1 00:00:00,751 --> 00:00:04,034 Hello world and welcome back to The Overlap. 2 00:00:04,034 --> 00:00:05,295 I am Joshua. 3 00:00:05,295 --> 00:00:11,220 Now, seasoned listeners, you're gonna notice something immediately different about the acoustic quality of the room today. 4 00:00:11,220 --> 00:00:13,261 There is a specific frequency missing. 5 00:00:13,261 --> 00:00:23,071 It's a frequency usually occupied by optimism and by the belief in the inherent goodness of humanity and by distinct lack of cynical dread. 6 00:00:23,371 --> 00:00:26,614 That frequency is named Will and Will is not here. 7 00:00:26,614 --> 00:00:28,056 Will's been deployed to the field. 8 00:00:28,056 --> 00:00:30,538 He's been lost to the fog of war. 9 00:00:30,538 --> 00:00:38,803 And when I say war, I mean, he's currently participating in the mandatory annual ritual of kinship performance known as the holidays. 10 00:00:39,303 --> 00:00:49,750 Right now, actually, as I speak into this microphone, Will is probably somewhere in the living room, probably wearing an itchy sweater, eating, I don't know, a cheese ball 11 00:00:49,750 --> 00:00:57,525 covered with almonds that nobody actually wants to eat, but everyone feels kind of socially obligated to consume because it's sitting there on a 12 00:00:57,774 --> 00:00:58,984 beautiful plate. 13 00:00:59,425 --> 00:01:08,548 He's nodding politely, explaining why the weather's been suspicious lately or answering questions about what's going on in his life. 14 00:01:08,548 --> 00:01:09,908 He's doing the holiday thing. 15 00:01:09,908 --> 00:01:11,609 He is serving his time. 16 00:01:11,609 --> 00:01:14,239 So once again, you're stuck with me. 17 00:01:14,239 --> 00:01:22,932 And honestly, it's probably better this way because if Will were here, he would try to put a positive spin on what we're about to talk about. 18 00:01:23,415 --> 00:01:25,055 he would try to find the silver lining. 19 00:01:25,055 --> 00:01:30,117 He'd say, but Joshua, isn't it nice that people are just trying to be happy? 20 00:01:30,497 --> 00:01:33,758 And normally I would agree, mostly. 21 00:01:34,118 --> 00:01:37,259 But today, I'm your designated driver for reality. 22 00:01:52,917 --> 00:01:57,038 Because look around you right now, society is currently drunk. 23 00:01:57,198 --> 00:02:06,421 We are collectively intoxicated on eggnog, nostalgia, and a very specific, very aggressive strain of manufactured goodwill. 24 00:02:06,672 --> 00:02:14,880 If you've walked into a grocery store, a pharmacy or a gas station in the last three weeks, you have been assaulted by auditory programming. 25 00:02:14,880 --> 00:02:17,023 You cannot escape Mariah Carey. 26 00:02:17,023 --> 00:02:18,144 It's not possible. 27 00:02:18,144 --> 00:02:19,565 She is everywhere. 28 00:02:19,565 --> 00:02:21,166 She is omnipresent. 29 00:02:21,567 --> 00:02:23,209 The lights are twinkling. 30 00:02:23,209 --> 00:02:26,152 The credit cards are swiping at record speeds. 31 00:02:26,152 --> 00:02:30,876 And there is overwhelming cultural pressure, this crushing weight. 32 00:02:31,127 --> 00:02:36,150 agree that this is in fact the most wonderful time of the year. 33 00:02:36,471 --> 00:02:38,352 But you listen to the overlap. 34 00:02:38,352 --> 00:02:42,234 You don't listen to this podcast because you want to be told that everything's fine. 35 00:02:42,234 --> 00:02:55,323 You listen because you have a sneaking suspicion that when everyone is looking in one direction, the interesting stuff, the dangerous stuff, the systemic stuff is happening in 36 00:02:55,323 --> 00:02:56,513 another direction. 37 00:02:56,901 --> 00:03:09,597 So while the rest of the world is distracted by the shiny wrapping paper and the door buster sales, I want you to take this podcast, just you and me to look at the machinery 38 00:03:09,597 --> 00:03:10,698 underneath it. 39 00:03:10,698 --> 00:03:12,739 I'm not trying to be a Grinch. 40 00:03:12,818 --> 00:03:13,169 Okay. 41 00:03:13,169 --> 00:03:18,522 Well, maybe I'm trying to be a little bit of a Grinch, but I don't want to steal Christmas, right? 42 00:03:18,522 --> 00:03:19,943 I want to autopsy it. 43 00:03:19,943 --> 00:03:24,926 I want to put Christmas on the table, shine a bright light on it and see what makes it tick. 44 00:03:24,926 --> 00:03:26,226 Because here, 45 00:03:26,277 --> 00:03:28,488 is the thesis for today's episode. 