visual tonight we are working on it that's a general public