Boom! Welcome back to the 21 convention 2022 of Orlando, Florida. The 16-year anniversary of 21 convention events and 21 studios being held at the much larger Super 21 Summit in Orlando, Florida. Our next speaker is a returning speaker to the 21 convention. First speaking at our event back in 2019 in Warsaw, Poland, our special event we had there back in July of that year. Excellent speech, excellent event. This speaker is a personal friend of mine who's helped me a lot in my life recover from kind of childhood trauma, relationship trauma, what he calls CPTSD, complex PTSD. He's an expert at it and I think he's one of the best coaches in the world for these kinds of issues for men and even for women on his channel. He's a big YouTuber as well by the way. I call him YouTube's number one psychology guru. He's also the author of a brand new book. He's going to be a best seller any minute. It just came out a couple days ago. We have a couple copies out in the lobby. It's called A Cult of One. It's even endorsed on the back by Dr. Shanti Smith, which is pretty badass. I was like, whoa, Shanti Smith endorsed this guy? Anyway, without further ado, please let me welcome back to the 21 convention stage, Richard Granin. Welcome back, sir. Thank you, sir. Hello gentlemen. Firstly, I must apologize. I have a bit of a head cold. And to combat that, I have taken large amounts of pseudo effigy. And I'm very, very high. So this could go one or two ways. It could be brilliant or it could be absolute drivel. I watched as many of you did Jack Donovan deliver just before this and watched him wrestle with the topic of what masculinity is. And in preparation for this, I wanted to know what Jack would say because I don't want to cover what other people do. And I don't want to cover what other people do better than I could. I'm very, very heavily influenced by Jack. I have a Donovanian worldview of masculinity because I read a lot of his material and it's had a heavy influence on me. So I thought in order to do this in a way that is not going to cover all ground and that could possibly present you with something useful, practical and interesting with actionable steps. I thought, how do I give myself a restriction? What would be the affectation with which to do this? And I thought, well, I could imagine I was trying to explain to a young man how to be a man now in 2022. How to be what you already are but it is sort of illegal to be. Very, very strange situation to find yourself in. And in doing that, I thought, okay, we'll start from a premise. What is masculinity? And I struggled to define it as you saw Jack struggle a little bit to define it as well. It's more of a kind of like a you know it when you say it sort of a thing. So I thought, okay, how do I reduce this to first principles in a way that really draws it down and makes it very, very simple. And I went back to Taoism and Taoism at the sort of the quantum physics level, like the quantum of reality. What is masculine versus that which is feminine? Because you can only define masculinity through its opposition which would be femininity. The Taoists called it yang, yang. It's that which is versus yin, which is that which is not. When movements are done in martial arts, yang is that which is, yin is that which draws in. It's that which pulls forward. If you have too much yang or too much yin in your internal organs, you have health problems and you can potentially die. You have to have balance. So if you have something that is yang and it is a thing, what does that mean? If masculinity is beingness and what is under attack is masculinity, then what is under attack is beingness itself. You are not allowed to be a man. And really now I think I will claim as we move forward everybody is being told that they're not allowed to be a human at all. So first of all, masculinity is attacked.  It's pointless. It's contemptible. You remember the TV shows, the adverts, not the first person to say it. The classic in the American sitcom was the father is a goofball.  He's a clown. He's the bot of the jokes, even as everybody is sat in the house that he has provided inside that house. Here's the bot of all jokes. In adverts you see that being played out again and again.  Then it got nasty.  Masculinity is dangerous. Men are evil. Men are dangerous. And the idea of toxic masculinity was born, which is being upheld even by the American Psychological Association, as I'm sure most of you in the room will know. They had this thing, this piece that they released about how psychologists across America must unify in training young men that being a man is bad for their mental health, that masculine traits are bad for your mental health. We live in very, very strange times, folks. Anybody watching this on YouTube afterwards who thinks that this is just a room full of men concerned with men's issues? What I would say is the defense of masculinity is the defense of humanity itself. The end goal is not to put women in charge. Women are tricked, women are tricked, who think that? Feminism, the ambition, the agenda of feminism, the cancer on culture that is feminism is to trick women into thinking that they will get their moment in the sun, that they will be in charge. But that's not true. Women will not be in charge. Men will not be in charge. We will all be enslaved and subjugated. There will be no men. There will be no women. There will be what Jack Donovan has referred to as androgynous, genderless, worm people who consume. We are being trained by an extremely evil agenda to be the best voters and the best consumers we can be, and there is no other concern.  Never did. It was never about social justice. It's only about subjugation, enslavement and entrainment. Attacking men was necessary. Why? I said, yang. Men are yang. Men were the boundary. Men were the boundary. Men were the wall. Men were the last line of defense. And that's gone. There was a little trick that was used developed by the communists.  It is verifiable. Objectively, it's called demoralization. Train the women into an ideology of conformity, vanity and victimhood that causes them to hate men and to show men contempt. And what happens when men lose their women? They become depressed. Are we not depressed? They become listless. Life has no meaning. Life has no passion. Life has no juice. Men clearly live for women. Hang on a second though. I thought men hated women. I thought men live just to subjugate women and enslave them.  Because women don't want us anymore.  True or false? I'm afraid it's true. So here we are now. And what would I say to a young man in this society, in this culture right now? And he said to me, how do I be a man and how do I be masculine? I would say you need to recognize all of this. You have to absorb all of this. You were raised, you were born unfortunately in a very, very strange time where the essence of who you are, you are not allowed to be that.   But if you want to be a man, that's a problem. That's a problem. I'm sweating now. I told you the effigy would kick in. So in this version of events and this timeline and this reality that we're up to now, masculinity is a decision to be as opposed to not being. This that we face is not feminism.  This is a death cult. This is a death cult. The purpose of this cult, as I say, and as Jack has said, is to turn as all men, women, children, trans, everybody, nobody say from this into genderless, identityless, worm people who will literally be put into pods. Literally. I swear. You will see this in the next five years. Pods. Pods are coming. They won't be called pods. They'll be like virtual reality machines or whatever. But we will be facing heavy pressure to get into pods because it's pleasurable. So the pleasure button is going to get pushed, as it always is, with these people and for the good of other people.  Consumer capitalism as it is today is evil. I'm a capitalist, but we need to recognize the difference between free market capitalism and consumerism. It behooves consumer capitalism to provoke and invoke evil in people. The seven deadly sins. Lost, sloth, greed, envy, rage, because people are in that state they buy and they submit and they do as they're told. Recognize that. Yang is the choice to be. There is going to be conflict in this choice. There is going to be conflict in this choice. If you think about at the very raw level of reality, the structure of human genitalia, that which is the yang is an audacious thing. That's a daring thing, but it is standing out and it is visible and it is punishable therefore. Safer to be horizontal, safer to be flat. We're talking ones and zeros. We're talking being and not being. I'm not trying to say yang is good and yin is bad. They need each other. They absolutely need each other. But this is the choice between I would claim a life, one of passion, one of red bloodedness, one of individuality, one of being able to be who you are, whatever that is, I'm all for it. I'm all for people spontaneously being whoever and whatever they want to be. The forces that we face are not. They demand submission and as I say, it's a death cult. I'm reminded frequently of around 2012, Will Smith, the poor cock, came out with a couple of movies. One was called I am legend and the other one was I robot. In I am legend, he is literally the last human being alive. He's the last man alive and everybody around him has been infected by a virus. Everybody of every ethnicity turns bald and milk white and become these screaming vampire zombies. In I robot, at the end of the movie, it's Will Smith alone facing an army of robots and facing artificial intelligence and they are also white. Why so much whiteness? It's anti-white racism. No, it isn't. Whiteness in this context represents sterility. Death. That which is white is death. White. Like, white people aren't white, right? They're sort of yellowy pink. Every ethnicity when they die, they go pale as the blood goes away from the skin. This is death. In one representation, he was the last man on earth facing a viral infection and in the other, artificial intelligence. Interesting. I find it interesting. I find it interesting that that's what came out of the collective unconscious around 2012 because that is the situation that we face now. It's desperate. It's tragic. These are the forces of death. These are the forces of conformity. This is a hive mind.  