46 00:03:29,229 --> 00:03:40,636 And if you take nothing else away from this podcast, take this, the holidays as we know them, the gift giving, the nuclear family gathering, the sudden urge to drop a dollar bill 47 00:03:40,636 --> 00:03:47,140 into a red bucket outside of a Walmart, the frenzy to buy toys, none of this is accidental. 48 00:03:47,301 --> 00:03:51,203 And very little of it is actually traditional. 49 00:03:51,423 --> 00:03:56,327 We have this idea that we're participating in like ancient rituals, right? 50 00:03:56,327 --> 00:03:58,848 We think we're doing what our ancestors did. 51 00:03:59,009 --> 00:04:05,373 But what we're really actually living through right now is a chaotic, high stress month of December. 52 00:04:05,373 --> 00:04:08,917 That's essentially the Manhattan Project of marketing and social engineering. 53 00:04:08,917 --> 00:04:19,124 It is a psychological operation, a Psyop, if you will, designed to do two very specific, very functional things for the capitalist system. 54 00:04:19,405 --> 00:04:23,357 First, it's designed to domesticate you. 55 00:04:23,862 --> 00:04:26,053 It's a tool of social control. 56 00:04:26,073 --> 00:04:37,627 It's a way to take the restless, angry energy of the working class, energy that might otherwise be used to, I don't know, organize, protest, and bottle it up inside a single 57 00:04:37,627 --> 00:04:38,797 family home. 58 00:04:39,098 --> 00:04:42,919 It turns public outrage into private stress. 59 00:04:43,439 --> 00:04:53,343 And second, and this is, look, this is the part that's gonna make some of you uncomfortable, maybe even a little defensive, but it serves as a massive systemic pressure 60 00:04:53,343 --> 00:04:54,063 valve. 61 00:04:54,732 --> 00:04:59,557 I'm going spend a lot of time today talking about what I call the philanthropy paradox. 62 00:04:59,557 --> 00:05:07,204 I'm going to talk about how holiday charity, the toy drives, the food banks, the performative acts of kindness we see on the news. 63 00:05:07,204 --> 00:05:12,468 These things might actually be the very mechanism that prevents the world from getting better. 64 00:05:12,612 --> 00:05:13,649 It's a bold claim. 65 00:05:13,649 --> 00:05:14,590 I know. 66 00:05:14,951 --> 00:05:17,973 Hope you're not screaming at your car radio or you're into your AirPods right now. 67 00:05:17,968 --> 00:05:18,959 Are you a monster? 68 00:05:18,959 --> 00:05:20,090 No, I'm not. 69 00:05:20,090 --> 00:05:23,506 I'm not saying giving toys to orphans is bad, right? 70 00:05:23,506 --> 00:05:25,355 mean, give toys to orphans. 71 00:05:25,355 --> 00:05:25,896 I don't care. 72 00:05:25,896 --> 00:05:37,006 I'm saying that if we live in a system that requires an annual volunteer run drive to prevent orphans from having a miserable existence, we shouldn't be celebrating our 73 00:05:37,006 --> 00:05:38,027 generosity. 74 00:05:38,027 --> 00:05:39,289 We should be rioting. 75 00:05:39,289 --> 00:05:41,500 We should be burning the system down. 76 00:05:42,382 --> 00:05:48,682 We talked about this in one of our previous podcasts, the orphan crushing machine. 77 00:05:48,902 --> 00:05:53,302 Instead of saying, why are we giving toys to orphans? 78 00:05:53,302 --> 00:05:56,842 It's like, why don't orphans have toys? 79 00:05:57,262 --> 00:06:00,462 So that's the roadmap for this podcast. 80 00:06:01,182 --> 00:06:07,982 If the survival of the poor basically depend on the holiday spirit of the rich, we don't have a society. 81 00:06:07,982 --> 00:06:09,882 It's kind of a hostage situation. 82 00:06:10,133 --> 00:06:17,528 So put down your gingerbread, go and step away from the Amazon checkout cart, peel back the tensile and look at the abyss. 83 00:06:17,779 --> 00:06:19,680 I wanna start with a feeling. 84 00:06:19,700 --> 00:06:21,501 I want you to check in with yourself right now. 85 00:06:21,501 --> 00:06:22,602 How do you feel? 86 00:06:22,853 --> 00:06:27,296 Not how you say you feel when someone asks, are you ready for Christmas? 87 00:06:27,517 --> 00:06:28,887 And you say, yeah, get in there. 88 00:06:28,887 --> 00:06:31,479 I mean, how does your body feel? 89 00:06:32,200 --> 00:06:34,271 Are your shoulders up by your ears? 90 00:06:34,656 --> 00:06:37,689 Is there a tightness in your chest when you look at your bank account? 91 00:06:37,689 --> 00:06:41,331 Do you feel a spike of adrenaline that isn't the good kind? 92 00:06:41,582 --> 00:06:45,315 Have you been running around cleaning up the house to the best of your ability? 93 00:06:45,315 --> 00:06:47,066 Why is that? 94 00:06:47,317 --> 00:06:57,144 Why does this season of joy feel so much like a performance review where the KPIs are happiness and debt? 95 00:06:57,395 --> 00:07:02,958 We're conditioned to believe that if we aren't having a magical time, it's a personal failure. 96 00:07:03,018 --> 00:07:07,700 If you're lonely in December, it's because you failed to build a family. 97 00:07:08,001 --> 00:07:12,382 If you're broke in December, it's because you failed to save money. 98 00:07:12,583 --> 00:07:16,745 If you're stressed, it's because you aren't organized. 99 00:07:17,445 --> 00:07:19,886 But what if that stress isn't a bug? 100 00:07:20,067 --> 00:07:21,527 What if it's a feature? 101 00:07:22,408 --> 00:07:26,670 What if the entire architecture of the holiday season 102 00:07:26,927 --> 00:07:33,934 is built to extract labor and capital from you at the exact moment you're most vulnerable. 103 00:07:34,675 --> 00:07:36,216 Think about the timing. 104 00:07:36,557 --> 00:07:37,998 It's the end of the year. 105 00:07:38,178 --> 00:07:39,319 It's dark. 106 00:07:39,440 --> 00:07:42,622 It's cold, at least in the Northern hemisphere. 107 00:07:43,444 --> 00:07:45,886 Biologically, we should be hibernating, right? 108 00:07:45,886 --> 00:07:48,449 Like we should be slowing down, resting. 109 00:07:48,449 --> 00:07:50,551 Our bodies want to rest. 110 00:07:50,851 --> 00:07:57,955 And yet the system says, no, run faster, buy more, travel through the busiest airports of the year, cook a meal for 12 people, pretend you like your in-laws. 111 00:07:57,955 --> 00:08:03,377 It's a machine designed to override your survival instincts. 112 00:08:03,397 --> 00:08:11,900 And the reason we go along with it, the reason we don't just say no is because of this word, tradition. 113 00:08:12,220 --> 00:08:15,301 We are obsessed with tradition. 114 00:08:15,322 --> 00:08:17,142 We treat it like it's a sacred law. 115 00:08:17,142 --> 00:08:18,583 We have to do this. 116 00:08:18,583 --> 00:08:19,743 It's tradition. 117 00:08:20,614 --> 00:08:22,184 What is a tradition really? 118 00:08:23,045 --> 00:08:33,147 In the context of the holidays, tradition is usually just peer pressure from dead people, or more precisely, peer pressure from dead marketing executives. 119 00:08:33,707 --> 00:08:40,249 Later in this podcast, we're gonna do a deep dive into the history of Christmas that they probably didn't teach you in school. 120 00:08:40,249 --> 00:08:45,850 We're gonna look at the fact that for most of human history, this time of year wasn't about family. 121 00:08:45,850 --> 00:08:46,891 It wasn't cozy. 122 00:08:46,891 --> 00:08:48,262 It was literally a riot. 123 00:08:48,262 --> 00:08:50,122 I'm serious, it was loud. 124 00:08:50,357 --> 00:08:54,401 It was drunk and it was happening in the street. 125 00:08:54,662 --> 00:09:01,320 And the transition from street riot to living room sweater party wasn't a natural evolution. 126 00:09:01,320 --> 00:09:08,537 It was a deliberate political project by the Victorians to shut us all up and keep us all working. 127 00:09:09,019 --> 00:09:10,800 We're to talk about Prince Albert. 128 00:09:11,051 --> 00:09:12,071 Not the piercing. 129 00:09:12,071 --> 00:09:15,792 We're going to talk about Charles Dickens as a propagandist. 130 00:09:15,792 --> 00:09:21,754 We're going to talk about how Coca-Cola basically hired Santa Claus as a spokesperson and never let him go. 131 00:09:22,154 --> 00:09:26,875 We are going to deconstruct the invention of tradition. 132 00:09:27,034 --> 00:09:37,098 But before we get there, we have to talk about the money because you can't talk about the holidays without talking about the absolute unbridled consumption. 133 00:09:38,079 --> 00:09:40,003 I read a statistic the other day and I'm 134 00:09:40,003 --> 00:09:47,403 I'm going to paraphrase because I don't exactly remember the statistic, but it was looking at the deadweight loss of Christmas. 135 00:09:47,403 --> 00:09:49,923 It's an economic concept. 136 00:09:50,283 --> 00:10:00,503 The idea is that basically giving somebody a gift is one of the least efficient ways to move money in an economy, right? 137 00:10:00,503 --> 00:10:08,663 If you buy a $50 sweater and you hate it, you stick it in a closet, I'm out $50 and you have gained nothing in value. 