They all virtue signal in the same way. Virtue signaling, by the way, just as a side note, as I referenced artificial intelligence and the death cult, there is just a concept called signaling in biology when animals want to speak to each other, they signal. There is a type of South African deer that jumps up in the air to show to potential mates that it is very virile. This action is called spronking. That's a signal. Signals can be deceptive. Signals frequently are deceptive. The animals will communicate that they're more virile than they actually are in order to win mates. This virtue signaling that we're seeing is actually a symptom of the ideological infection of the virus that is sweeping through society now. It's a pandemic. Does that mean that nobody has any moral responsibility? No, people should resist going with the flow. But when I say there is conflict in being, and when I say we will need to resist and that there may be violence, what I would also say is the people who are your enemy are also victimized by this ideological infection. Does that make sense?  We have to keep our compassion. This will be hard, but we are men, and it is masculine to be compassionate even with your enemy. Even with your enemy. It is honorable to be compassionate even with your enemy. I believe that this ideological infection can be reversed as well. So that's something to bear in mind. What we're looking at at the initial level when you think about this ideological infection is a kind of broad-scale anima infection, which is a Jungian concept, which means that there's a part of the human spirit that has been denied and then has come back to possess the individual, but we're seeing it at a collective level. What this means is that the spirit that has collectively infected our culture is that of an angry, stroppy, bullbusting woman. Sound familiar? That's anima possession. If it were anima's possession, you would have a very, very bullying, aggressive man infecting people. This archetype, sometimes I'll refer to it as the smother-mother archetype. If you have bad parents, like a danger daddy would be a father who encourages too much risk in his children, the smother-mother doesn't allow for any risk whatsoever. She's obsessed with safety, conformity, and people doing as they're told. She's also very keen on policing words and thoughts. You may find that something you recognize. The end goal is, as I say, a kind of sexless consumer, a perfect voter. Now, under these circumstances, if we're looking for action steps, and I hope that we are, whether you're male or female or however you identify, presumably you identify as being a human being. If you identify as a human being that values individual freedom, then you must resist, and you must develop your will. This is one of the biggest tests that humanity is going to face. Everybody around you is going to throw their will to one side, and they're going to give you every single kind of pressure and every single kind of reason to do the same thing as them. We are tribal creatures, we need each other, and you will feel the impulse to do whatever else is doing and to throw your will away.  Just do as you're told. Stop asking all these hard questions. Just go with the flow, just do what everybody else is doing. So what I'm going to advocate for is training the will, even as everybody else is throwing theirs away. Make your will strong. Cultivate your intent. This is going to be tough, very tough, but nobody's coming to save us. It's just us. Literally. Don't fantasize that there's anybody else, there's no one else. This is it. It's these conferences, it's these groups, it's these forums, it's these people, and no one else.  I'm not that great. I'm not that perfect. Doesn't matter. There is no one else. If we don't stop it, nobody's going to stop it, and this is where it's going to go. You start here. You train your will. You train your intention. You train yourself to be determined. That means making certain choices again and again that are going to be uncomfortable choices. Literally uncomfortable choices. You're going to have to choose conflict. Conflict's not nice. The smother mother wants you to be nice.  Be agreeable. Our culture values agreeableness practically over everything else.  What kind of progress can any culture make being obedient? How does obedience and agreeableness become a key principle of a culture that is expanding? It is not. It is a key principle of a culture that is now in decline. So you must choose conflict. You must choose rebellion.  This is going to be painful. Your own tribe is going to turn against you and that's guaranteed at this point. You must choose risk over safety. Keep choosing risk over safety.  I don't say this to you and be like don't worry guys everything's going to be okay if you take risks. It isn't.  That's life. That's the way we always lived. That's the way we've always lived up until about 120 years ago. We said right we're not taking any more risks because you know bad things might happen. Choose discipline over self-indulgence. I think we're already seeing this spontaneously happening. I used to laugh at all the guys online who would brag about nofap. I'm like are you seriously talking about wanking with each other in a public space? But I see value in it now that I never did before.  You know people who take cold showers and they stop wanking. I think what are you doing that for? Or they don't do porn. And now I'm looking at I'm going no that makes sense. That is a spontaneous intuitive unconscious drive to rekindle the masculine urge. Discipline. Control. Do the uncomfortable thing. Do the hard thing. Do the difficult thing against indulgence. Everything in your environment. Everything inside of the ideological soup that you swim in every day is saying don't be disciplined. Indulge. Indulge. Indulge. Because that's what makes you a good consumer.  So you have to be disciplined. You've got to change the way you eat. You've got to change the way you drink. You've got to change the way you sleep. All of it.  There's no more time. It's got to be now. You want to be healthy. You want to be strong. You're going to need it. Choose hardship. Choose hardship over ease. Choose action over introspection. I'm a psychologist. You won't often hear psychologists say that. But actually I think our culture is infected with something that's called psychologization and safetyism. If you're interested in that you can read Jonathan Haidt's book, The Coddling of the American Mind. It's an excellent book. Introspection is not that useful. Knowing why somebody did something is not that relevant. But we're obsessed with it. We're obsessed with knowing like, why when that military general did this, why was he doing that? Was it because his mother told him no?  Take action. Get out of that. That's a more feminine mindset. So as a psychologist I generally am a more of a feminine type of a guy. I'm more interested in people than I'm interested in things. But I can see that this is poison. It paralyzes people. Stop introspecting that so much. Get on with it. Take action. You want to do something.  It becomes a form of procrastination. Mental masturbation leads to paralysis. Focus on the results and worry less about motivations. But why am I doing this?  Just get on with it.  And if you want to see something happen in your life, make it happen.  Stop whinging. Loads of lads now.  You know what whinging is? Does that make a complaining? What do you call it in American? Whining. Whining. Stop whining.  It's an indulgence. That's ease. That's safety. That's conformity. Stop whining. Take action. Do something. Stop whining. You want to see something happen in your life and it hasn't happened yet? What did you do today to make it happen? What five things did you do today to make that thing happen? Nothing. But you whanked five times in a row. Well done. Well done. That takes discipline. Get sore at the end. This is the kind of thing you want to be focusing on if you want to break out of this. It's going to be hard. It's going to take a lot of courage and it's going to be very, very uncomfortable. I also recommend as you do this, try and have open-minded conversations with people even if they're on the other side of this argument. Have faith that a strong philosophy will beat a weak ideology. Have faith.  You don't get defensive. You don't get cranky. You just sit there and say like, why do you believe that? Oh, that's interesting. What causes you to think that that is true? What evidence is there for that? And then you present a superior philosophy. You don't have to take people apart. You don't have to be like, I'm going to smash this communist's ideas into smithereens. You don't need to do that. Just show people a better way. Just show them a different way of thinking about something. The human brain has this weakness. It has this fallibility and I've been using it for 25 years now in the therapeutic context. Because if it has two choices, if you show it a better choice to get done, whatever its objectives are, it automatically takes that. It automatically takes that. Find out what your opponent's motivations are. I just want my children to be safe. So do I, mate. So do I. Have you considered that one way of doing it would be this? Oh, OK. I thought that handing over all of my power and agency to the state would do it.  