138 00:10:08,914 --> 00:10:13,975 The economy has essentially vaporized wealth and yet we do it. 139 00:10:14,195 --> 00:10:18,816 Billions and billions of dollars every single year. 140 00:10:18,876 --> 00:10:19,856 Why? 141 00:10:20,257 --> 00:10:24,558 Because the holidays are an obligation engine. 142 00:10:25,478 --> 00:10:29,719 This system has essentially figured out a way to monetize your guilt. 143 00:10:30,359 --> 00:10:32,260 It has monetized your love. 144 00:10:32,260 --> 00:10:38,856 It's convinced you that the only way to prove you care about another human being is to purchase a consumer good 145 00:10:38,856 --> 00:10:47,829 that was manufactured in a sweatshop and shipped across the ocean on a container ship that is burning bunker fuel and melting the ice caps. 146 00:10:48,170 --> 00:10:50,910 I love you, so I bought you this plastic thing. 147 00:10:51,371 --> 00:10:53,671 I love you, so I went into debt. 148 00:10:54,232 --> 00:10:59,014 We have created a deity of commerce, Santa, right? 149 00:10:59,014 --> 00:11:04,076 Who is basically the ultimate surveillance capitalist. 150 00:11:04,496 --> 00:11:05,976 Think about the lore. 151 00:11:06,037 --> 00:11:07,757 He knows when you've been sleeping. 152 00:11:08,017 --> 00:11:09,918 He knows when you're awake. 153 00:11:10,399 --> 00:11:13,341 That's not a magical elf, that's the NSA. 154 00:11:13,341 --> 00:11:14,801 That's an algorithm. 155 00:11:15,022 --> 00:11:19,054 Santa is just Amazon Prime with a moral compass. 156 00:11:19,305 --> 00:11:20,758 And that's where we're starting today. 157 00:11:20,758 --> 00:11:30,753 We're starting with the realization that the stress you are feeling isn't because you're doing Christmas wrong, it's because Christmas is doing you. 158 00:11:31,415 --> 00:11:34,449 So, take a deep breath. 159 00:11:34,700 --> 00:11:36,771 Let the guilt go. 160 00:11:37,022 --> 00:11:43,967 Because for the rest of this episode, we're going to take the red pill or I guess in this case, the red and green pill. 161 00:11:44,909 --> 00:11:51,507 We're going to take a look at how the Victorians rebranded rioting, right? 162 00:11:51,507 --> 00:12:00,224 How corporations monetized your affection and ultimately how we can maybe just maybe 163 00:12:00,605 --> 00:12:04,117 salvage something real from the wreckage of the holiday season. 164 00:12:04,117 --> 00:12:04,528 Are you ready? 165 00:12:04,528 --> 00:12:06,794 All right, let's do this. 166 00:12:07,045 --> 00:12:10,637 All right, so I ask you to sit with that feeling of stress, right? 167 00:12:10,637 --> 00:12:19,291 The feeling that you're currently performing a tightrope walk of social expectations without a net. 168 00:12:20,012 --> 00:12:28,156 I told you the reason you feel this way is because you're trying to live up to a tradition that is frankly a fabrication. 169 00:12:28,217 --> 00:12:33,981 So we have this collective hallucination in the US, a little bit in the UK as well. 170 00:12:33,981 --> 00:12:37,823 Basically that Christmas is like this timeless immutable thing. 171 00:12:38,443 --> 00:12:48,629 We kind of imagine that if you went back in time, like 500 years, you'd find a peasant family sitting around a Douglas fir tree and exchanging wrapped gifts, maybe brown paper 172 00:12:48,629 --> 00:12:56,513 wrapped gifts and sipping hot cocoa and feeling cozy because we think of it as like an ancient tradition of the hearth. 173 00:12:57,194 --> 00:13:02,106 But I do have to tell you that that is historical fiction. 174 00:13:02,357 --> 00:13:13,812 If you actually hopped into a DeLorean and went back to say 17th century England or early colonial America, you would not find a cozy family gathering. 175 00:13:14,073 --> 00:13:19,235 You'd find something that looked a lot more like a riot or a protest. 176 00:13:19,235 --> 00:13:21,906 And I don't, I don't, I don't use that word lightly. 177 00:13:21,906 --> 00:13:25,478 I mean, it's thrown around enough in the media. 178 00:13:25,478 --> 00:13:27,559 I mean, a literal riot, right? 179 00:13:27,647 --> 00:13:37,615 So for most of human history, midwinter festivals like Saturnalia in Rome, had Yule and the Germanic tribes, they were about inversion. 180 00:13:38,076 --> 00:13:39,898 They were about letting off steam. 181 00:13:39,898 --> 00:13:46,403 The harvest was done, the beer was fermented, the cattle were slaughtered, so you didn't have to feed them through the winter. 182 00:13:46,403 --> 00:13:48,724 It was a time of excess. 183 00:13:49,265 --> 00:13:51,897 And socially, it was a time where rules didn't apply. 