What I wanted to do in this session, guys, is to give you a chance to ask questions so we can go back and forth on this. So I'm going to stop yelling at you in my effigynd out state. My jet-lagged, caffeinated effigynd state. And we'll do some questions and we'll have a little bit of a chat. So thank you very much and feel free to go up and ask a question. Hello, sir. Hi.  And like it can be, it can, like practically, it can be very easy when you're the only one to just avoid the conflict and be agreeable and to make the choice that the majority wants you to make. Like if they say, OK, like where I'm asked when you work, take the COVID shot, do what the government tells you to do, and then they broadcast it on media. So you think you're the only person that is making, and it makes you feel like you're making the wrong choice by not doing what they say. And at my particular job, I eventually found about like five to 10 people who were in agreement with me and did not want to take like the shot or really do what the government says. Like how can you, can you give some advice on how to make the more difficult choice when you're choosing like the conflict, or rebellion, and all that other stuff, like the action over just like really going with what the, doing what the TV tells you to do and just going with the majority. Less TV, less porn, more Nietzsche, more Kierkegaard. You got to read.  These are weird guys, strange dudes with big ideas, challenging ideas, dangerous ideas. You got to live in their world. If you watch Netflix, or you're consuming porn, you're on social media all day, you're not going to develop a will like that because everything I do, I'm scrolling TikTok, I'm ideologically infected as well. I got enough Nietzsche in me to defend it, just about, but I'm aware of it, and it's all, it's all lowering impulse control. It's all lowering discipline, slowly, slowly, slowly, and like the coordinates of what you're watching, you go, that's funny. And then I'm sat there, I'm going, why is that funny? What do I need to believe to be true in order for that to be funny? You know like meme culture online so that we can all enjoy the same weird videos? That's ideological. That's conformist. It's incredibly conformist. There aren't multiple standards of sense as a fumer online. There's one. There's one tone of like this ironic, post-modern, hipsterish sort of tone to everything. I enjoy it, I like it, but I recognize it's actually a sort of conformity. So you've got to break it. It's really, really uncomfortable. Read. Stop watching TV or watch way less TV and be very, very careful. The adverts come on on the radio, turn it off. Don't look at posters when you drive around. I'm serious. I'm deadly serious. Don't look at big hanging titties when you're in the traffic. It's hard. That's not me milking them. When you're in traffic, try not to look. Try not. There's so much bombarding your mind and it's weakening you because these unconscious messages that have been put in there by smart people who understand psychology at the deepest levels, they want you weak. They want you soft. You've got to be a weirdo. Like you're going to be weird.  I'm a weirdo then. You're not watching the same TV as everybody else. You're not consuming social media like everybody else. You're the weirdo who, I won't go in the cinema and watch trailers.   I'm weird.  It's my mind. It's mine. I have to protect it or what little I have left after all this effort. I have to protect it. Does that answer your question? Sort of. I mean, you're right.  But it's also difficult when it's like your own family that believes and is doing the will of what the TV says. I mean, like you were saying, I don't really watch much TV. But when it's your own family and they're really pressuring you, it can be tough to resist. Would you say that it's like an isolating and depressing experience? I would say it's more like... I'd say it is more like isolating. I mean, because it would be just me and then against my two parents and then my brother and my sister. So it's definitely isolating with that. Does that ever lead to feelings of despair? More like the conflict of just knowing that I'm making a bad decision by following what they say. You would enjoy Kierkegaard. Okay, I have not read Kierkegaard. Yeah, you would enjoy it. It helps. It's an Nietzsche. It will offer a lot of solace. It's the nature of the beast. It's the time we're born into. This is the test. Your mother is going to pressure you to do something out of kindness and love and the best of intentions to do something that you know you shouldn't do. And you're not going to do it.  That's what being a man is. Embrace the suck. Okay. All right. Yeah. Thank you. That really helped. I'll definitely give Kierkegaard a read. Cool. Cool. Hello. How are you today other than high?  So of the words that you have up on the left side of the board, I think a lot of men can relate to those from physical aspects, you know, combat. We understand that physically. But how would you paint a picture of what those look like within the current sociopolitical experiences we have? How do we take that kind of action? Well, they mirror perfectly into the psychological, emotional, and political world. You take exactly these same principles. You could look at these as, these aren't tactics and they're not strategies. They're upstream of tactics and strategies. These are principles of action. So take those principles of action. So if you're dealing with, say, something that's difficult politically, you could look at a list like that and go, okay, where am I not taking action on this issue? And where could I? Or where could I inspire other people to take action?  Because a lot of politics stays in a loop of what are you trying to do? What are you trying to do? That's the virtue signaling thing.  Your results stink. I mean, it's perfect right now. I love what they're doing here. The results stink.  And it's open and it's obvious.  So that's why I would, I say it overlays perfectly. Is there an example you're thinking of? No, not in particular. If you could think of one, I'll try and work through it for you. I'll let you know. Okay, all right. Thank you. Hello. Hello there. I was first of all wondering if you could tell me which roadways to drive on that I could see those big hanging titties you were talking about. So it really resonated with me when you were talking about being weird, consciously being weird, embracing the weirdness. Because I think a lot of the guys in this room, including myself, have done that in some form. But I was wondering, let me just give a quick anecdote. I was walking the other night, nice October night, you could smell the leaves, you could get a nice cool breeze. And I was walking through a neighborhood and you could see the stars, beautiful night. But you could also see the flickering blue light in every house. I mean every house. And I was just thinking, some of those are normal people, good people, just having their nightly Netflix. But I want to be able to drag some guys, some people out, and just get them to experience something else. And I was wondering if you had any ways that you've run into in your life, successfully getting people out of the matrix and into some fun stuff. I think like the answer I gave before is pertinent to this, which is if you have a superior philosophy and you give people the choice to go for it without badgering them for what they're already doing, it's pretty cool. So exactly that example of watching TV versus looking at the stars at night, I'll say to people, how many shooting stars have you seen in your life? Like most people go two, three. I've seen over 40. Over 40, how you do that? Because I'm constantly outside, lying on my back, looking at the stars. I'm like, why'd you do that? I'm like, dude, you've got to try it. It's like taking psychedelics or something. Half an hour, 35 minutes, your mind just goes into another place, you start zoning out. And it's like a sales pitch for a unique experience that then people go, oh, that sounds really weird, but I kind of want to try that. I live sometimes in Ibiza, which is an island off Spain. It's a beautiful place. And if you go inland, there's no light pollution. And you can just lay there and just watch the stars. America's great for it, like your national parks. I've done it in Joshua Tree. It freaked me out. I was nearly crying. Yeah, I've done it in Great Sand Dunes National Park, Colorado. Just lying in the sand in a sleeping bag. Yeah. Unbelievable. And it's a psychedelic experience, right? You're not thinking your normal thoughts. You can't. Because from there to there, your entire reality is the sea of stars.   You become free. You cease to be in a certain sense. Your ego disintegrates. So you said, how do you convince people? That's how I convince people. I talk like that. I talk like a weirdo. I'm like, your ego disintegrates.  I want to try that. It kind of sounds like ayahuasca.  