184 00:13:51,897 --> 00:13:55,840 In England, you had the Lord of Misrule. 185 00:13:56,259 --> 00:14:00,120 a peasant who would be appointed to mock the nobility. 186 00:14:00,340 --> 00:14:02,060 You had wassling. 187 00:14:02,581 --> 00:14:07,672 Now we hear wassling today and we think of polite carolers singing, here we come a wassling, right? 188 00:14:07,672 --> 00:14:14,926 But to the lyrics of that song, if you really listen to them, we won't go until we get some. 189 00:14:14,926 --> 00:14:17,907 We won't go until we get some. 190 00:14:18,247 --> 00:14:22,168 This isn't like a holiday card request, right? 191 00:14:22,168 --> 00:14:23,468 This is a threat. 192 00:14:23,719 --> 00:14:36,650 Wassling was basically a group of young working class men getting absolutely hammered, then marching up to the houses of rich people, banging on their door and demanding more 193 00:14:36,650 --> 00:14:38,451 booze and food. 194 00:14:38,651 --> 00:14:42,304 And if that owner didn't pay up, they would just trash the place. 195 00:14:42,304 --> 00:14:45,296 They break windows, they burn effigies. 196 00:14:45,337 --> 00:14:48,559 It was basically like the Purge, but with snow. 197 00:14:49,480 --> 00:14:52,062 It was a redistribution of wealth. 198 00:14:52,062 --> 00:14:53,482 at the point of a pitchfork. 199 00:14:53,482 --> 00:14:57,562 It was loud, it was public, and it happened in the streets. 200 00:14:57,562 --> 00:15:00,062 Now, fast forward to the 1800s. 201 00:15:00,502 --> 00:15:03,402 The Industrial Revolution is kicking into high gear. 202 00:15:03,402 --> 00:15:06,702 You have factory owners who need a disciplined workforce. 203 00:15:06,982 --> 00:15:14,802 You can't have your employees showing up to run the textile looms on December 26th if they've been rioting and drinking moonshine for three days. 204 00:15:15,182 --> 00:15:19,838 The ruling class looked at this Christmas thing and said, this is a liability. 205 00:15:19,838 --> 00:15:20,878 This is kind of dangerous. 206 00:15:20,878 --> 00:15:22,599 I think we need to shut it down. 207 00:15:22,959 --> 00:15:24,640 But you can't just cancel a holiday, right? 208 00:15:24,640 --> 00:15:27,261 I mean, we've seen what happens when they try. 209 00:15:27,341 --> 00:15:28,561 People get mad. 210 00:15:28,561 --> 00:15:32,163 So they did what any smart corporation does. 211 00:15:32,163 --> 00:15:34,243 They basically rebranded it. 212 00:15:34,404 --> 00:15:42,627 That's where the Victorians come in, specifically Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, along with the rising middle class of the industrialists. 213 00:15:42,627 --> 00:15:48,957 So they decided to take this public, rowdy, community-based festival. 214 00:15:48,957 --> 00:15:50,417 and move it inside. 215 00:15:50,639 --> 00:15:52,530 They basically privatized the holiday. 216 00:15:52,530 --> 00:15:59,067 Prince Albert, who was actually German, brought over the the tannenbaum, the Christmas tree, set it up in Windsor Castle. 217 00:15:59,067 --> 00:16:09,796 They took a picture of the royal family standing around it looking very domestic and sober and and published it in the Illustrated London News in 1848. 218 00:16:10,047 --> 00:16:17,120 And all of a sudden, every middle-class family in England and America said, oh, that's what we're supposed to do. 219 00:16:17,220 --> 00:16:24,083 We're supposed to stay inside with our immediate biological family, sister, cousin, whatever, and look at a tree. 220 00:16:24,334 --> 00:16:28,346 It was a really big shift in social engineering at the time, right? 221 00:16:28,346 --> 00:16:33,738 It went from community and chaos to privacy and order. 222 00:16:33,798 --> 00:16:38,160 They replaced that riot with the living room and they had help. 223 00:16:38,773 --> 00:16:40,494 We do have to talk about Charles Dickens. 224 00:16:40,494 --> 00:16:42,455 I know, I know, I know, I know. 225 00:16:42,696 --> 00:16:44,737 You love A Christmas Carol. 226 00:16:44,897 --> 00:16:54,513 It's a classic, but looking at it through this lens, Dickens was writing at a time of pretty massive wealth inequality. 227 00:16:54,513 --> 00:17:01,108 Now, the only thing that rivals the wealth inequality of that time is the wealth inequality of our current time. 228 00:17:01,108 --> 00:17:02,949 The poor were starving. 229 00:17:03,910 --> 00:17:07,752 The threat of revolution was being discussed. 230 00:17:08,105 --> 00:17:15,389 whispered about in all corners, a Christmas Carol is basically a scare tactic for the rich. 231 00:17:15,640 --> 00:17:17,521 The message isn't just be nice. 232 00:17:17,521 --> 00:17:25,225 The message is, Scrooge, if you don't give Bob Cratchit a turkey and a day off, Bob Cratchit is eventually going to burn your house down. 233 00:17:25,225 --> 00:17:28,726 Or at the very least, you'll die alone and unloved. 234 00:17:29,387 --> 00:17:33,349 It was a plea for benevolent capitalism. 235 00:17:33,389 --> 00:17:35,088 The idea that if 236 00:17:35,088 --> 00:17:38,299 The rich were just a little bit nicer once a year. 237 00:17:38,299 --> 00:17:41,760 The system could keep going without a revolution. 238 00:17:42,180 --> 00:17:45,901 So the Victorians domesticated us. 239 00:17:45,901 --> 00:17:54,503 They got us off the streets, into our houses, and once we were trapped in our houses, the marketers moved in for the kill. 240 00:17:54,803 --> 00:17:56,064 It's truly staggering. 241 00:17:56,064 --> 00:18:02,337 And I mean like mind blowing how many things are considered sacred ancient folklore. 242 00:18:02,959 --> 00:18:06,739 But really they're just successful ad campaigns from the 20th century. 243 00:18:07,059 --> 00:18:08,799 So let's go down the list. 244 00:18:09,259 --> 00:18:11,639 Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. 245 00:18:12,099 --> 00:18:13,539 You think that's an old myth? 246 00:18:13,539 --> 00:18:15,759 A fable passed down by the elders? 247 00:18:15,759 --> 00:18:16,579 No. 248 00:18:16,999 --> 00:18:21,719 Rudolph was created in 1939 by a copywriter named Robert L. 249 00:18:21,719 --> 00:18:22,179 May. 250 00:18:22,179 --> 00:18:24,079 He worked for Montgomery Ward. 251 00:18:24,779 --> 00:18:30,859 For those of you who are not old, Montgomery Ward was a department store. 252 00:18:31,439 --> 00:18:32,730 The store used to buy 253 00:18:32,730 --> 00:18:37,302 coloring books to give away to kids, to get parents to come into the store. 254 00:18:37,562 --> 00:18:47,486 They basically decided that buying those coloring books was too expensive and said, hey, Robert, write us a story so we can print it cheaply in-house. 255 00:18:48,286 --> 00:18:49,826 Bob wrote Rudolph. 256 00:18:50,087 --> 00:18:52,147 Rudolph is not folklore. 257 00:18:52,427 --> 00:19:00,459 Rudolph is a freelance marketing asset created to reduce overhead and boost Q4 retail foot traffic. 258 00:19:00,710 --> 00:19:04,152 He is a cost-saving measure with antlers. 259 00:19:04,813 --> 00:19:06,014 Santa Claus. 260 00:19:06,014 --> 00:19:11,357 Now look, Saint Nick's been around for a while, But the visual, right? 261 00:19:11,357 --> 00:19:15,860 The fat guy who's always happy, wearing a red suit. 262 00:19:15,860 --> 00:19:20,402 That became the global standard largely because of Coke. 263 00:19:20,583 --> 00:19:22,744 Coca-Cola, not the nose candy. 264 00:19:22,904 --> 00:19:30,189 In the 1930s, Coca-Cola basically needed people to drink soda in the winter because they weren't drinking it. 265 00:19:30,449 --> 00:19:33,231 Specifically soda was kind of like a summer drink, right? 266 00:19:33,231 --> 00:19:42,019 So they they hired They hired an artist named Haddon Sundblom to paint Santa drinking a coke. 267 00:19:42,019 --> 00:19:46,032 They also tried other things There were weird recipes from around that time like like hot dr. 268 00:19:46,032 --> 00:19:58,833 Pepper and these strange mulled wine like wine with coke Hot beverages that they were we're trying to to put out there to encourage people to drink coke during the winter, but 269 00:19:58,833 --> 00:19:59,397 they're 270 00:19:59,397 --> 00:20:04,299 farthest effective campaign was painting Santa drinking a Coke. 271 00:20:04,299 --> 00:20:08,680 He made Santa softer, rounder, friendlier. 272 00:20:09,220 --> 00:20:14,081 He basically made him the grandpa you wanted to buy products from. 273 00:20:14,332 --> 00:20:18,881 We have effectively taken the mascot for a sugar beverage, right? 274 00:20:18,881 --> 00:20:24,595 Just sugary liquid and elevated him to the status of a demigod. 275 00:20:24,846 --> 00:20:26,784 And this brings us to the mechanism 276 00:20:26,784 --> 00:20:27,394 of it all. 277 00:20:27,394 --> 00:20:29,314 Why do we keep doing this? 278 00:20:30,195 --> 00:20:34,796 It's because the system loves the inefficiency. 279 00:20:35,436 --> 00:20:39,777 There's a concept in economics called the deadweight loss of Christmas. 