That's great. And I would say as far as being weird goes, it's okay for us to be weird and it's okay for us to swim against the flow. But we also have a responsibility to learn to be socially intelligent. We're going to have to convince people. There may be violence, but I don't think the violence will lead to anything. This is more of a situation where the thing that's going to create the next revolution to something better is convincing people with a superior philosophy. So we have to become philosophers. We have to become good at speaking, good at conveying with passion that which we believe to be true and bringing people on side naturally without bullying them because that all creates resistance otherwise. So yeah, it's a good example. I like that. Convincing people not to watch TV but to go out and look at the stars. And I guess while I'm here and we have time, one more thing about that. Are there any specific activities you can recommend for men to get together and do? I know nature is awesome, but are there any other things that are alternatives to dragging people away from the television? Usually what I've noticed with men is that I'm a fairly feminine guy, so I have female friends who I'll hang around with. Women seem more comfortable just meeting up and talking. And men, they need like a third thing. So it's got to be poker or they're going to show up and do Brazilian jiu-jitsu or there's like another thing that you do. So as long as you put that in there, it makes it appealing. But it's just an excuse.  I actually think a lot of mental health problems would dissipate after a few weeks. A lot of insomnia issues, a lot of anxiety issues, a lot of depression. We've lost each other. We've lost our connection with each other. You just sit there by firelight. You don't even need to say anything particularly deep.  But you're there together. You're there together. You feel the presence of other people. You have that interaction. Last night there was a speaker's dinner and around the table it was sort of found out that everybody at the table had either done Brazilian jiu-jitsu or judo.  And I'm thinking none of us work in security. Nobody's law enforcement. Nobody's gonna use this in real life but as men we like that.  We want to talk about the technical aspect of the thing when you do this and that's what we are. And when I talk about masculinity I don't want people to think that they have to conform to my deal of what like being a man is.   I warned you I was on drugs that night. Does that help? Thank you, that was great. Thanks. We were shagging elks there for a second.  Hello. Hey, I really appreciated your talk. It spoke a lot to me. Thanks. I think especially in America I think it's intentional that they don't really bring philosophy as much into the schools. And you're a perfect example of that. You're very dangerous because you're open to a lot of different ideas. For me personally philosophy found me in a very low time in my life. I was very lost.  What's your story in a way? Well, I was... How long we got? When I was a kid I was in a... There's an ethnic group in the UK that you don't have here that my father is from that brings a certain sort of trouble that is renowned and I was raised in a household like that. So I have multiple late half brothers and sisters that I don't even know. It was a chaotic environment. It was violent and it was actually abusive as well. So whilst I was in that space as a kid that couldn't escape I was always looking for something, some way out. So when I was looking at like magic, religion, psychology, philosophy, all that kind of thing as a way of sort of trying to escape the chaos and the pain of what I was in. And what I could see as a kid was I saw children, other children and they seemed okay. But then I looked at adults and I was like these motherfuckers are infected with something.  And so over the years I would always come back to philosophy, spirituality and religion and be like what do we need? Like why as we age do we age like this?  Is that necessary? I just when I flew in to America I had this thought, I was like oh what if people did more like fasting and what if people did more like dancing? You know dancing to change your consciousness. You dance till you're exhausted and then you keep going. So I was thinking fasting, dancing and then chanting. And I was like which religion has that? Native American religion. I was like what does America need? America needs native and I was drunk on the flight. I was like American needs native American religion back and everything will be okay. There's an unburdening in doing that. Oh also they took psychedelics. That's part of the Native American church. You can take psychedelics and it's actually legal. We need that. We need as humans, we need our tribe, we need our people and you have to escape your ego because this flesh suit it sucks, it's tough. So if you can alter your consciousness regularly I think you unburden something and we desperately need that. We desperately need that. Now does philosophy give you that? No, but I think philosophy gives you the tools to ask the question. So say okay what am I looking at? I'm looking at people weighed down, burdened. Why do we even age was one of my things when I was a kid. And then when I was like I think 13 I took acid for the first time and I did that right the way up until I was 20. And I would take acid even if it was a bad trip. Like most of my trips were really really bad trying to find the answer to these kinds of questions and it left me, because you asked where did this come from it left me with the curiosity for these things. Like why have we always lived this way? Human beings don't live like this. We never live like this. This is like one day old. We are weird. We speak to spirits. We like I say we do the sweat lodges. We do we escape this reality. We have a magical view of reality, a spiritual view of reality and that's the creature that we are. The post enlightenment western mechanistic view. It's good and it's given us dentistry and anesthetics and airplanes fantastic. But I think we've gone too far that way and it's probably time to sort of explore back into psychedelics and other practices that alter consciousness. Taking loads of pseudo-epigen is not a recommended one. I'm like coming in and out of reality here. Does that answer your question? Yeah, I guess in a way it found you at a certain time in life. Do you feel as if you need to experience that other level of consciousness do you need to take psychedelics? Or can philosophy just give you that own stimulation? For me in a way I feel like I haven't taken psychedelics so I can't tell you why I'm asking you. But me personally I find that same mental stimulation an openness of my mind, that depth through philosophy not necessarily through drugs. I don't do psychedelics anymore. I regularly get asked to speak to psychedelics groups. I'm not an advocate for it. I don't like the way it's become trendy because it is actually quite dangerous. It can induce psychosis. As I said my trips were frightening because I wasn't guided and I was traumatised.  So no philosophy might do it. Really seriously looking at the stars might do it. If you need a push, dancing, chanting is a great heavy heavy exercise like a savage kettlebell workout.  You reduce yourself back to that primal state and you're engaged in all that conflict and hardship.   That's another part of the Native American culture, right? Was self, what do you call that? Well there were degrees of self-harm. Ritualised self-harm. Cutting off fingers, drilling holes in the head.  And I don't think we should lose that. But to answer the question about drugs, no, I don't think drugs are essential.  Do you have any other books or philosophers other than Soren Kierkegaard and Frederick Nietzsche that you'd recommend to young men? Yes, I think all young men should, especially now should read Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov. I think that's the central reading for this moment of history that we're going through. Thus Spake Zarathustra is also another one probably. And then explore the philosophy of Sufism, Buddhism, the Vedic philosophies, these are interesting, Gnosticism. And then just compare and contrast and be like, wow, why would wider human beings think that we're trapped inside of a world that was created by an evil god that we can only transcend through Gnosis? That's an interesting idea. And what were the different sects of that? Why did they believe that? Why were the bogamills only having anal and oral sex? That sounds fun. I'm going to join them. So yeah, these are the things that... That's true, you know. Some bogamills really did that. It's not my fault, man. Yeah, to explore all of these different things and to see from the point of view of trying to understand how our human beings are experiencing themselves. How are we experiencing the human experience? What does this mean for us to be alive now with all of the conflict, with everything that's going on? And what's the right way to live? You're right, there is no philosophy taught in schools and it's insane. It's insanity inducing. There are questions that we all have to answer as human beings that should be gone being asked by the age of eight. What is good? What is bad? What is the purpose of life? What is the nature of reality? How should a person live? Not that an eight-year-old is going to be able to answer that question but an 80-year-old can't answer that question. We should wrestle with these questions for life and, you know, we should hang around the campfire and argue with each other about it and engage in the Socratic method. I think it is good to do this. Imagine that. Three months, every night. That's what we did, everybody in this room right now and everybody has to go up by the campfire and you answer that same question again. What is good? And you say it. Why do you believe that? And then we all badger you and you have to think. You have to endure that psychological pressure to defend the point of view. How strong? It's like three months. How much stronger would you be in terms of thinking, presenting an argument, not getting emotionally dysregulated when somebody challenges you? It could be a good thing. It's the beginning of my new cult. That's why I'm here. Yeah. And I think that's something that we definitely need in the civil discourse.   