280 00:20:40,337 --> 00:20:48,711 It was popularized by an economist named Joel Waldfogel and his theory was pretty simple. 281 00:20:48,711 --> 00:20:51,781 Basically, gift-giving is bad economics. 282 00:20:51,801 --> 00:20:54,322 If I have hundred dollars, I know exactly what I want. 283 00:20:54,322 --> 00:20:57,802 I can buy a hundred dollars worth of utility for myself. 284 00:20:57,802 --> 00:21:01,642 But if I buy you a gift, I have to guess. 285 00:21:02,222 --> 00:21:10,042 So I buy you a fancy espresso machine for a hundred bucks, but you don't drink coffee or you drink drip coffee. 286 00:21:10,401 --> 00:21:13,542 To you, that machine is basically just useless. 287 00:21:13,542 --> 00:21:18,002 Maybe you'd pay 20 bucks for it, you know, at a garage sale or at a secondhand store. 288 00:21:18,162 --> 00:21:23,802 So I spent a hundred dollars to give you $20 of value. 289 00:21:24,690 --> 00:21:27,850 So basically the economy just set $80 on fire. 290 00:21:28,101 --> 00:21:37,586 Wal Fogel estimated that billions of dollars of value are destroyed every year because of this simple social obligation of gifts. 291 00:21:38,147 --> 00:21:44,059 But the system doesn't really care about your value, right? 292 00:21:44,059 --> 00:21:46,131 It cares about the transaction. 293 00:21:46,752 --> 00:21:53,455 The holidays act as an obligation engine, like I said earlier, it creates a manufactured emergency. 294 00:21:53,455 --> 00:21:54,796 It's December 20th. 295 00:21:55,088 --> 00:22:02,348 If you do not spend $500 by December 25th, you have failed as a mother, father, friend, whatever. 296 00:22:02,348 --> 00:22:08,408 It forces liquidity into the market and it keeps the factories running. 297 00:22:08,408 --> 00:22:10,328 It keeps the shipping containers moving. 298 00:22:10,328 --> 00:22:15,208 And to enforce this, we have the ultimate surveillance tool. 299 00:22:15,459 --> 00:22:16,749 Elf on the Shelf. 300 00:22:16,890 --> 00:22:19,781 Or just the concept of a naughty or nice list. 301 00:22:19,781 --> 00:22:21,451 That's how it started, right? 302 00:22:21,831 --> 00:22:25,032 Think about what we tell the children. 303 00:22:25,133 --> 00:22:26,933 He sees you when you're sleeping. 304 00:22:27,294 --> 00:22:28,974 He knows when you're awake. 305 00:22:29,154 --> 00:22:36,377 We are training children from birth to accept the idea of a benevolent panopticon. 306 00:22:37,237 --> 00:22:39,648 We're normalizing the surveillance state, right? 307 00:22:39,648 --> 00:22:44,960 We teach them that a judgment is coming and that judgment is based on what? 308 00:22:45,220 --> 00:22:46,281 Behavior? 309 00:22:46,424 --> 00:22:47,626 Sometimes. 310 00:22:48,069 --> 00:22:52,039 But mostly on whether or not you deserve things. 311 00:22:52,290 --> 00:22:56,494 We've confused moral goodness with consumer goods. 312 00:22:57,174 --> 00:22:58,755 If you're good, you get an Xbox. 313 00:22:58,755 --> 00:23:07,580 If you're bad, you get coal, which honestly in this economy is actually still a valuable commodity. 314 00:23:07,580 --> 00:23:11,242 anyway, so you look at the modern holiday, right? 315 00:23:11,242 --> 00:23:13,944 You aren't seeing a mystical tradition. 316 00:23:13,944 --> 00:23:18,277 You're seeing a Victorian containment strategy wrapped in a Coke campaign. 317 00:23:18,557 --> 00:23:30,151 powered by Montgomery Ward mascot, designed to force you to vaporize every dollar of your disposable income, if you even have any right now, to basically prove that you're just a 318 00:23:30,151 --> 00:23:32,251 functioning member of society. 319 00:23:33,152 --> 00:23:38,253 It is a PSIOP, and it's so far a pretty good one. 320 00:23:38,494 --> 00:23:39,814 But here's the catch. 321 00:23:39,814 --> 00:23:43,385 The system knows that this level of consumption makes us feel empty. 322 00:23:43,920 --> 00:23:49,521 It knows that buying plastic junk doesn't actually fill the void in our souls. 323 00:23:49,721 --> 00:23:56,223 And it knows that while we're opening presents, there are people outside starving. 324 00:23:56,463 --> 00:24:00,984 The system knows the inequality is disgusting. 325 00:24:01,144 --> 00:24:05,165 So it has to offer us a solution. 326 00:24:05,345 --> 00:24:08,846 It has to give us a way to wash our hands of guilt. 327 00:24:09,686 --> 00:24:13,469 And that brings up the next part of the machine, the actual 328 00:24:13,469 --> 00:24:14,600 pressure valve. 