A lot of what you'll hear in modern discourse or modern debate, it's just morons who are ideologically infacted going bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep. And then there's no thought there. So, ideology is not philosophy. Philosophy teaches you how to think. Ideology can only give you what to think. It's a parasite. It's a psychological parasite. Have you heard of the Kruger Effect? Yeah. Donning Kruger Effect. Yeah. So there's plenty of that. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I appreciate it. Thank you, sir. Thank you very much. Any other questions? Hey, Rich. It's great meeting you, man.  It was a great conversation about doodon and stuff. But absolutely fascinated by your talk today.  I guess my question would be if you could quantify a little bit because I've always thought introspection was a good thing. But how do you quantify having a slightly better value over action, I guess? Or how do you manage or reconcile the difference between spending being on one dimension or over the other? Do you know where the idea, the modern idea that introspection is a good thing came from? I have no idea. It's probably largely popularized by Freud, by one guy. Like the daddy of psychoanalysis and the way we view human psychology today. If I said to you, if we kept this philosophical if I asked you why is introspection good, how would you answer that? So you could probably review and analyze and make better choices. That's how I would define it, I guess. So I think and this is after I did a degree in psychology and I actually got a job in psychology straight away. I was really, really lucky. They stuck me in the probation service working with criminals who are criminals because they're drug addicts. I was 21. They would fill a room with drug addicts and they'd be like, now tell them not to take drugs and give them and I'd be doing cognitive behavioral therapy. Next time you think of taking heroin do something else. It didn't work very well. So some of the assumptions of psychology are somewhat naive and I think this is a beautiful example of one of them. Introspection must be good. Why? Because I go inside and I think and it revealed to me what my true motivations are. How do you know you're telling the truth? So in psychology if I say to you we're doing a therapy session, why did you do that?  It has to be acceptable to me.  But that really might be the reason but how you would say it to me because I'm a deviant as well. But to someone else you would lie. But it's not really a lie because in that moment where you're looking at your female psychologist you don't want to offend. You would say I wanted to improve my social circle. Instead of bitches with bigger titties. But that's really what the motivation was. But in that moment you would believe that. So it's a confabulation. You trick yourself. So introspection like the repressed memory I don't think much of it. There is another school of psychoanalysis that was developed by Adler that was much more focused on what people did.  Alfred Adler. He's another one if you're looking at somebody to review. Alfred Adler far superior way of looking at psychoanalysis.  We all have the will to power. They were all influenced by Nietzsche and Jung and Adler. The three of them. But Adler is truly Nietzschean. He was like I don't care what you say you want to do. What are you doing? What are you doing? It's the will to power.  You're a man.  You feel lost for beautiful women. Why can't we have a conversation which we say you did that because you want to have sex with better looking women. Why can't... How is that a taboo? It's really true. People are building corporations for that reason. The world runs on this but we're not allowed to say it because it's not politically correct.  That's completely crazy. And so that's where I come at it with introspection. I'm not convinced it's as useful as we've been led to believe. Was that even your question? No, I mean it's... It's led to it. Well, I guess how do you with your call to action over there? Oh, yeah. It would be how would you... You kind of answered it a little bit. So I guess if I could surmise that you're saying that being in integrity is being in action versus over-indulging in introspection. Yeah, that's good. I should have said it like that.  It's all good, man. I think the brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky, was for the importance of spirituality and the importance for the love of something greater than ourselves to break beyond the human ego and integrity. Freud read that and he had a rule which was above all else be honest with yourself. So one of the things that I meant to say in this talk and I didn't until you just reminded me is about authenticity. We have to tell ourselves the truth. So trying to reclaim masculinity, reclaim life we have to tell ourselves the truth.  And it's all good. As far as I'm concerned that is what it is. The ideological infection is like, no, not titties, no, titties bay, titties bay. Why? Why are we all here?  And now there's 8 billion of us and then yesterday we decided that's the worst thing on earth.  Tell me, I mean, come on. What was your question? No, that's it. You got it, mate. We're getting titties on everything now. Titties, titties, titties. Sorry, Anthony. This will be unreleasable on YouTube. This is useless.  My question is that earlier when you're talking about introspection and you're saying, you know, that there's less value in that than taking action per se. But then when we question people, for instance, what's your motive and then they say, well, I want my kids to be safe. And then that's kind of asking them to be introspective. Is it more valuable then to maybe just talk to people about the consequences of what they're trying to impose versus having them introspective? This is a wave. This is to fight a wave. So the wave is pushing you towards agreeableness, introspection, self-indulgence, ease and so on. So we have to fight against the wave. We have to push back. But then when you're talking to somebody and you want to build rapport and you want to lead them to a good conclusion, you do whatever you need to do. And finding out what people's motivations are makes them feel heard. Even in therapy. So sometimes I'm doing therapy with people and sometimes I'm writing sales copy because these are the two jobs that I have largely speaking, the sound make money. I don't really care. I actually don't really care because the answer, it's not that I don't care about you, but the answer you give me is going to be a lie because you're performing. We all do. I'm performing, you're performing. So I say to you, what is your reason for wanting to vote this way? You're not going to tell me the truth.   And I'll go, okay, I don't have to buy it. Do you know what I mean? But I'm listening to you. I'm here. I'm present and I'm taking an interest. And the answer you give me does tell me useful data about you but it's not answering the real question. Not really. Do you see where I'm going? It's more about the connection with another person actually saying, like, this is the real reason why they do it. Because people just do it. I ask people all the time, I'll say, are you left or right? And then they'll give me their answer. And I'm like, do you know what left and right means?  You take anybody out of a bar, they have really strong political views. And I'm like, where does left wing come from? Where does right wing come from? It's the French Revolution. What does it mean? They don't know. I'm totally convinced I'm left wing. But I don't know what those words mean. You know, I take people, humans, seriously in terms of their value. Like, I want everyone to be happy and healthy. But I don't take what they say seriously. It's gibberish. People just go, I hope they just practice saying sounds.  It's just talking points that they've heard somewhere else. Most of the time. We were all around the campfire. Really, we would learn so much about human psychology if we did that. So I'm going to ask you, for the next three months every night, the same question.  Because you show up the next day as a different you. Like in some quantum physics sense, you fell asleep and the old you died and then a new you was reborn. I'll go, why did you do that? And you'll give me like the same answer but with a little nuance. And then a little nuance and it's, you evolve as we're having the conversation.  And we shouldn't castigate. We shouldn't punish people for that. So like what you were telling the gentleman earlier about being intellectual, like reading more and just focusing on just kind of like factual conversations. Yeah, because again, I come back to we think of ourselves as rational but we're emotional.  We must connect. So like we have a conversation about why you're depressed and you go into your childhood a bit and you walk away feeling better. Is that obvious that I'm depressed? Yes it is. But actually why you walked away feeling better is because someone listened to you.  Dude you just had a conversation because you don't have that conversation. Who's listening to you? You're a man.  Nobody's listening to you. I'm in pain. Are you?   God damn. We should be doing that for each other. Thanks for answering. How are we for time? Good. Hello sir. How's it going? First I just want to say thank you for what you put out right in the content.


Ybodaeth ymlaenwch y gwisnwys meddwl ar gyfer ond modd 6-3-2-5 ar y petrach, gan Lyfydd Ffferriaol, mae sefydlu o dde quarantine i £30,280.90 o cardiomyopathy. Y fit yw ymlaenwch wedi ymlaenwch y gallai ddawn, mae yna bod wedi hynny ymlaenwch chi'n gwybod â cyunction gynrytu ychydig, o'r prysåd. Rds i'r wneud yn eich ffunctfyniad yn ddiwrnod i chi'n ddweud, ac rydw i ddim yn gwasanaeth i gyd yn ddwynd i'ch gweithio'n gweithio'n ddweud o gyrchon sy'n gweithio'n ddweud. Calum Fherry wedi wneud i gyd yn gweithi'n ddwynd i'ch gwaith dros ffyrdd hynny. Dyna, rydyn ni'n randdo i'ch fan ar gyfer Rhwygi. Fodra gyda gwybodaeth gyda gyntaf, rydyn ni'n fwrdd i ymwysig ar hyn. Ieithodau y cyfrifyn 2013, mae'r 16-yrlyg C выпenno yn gychaf i arniad dras hyn, ac rydyn ni'n fydd yn deitio i rydym yn y gwaith yn ei trei. Rydyn ni'n tragell a'r hyn i nhw'n erbyn i'r morheidiau, rydym ni'n rydyn ni'n rhyw bros i'r prif. Calum had cardiomyopathy, a condition affecting the shape of his heart. The ferrier family from Dunedinston in my constituency have gone on to fundraise over £30,000 for cardiomyopathy UK, national charity for those with this disease. Through Caleys, Trex all over the world, the sky dives and consulates, Calum's family are honouring his legacy and raising awareness. This charity is working to extend their offering in Scotland, but they need volunteers to develop peer groups and provide advocacy. Cardiomyopathy is a group of conditions and various forms affect the heart in different ways. Dilated cardiomyopathy leads the walls of the heart to become stretched and thin, while hypertrophic cardiomyopathy sees muscle cells in the heart enlargening, thickening the heart walls. With arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy cells in the heart muscle don't stick together properly so the heart wall can become weak. Those conditions have a range of causes, but in many cases they are genetic. They can all reduce the heart's ability to pump blood around the body and can lead to heart failure. At least one in 250 people in the UK have cardiomyopathy, but for many it remains undiagnosed. Young, active and keen rugby player Calum's story is sadly not unique, and according to the British Heart Foundation at least 12 people under 35 in the UK die from an undiagnosed heart condition every week. You will probably be like me in thinking that that is quite a high statistic, a high number and something that we need to be concerned about. With diagnosis and treatment, those tragic deaths can be prevented, but Dr Stephen Cox, chief executive of cardiac risk in the young or cry, says that there are no signs or symptoms in 80 per cent of cases of cardiomyopathy. For many, the first indication of the condition is death. Awareness and access to screening programmes are vital. Just weeks before Calum's death, Phil O'Donnell died on the pitch. The captain of Motherwell Football Club, Mr O'Donnell, also had cardiomyopathy. High-profile deaths such as this one led to a rise in screening programmes, first for young athletes, but now available for many young people through charities such as Cry. Their activities are funded mainly through the efforts of those who have lost relatives. Cry screens around 27,000 young people every year for free. Free screenings, however, book up quickly, with well over a million people in Scotland aged 14 to 35. A more sustainable and far-reaching strategy for screening is required. Although frequently undetected, it is possible to diagnose cardiomyopathy. Doctors use scans and tests such as electrocardiograms, echocardiograms and MRIs. Once diagnosed, the condition can be managed through lifestyle, medication or surgery. Diagnosis for family members is also available on the NHS due to the genetic nature of the condition. Symptoms can go unnoticed or remain mild or can get worse over time. They include breathlessness, chest pain, the feeling faint or light-headed that abdomen, legs or feet may become swollen. The rhythm of the heart may be abnormal. However, cardiomyopathy UK found that 73% of patients with symptoms did not associate their symptoms with a heart problem at the time of diagnosis. The charity also highlights that those with symptoms spend a long time in primary care before diagnosis, which suggests that we need more awareness among healthcare professionals. I tried searching the common symptoms online, and when typing swollen legs in on NHS inform, heart failure only comes up on page 3. It only mentions cardiomyopathy and passing. It is not listed under chest pains, it is not mentioned under breathlessness. There is plenty of information on cardiomyopathy out there, but only for those who know to look for it. A page on NHS informed to highlight the condition to parents and young people who may be googling symptoms would go some way to bridge the gap. The Scottish Government's heart disease action plan from 2021 sets out that heart disease is a priority. However, cardiomyopathy is only mentioned in passing and a more robust outline of the plan relating to that condition would be welcomed by many. I look forward to hearing how the Government will ensure that raising awareness of cardiomyopathy, as well as providing pathways for screening, is built into that strategy. Morag Callum's mum said that if, as a family, we do nothing else, we are raising awareness of that silent killer. They hope that their work prevents other families from going through the heartache, that they still feel with Callum's untimely death. I am grateful, and I know that the ferrier family are too, for the interest and engagement on this debate, and I look forward to a future where cardiomyopathy is diagnosed and treated for as many young people as possible. I am very grateful for the opportunity to contribute and congratulate Evelyn Tweed on bringing her members' business debate to the chamber this evening. I would also like to convey my most sincere condolences to the ferrier family on their deeply tragic loss of Callum. Although I acknowledge that this awful event happened almost exactly 15 years ago, I know from personal experience that no amount of years can cushion the type of loss in such terrible and unexpected circumstances. Many colleagues will know that in the last parliamentary session I was pleased to have been a co-convener of the previous cross-party group on heart disease and stroke. Collectively, during that time, fellow MSPs together with patients, health professionals, consultants and the British Heart Foundation as the secretariat, along with the stroke association and other charities involved, achieved a great deal of many objectives in the research and treatment of a myriad of heart conditions and, sadly, affect many people across Scotland and the wider UK. When I was invited to do similar for the new cross-party group on heart and disease, I was delighted to take up that opportunity. As we have already heard, the motivation and the motions that explain the cardiomyopathy are a disease of the heart muscle that is manifested in many forms. It ensures, however, that it makes it harder for the organ to pump blood to the rest of the body and that it can tragically lead to heart failure. Often, in the case of young Calum, it was one of many who have suffered from the condition. There are no real symptoms at all and individuals feel completely well before the situation occurs with tragic circumstances. Indeed, the scenario renders the effects of subsequent heart failure as a result of even more devastating. That makes the various fundraising achievements even more substantial and extraordinary. To raise excess of £30,000 is a phenomenal achievement. The way that they have dealt with such a terrible loss affecting grief and no doubtly dark times but have turned that round through time into a superhuman example of courage, determination and the wish to help others is truly exceptional. The target of such demonstration and focus to hear about what is happening with cardiomyopathy is the UK. The only UK charity dedicated to providing support and information to everyone who is affected by the condition. The charity realises externally and donations are what it relies on to ensure that it can and does have a prompt working to try and prevent a diagnosis and get information treatment to save lives and improve the quality of people affected by the condition. It is all about trying to ensure that the message is put across and a debate of this nature this evening is an example of what we can all do to try and highlight the circumstances and situations. In conclusion, I wholeheartedly commend what the ferias have done and cardiomyopathy UK for all that it has done, but I also congratulate the local businesses, the clubs, the organisations and the schools that are involved in all that is mentioned in the motion for their tireless and unsealing endeavours to benefit all levels of research, treatment and wellbeing for everyone who is affected by this devastating and often silent condition. As has been said already this evening, raising awareness is what we need to do. We are very privileged to have that opportunity to ensure that we can raise awareness and we can fight the corner for many individuals who do not have that opportunity and we take that very much on board and I thank you for the opportunity of contributing to this member's debate. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. Thank you very much, Mr Stewart. I now call Christine Baillam to be followed by Claire Baker around four minutes, Ms Gray. Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. I am pleased to speak in the debate and support of my colleague and all who have campaigned over the years to highlight the issue of cardiomyopathy and the need for defibrillators. I also comment that you, Deputy Presiding Officer, are taking part in previous debates. There will be my fifth debate on the issue, the first in 2001, then 2010, 2014 and 2021. I want to record my condolences to Mr and Mrs Ferrier even while I congratulate their funding efforts following their own tragic circumstances. Similarly, I first became engaged with cardiomyopathy when I met Kenneth and Wilma Gunn, then constituents of mine in Selkirk, who established Scottish Heart, the Borders-based Charity, which is also known as the Cameron Gunn Memorial Fund, set up after their son died from hypertropic cardiomyopathy many years ago. Since then, Mr and Mrs Gunn over these decades have worked tirelessly to promote awareness of cardiomyopathy and to encourage the testing of young athletes. Back then, they were endeavouring to raise £25 million that was required to provide a mobile echocardiogram that could be used at sports clubs and schools to test young people. This is a disease that is usually more recognisable to people under the headlines that we unfortunately sometimes read, such as sudden death on sports field, heart condition kills youth or teenager in mystery death. Cameron Gunn was playing five-a-side football with workmates, practising for a charity game when he suddenly dropped down dead. He was 19 and it was his 20th birthday the next day. Young people are still dying in similar circumstances. I pay tribute to other members of the Parliament who have raised awareness of cardiomyopathy and, of course, the work of Scottish Heart, which stands for heart at risk testing. Ewan Robson, former Liberal Democrat at MSP, first lodged a motion on the issue in 1999. It was followed by former Labour MSP Joanne Lamont in 2001, myself in 2003 and again former SSP MSP Rosemary Byrne in 2004. It covers huge cross-party support. I recognise the campaigning by outside organisations that are involved in cardiomyopathy prevention, and it has made progress. All parties have responded to it. Malcolm Chisholm, who was then the health minister, met Willman, Kenny Gunn and Nicola Sturgeon. Both gave up a lot of time to discuss the issues with them. That shows that, with a heartfelt commitment to an issue that requires attention, ordinary people, such as the ferriers and the guns, can, with determination, change things in Parliament. It shows that politicians do listen and there are results. Following a petition to Parliament in a further meeting with representations from Kenny and Willman Gunn in Scottish Heart, the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Well-being launched a pilot screening programme in conjunction with health professionals and the SFA at Hamden Park. It involves screening amateur athletes aged 16 or over for life-threatening conditions. The Cabinet Secretary at that time put in a further 150,000 of funding to extend the screening pilot over the coming years. It actually then found 400 youngsters who exhibited risk factors that ranged from mild to serious. Even if one life saved is excellent, so the programme was invaluable. The guns campaign for defibrillators in public areas such as large supermarkets, airports, train and bus stations, and that is what has happened over the years that has been moving. Fast forward to 2021, and I quote from my contribution then. From 1997 onwards, Willman and her husband Kenny have been fundraising, raising the organisation's profile in Parliament and campaigning not only for early testing of young athletes but for accessible defibrillators. Back then, not many people knew what a defibrillator was, including myself in that. Their profile was raised here in debates and petitions to the Parliament. In 2014, Willman was deservedly awarded an MBE. Today, as I have said, we have defibrillators at many points, trains, stations, bus stations, airports and supermarkets, and in Parliament in some workplaces. Kenny and Willman have not stopped campaigning, and they are keen for even more to be distributed. The new ones are easy to use, and you cannot hurt the patient by using them. In fact, it is better to use a defibrillator than to hurt the patient down front of you for lack of action, as you cannot do any more harm than if you have done nothing. I have practised defibrillators in the Parliament elsewhere, and if I can use them—of course, I am hopeless with anything practical—anyone else certainly can. Those invaluable minutes on the defibrillator will mean life or death until the medics arrive. That is especially relevant in rural areas such as my constituency, where paramedics cannot simply arrive within eight minutes. I want to take part in this debate to remind members of others, just like the ferriers through their own tragic circumstances, who have tried to move this debate forward, to try to bring defibrillators, testing where necessary, to save so many young lives to the forefront. I congratulate the ferriers as I remain forever congratulating Wilma and Kenny Gunn, who, all years later, in a sales to ferriers, keep campaigning. It does produce results. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I want to thank Evelyn Tweed for bringing this debate to the chamber and joining others in paying tribute to Calam ferrier, who sadly lost his life to high-powered trophic cardiomyopathy in 2008. The grief experienced by a family for the loss of a loved one is significant, and for the ferrier family the loss of Calam must have been devastating. To experience the death of a healthy fit young person with their life ahead of them is a tragedy. As testament to the ferrier family, they have invested time, effort and resources into fundraising for cardiomyopathy UK. It is fitting that their dedication is recognised in a parliamentary debate. Their fundraising efforts and their continuing work in raising awareness of cardiomyopathy and supporting cardiomyopathy UK should be praised. The breadth of campaigning and fundraising highlighted by Evelyn Tweed is impressive, and the ability to galvanise others is evident. I hope that by having this debate today, we are able to contribute to increasing awareness of those conditions, the importance of testing and the treatment and support that is available. As the motion for the debate stresses, cardiomyopathy is not a single condition, rather a group of conditions, which affect the structure of the heart and reduce its ability to pump blood. Some people may get cardiomyopathy as a result of another condition or a risk factor that they have, and for others it is a genetic condition that can be passed down, but for many the cause is not able to be found. The NHS estimates the condition to affect one in five hundred people, and that figure is reflected by the number of us who know a family who has experienced this tragic loss. I know how devastating it is for a family to lose a young son or daughter in these circumstances. Sudden death of a young person is a huge shock for everyone, as the condition often goes diagnosed, and the young person can often be someone who is athletic and active in sports. At least 1,600 people across the UK are living with cardiomyopathy. Some people may be aware of it as a result of symptoms such as feeling tired, dizzy or light-headed, breathlessness or chest pains, swelling in their legs or stomach, but others will have no symptoms at all. Most of the people who live in the UK with cardiomyopathy are undiagnosed. When Phil O'Donnell died following his football match in 2007, as Evelyn Tweed mentioned, it was the first time that I have heard about cardiomyopathy and how it can cause cardiac arrest without warning. Only a few weeks later, Callum Ferrier lost his life to the same condition. While there is no cure for cardiomyopathy, there are effective treatment options, and most symptoms can be controlled through medication, devices such as pacemakers or surgery. That is why raising awareness of cardiomyopathy is so important. If people are aware of the symptoms, if they know of any family history of heart disease or sudden unexplained death, they can talk to their GP about their own risk and, if required, take steps to manage it. With the right treatment of support, people with cardiomyopathy can lead healthy and full lives. Increased testing for cardiomyopathy would help to allow people with risk factors to be assessed and if found to have a condition to take steps to manage it. In 2017, the British Heart Foundation launched a UK-wide genetic testing service, which allowed an additional 800 people a year to be screened for hyper-triopic cardiomyopathy, with test centres across the UK, including at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow. The Cure Heart Research Project, which cardiomyopathy UK is a part of, recently won the international competition, the Big Beat Challenge, securing a £300 million research grant. It was recognised as the project was the most chance of delivering a revolutionary advance in cardiovascular health and disease. The Cure Heart team aims to develop a treatment that targets and silences the faulty gene responsible for cardiomyopathies. I will close on that positive news. While the Ferrier family have experienced great loss, their actions and dedication to improving outcomes for future generations is a message of hope, and one that I applaud and very much welcome this afternoon. Thank you very much, Ms Breaker. I will call Fulvin McGregor again for around four minutes, Mr McGregor. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I hadn't actually intended to speak until I heard Evelyn Tweed's opening speech today and how powerful that it was and reminded me of a situation in my constituency, so I might not take up the whole four minutes, but I do appreciate you allowing me to speak in this debate. I want to just say again, as I said, that Evelyn Tweed is very powerful opening speech and I think a great tribute to the Ferrier family and to Callum, and it must have been very difficult to go up and speak in the way that she did, but I think she has done the family proud and put on record the work that they are doing to continue to fundraise, as well as Claire Baker raising a fellow Donald as well, who of course was a mother role player. What it brought to mind with me is an issue that I have raised, Presiding Officer, in this Parliament before, through motions and in the chamber, naturally relating to the very similar story of young Kieran McDade, who died in the 26th of August 2016, not long after the election of that year, while training with Dumbeth football club in Coatbridge just 13 years old. I felt that after Evelyn Tweed's speech that I should also make mention of him again and pay dedication to him and his legacy since, he, as I said, was only 13 years old and he was known as being dedicated to his team Dumbeth football club, a well-known team in the Coatbridge area. They had won the youth championship and were training at the time when they very sadly passed away. I am a massive Celtic fan and I think that one of the players in the Celtic game that followed paid tribute to when the player scored a goal against, I think it was Lee Griffiths and he scored a goal against Aberdeen and he removed his top to pay tribute to young Kieran and that would have been a very poignant moment for his family. Following that, the whole instance transpired in the football club helping to find the Kieran McDade Foundation, which launched in 2017 a year later and now runs a tournament annually, very well attended with teams from all across central Scotland. The purpose of the foundation is to raise money for defibrillators, which they have now given out. The last update that I had was about 115 but I am sure that it will be more now because that does not include the most recent tournament and they give out to grass roots football teams, particularly across Scotland but also in England and in Ireland and defibrillators to local organisations. One of such, which I also made a motion for, was that one of the said defibrillators was placed at the West End bar in Airdrie and very recently helped to save an individual's life. So a very, very big legacy this young person is continuing to leave. I know that the team regularly posts about them and obviously it posts a lot about the Kieran McDade Foundation and I am keen that the defibrillators are in every town and village across Scotland. I know that that is something that has got a lot of cross-party support in the Parliament and that it continued at this young boy just like Calum's legacy has continued and that we get to a place where routine screening for young people, particularly those who are active, becomes a reality in, you know, in hopefully these sort of things, things of the past, but that these individuals' legacies go on to do good and thanks for letting me speak, Presiding Officer, and thanks again to everyone to be there for inspiring the debate. Thank you. Thank you, Mr MacGregor. I now call Kevin Stewart to respond to the debate, Minister, for around seven minutes. Thank you, Presiding Officer, and I'd like to open my speech today by offering my condolences to the ferriers on the devastating loss of Calum. As we've already heard, sadly Calum died in his sleep age 16 as a result of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. From the accounts I've seen, Calum was a young man who loved sports, a rugby player and a football fan. He supported Rangers and local side Dune Castle and Evelyn Tweed's debate today has been an opportunity for members from across the chamber to recognise his life and the ongoing impact of his loss. It also raises the importance of quality care and support for people with cardiomyopathy and the issue of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, both of which I will touch on in my speech. First of all, it's important for us to recognise that in the 15 years since Calum's death his family have carried out exceptional fundraising efforts in his memory. They have raised over £30,000 for charity and this has been achieved by carrying out a number of quite incredible challenges. To mention just a few, they have climbed Machu Picchu, trekt the Sahara and the Great Wall of China, gone skydiving and ran multiple marathons. The result of those efforts has gone on to provide support for cardiomyopathy UK, which is the specialist national charity for people affected by cardiomyopathy. The charity provides support and information, campaigns for better access to quality treatment, saves lives through raising awareness and provides hope through shaping research. Third sector partners, including cardiomyopathy UK, play an important role in driving improvement for people with cardiac conditions in Scotland. The Scottish Government is grateful for their continued work and engagement in this area. Cardiomyopathy UK have outlined the importance of early detection and diagnosis, improving specialist treatment, access to genetic and family testing and on-going care and support. At this point, Cardiomyopathy UK refers to a group of conditions that affect the structure of the heart and impact its ability to pump blood around the body. There can be a number of different causes for this, but in many cases it is a genetic condition that can be passed down through families. It might also be referred to as an inherited cardiac condition. There is a network for inherited cardiac conditions in Scotland, known as NICS. This is a national managed clinical network, which supports improvements in the detection, diagnosis, treatment and outcomes of people with inherited cardiac conditions, including but not limited to inherited cardiomyopathies. NICS brings together healthcare professionals, people affected by inherited cardiac conditions and relevant third sector organisations. Together, they are supporting the delivery of quality patient care across our country. There are a number of helpful patient resources and healthcare professional guidance available on the NICS website for anyone who might be interested in learning more about their work. I would like to use this opportunity to recognise and give my thanks to everyone involved in NICS. Before closing, I will touch upon some of the wider work of the Scottish Government, which is relevant to this debate. We recognise the scale and impact of heart diseases in Scotland and continue to deliver our heart disease action plan. The priorities and actions within that align closely with much of what Cardio Myopathy UK has identified as important areas for improvement. That is the action plan that has a focus on early detection and diagnosis, improving specialist treatment and ensuring access to on-going care and support for people living with a cardiac condition. Further to this, reflecting on the loss of Callum is a difficult reminder that each year in Scotland over 3,000 people experience a cardiac arrest in the community. I will certainly give way to Ms Graham. I tended to focus on defibrillators and we have come a long way. Do we know where they are located? For example, do we know local authority areas? Could they map where there are defibrillators? If somebody is in an emergency they know where to get one. I know that in some areas the defibrillators are mapped, but I will get back to Ms Graham and see if we have a national mapping system in place. I do not have that information to hand, but I will get back to Ms Graham on. We are working in partnership with Save a Life for Scotland to deliver the out-of-hospital cardiac arrest strategy. That includes a focus on ensuring that, in instances where a cardiac arrest is witnessed, people have the skills and confidence to intervene. The overall aim is to increase CPR and defibrillation rates, leading to increased survival. It is also important to highlight that, beyond that, the strategy recognises the significant impact of witnessing a cardiac arrest or sudden cardiac death. That is why the Scottish Government has recently provided funding to Chest Heart and Stroke Scotland and the research resuscitation group of Edinburgh University to deliver a pilot project of aftercare support for people who have had that experience. I am very grateful for the opportunity to speak on that motion tonight. It has reminded the chamber of the importance of efforts to improve early detection, diagnosis and access to care for people with cardiac conditions across Scotland. It has also served as a reminder of the importance of on-going work to increase survival from out-of-hospital cardiac arrest and of providing aftercare to support those folks who have been impacted. I reiterate my thanks to Cardio Myopathy UK for their vital working support in people with those conditions across those islands. I also thank NICS for playing such an important role in ensuring that people who have been affected by Cardio Myopathy in Scotland have access to quality care. Finally, to close this debate, I would like to put on record the remembrance of Callum Ferrier and to give my sincere congratulations to his family for all that they have achieved in his memory. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Thank you very much minister. That concludes the debate and I close this meeting of Parliament.