329 00:24:15,504 --> 00:24:18,909 I'm sorry to do it, but we need to talk about charity. 330 00:24:19,352 --> 00:24:25,093 We need to talk about why despite all of this giving, nothing ever seems to change. 331 00:24:25,344 --> 00:24:27,065 If you're still listening to this, congratulations. 332 00:24:27,065 --> 00:24:32,617 You have survived the part where I ruined Santa and the part where I told you that Rudolph is a corporate chill. 333 00:24:32,617 --> 00:24:33,817 You're doing great. 334 00:24:34,318 --> 00:24:42,480 But now we kind of have to pivot because the first half of the show was kind of about this whole consumerism industrial complex. 335 00:24:43,001 --> 00:24:48,903 But the second half is kind of the guilt mitigation industrial complex. 336 00:24:49,163 --> 00:24:54,375 I can hear you getting ready to tweet me or whatever already, but 337 00:24:54,626 --> 00:24:57,508 I hear you say, Joshua, you just attacked Christmas traditions. 338 00:24:57,508 --> 00:25:02,421 You called Santa a surveillance asset for the NSA and now you're coming after charity? 339 00:25:02,421 --> 00:25:06,184 You're coming after the simple act of being nice to people who hurt you? 340 00:25:06,184 --> 00:25:07,074 Was it the Grinch? 341 00:25:07,074 --> 00:25:08,786 Did he steal your presents? 342 00:25:08,786 --> 00:25:10,686 Look, I get it. 343 00:25:10,686 --> 00:25:12,207 This is the third rail. 344 00:25:12,588 --> 00:25:24,495 In a world that feels increasingly cruel, where the headlines are a constant stream of disaster, the idea of holiday giving feels like the last pure, honest 345 00:25:24,495 --> 00:25:25,985 thing that we have left. 346 00:25:26,466 --> 00:25:30,829 It feels like the one time of year where humanity actually tries. 347 00:25:30,829 --> 00:25:41,656 It brings to mind that song uh and a lot of the reason behind this podcast today was talking with my wife about the song Don't Save It All for Christmas Day, which I heard at 348 00:25:41,656 --> 00:25:47,060 a concert that we went to and it's been on my head and on my heart lately. 349 00:25:47,312 --> 00:25:53,497 Yeah, I need you to kind of suspend your knee-jerk reaction to all of this for a second. 350 00:25:53,497 --> 00:26:00,432 I want you to put down the defense mechanism and look at the mechanics of what we're actually doing, okay? 351 00:26:00,432 --> 00:26:05,996 So let's talk about the pressure valve idea that I'm talking about. 352 00:26:05,997 --> 00:26:12,792 There's a famous essay by Oscar Wilde, yeah, that guy, the one who wrote The Importance of Being Earnest. 353 00:26:13,646 --> 00:26:18,029 He also wrote another piece called The Soul of Man Under Socialism. 354 00:26:18,510 --> 00:26:28,518 So in this, I guess it's an essay, he makes the argument that enrages really wealthy philanthropists even to this day. 355 00:26:28,659 --> 00:26:32,962 He basically says that charity is not a cure for poverty. 356 00:26:33,403 --> 00:26:38,546 He says that charity is the thing that makes sure poverty continues. 357 00:26:38,647 --> 00:26:41,633 Here's the quote, and I typed it up because I'm 358 00:26:41,633 --> 00:26:42,375 I wanted to get it right. 359 00:26:42,375 --> 00:26:43,736 It starts as such. 360 00:26:43,736 --> 00:27:00,200 Just as the worst slave owners were those who were kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of the system being realized by those who suffered from it, and understood by 361 00:27:00,200 --> 00:27:08,226 those who contemplated it, so, in the present state of things, the people who do most harm 362 00:27:08,368 --> 00:27:11,977 are the people who try to do most good. 363 00:27:12,228 --> 00:27:13,730 That hit me hard. 364 00:27:13,981 --> 00:27:15,393 How does it feel for you? 365 00:27:15,644 --> 00:27:24,758 Old Oscar's basically saying that charity remedies, the symptoms, just enough to keep the disease alive. 366 00:27:25,009 --> 00:27:27,621 Think about the holiday season through this lens, right? 367 00:27:27,621 --> 00:27:31,644 It functions as a massive societal relief valve. 368 00:27:32,185 --> 00:27:43,755 We spend 11 months of the year operating a machine, let's call it late stage capitalism, because that's what it is, that systematically crushes the working poor. 369 00:27:43,976 --> 00:27:52,755 It suppresses wages, it spikes rent, it denies healthcare, it under-funds schools and tries to privatize them. 370 00:27:52,755 --> 00:27:56,538 It builds up an incredible amount of pressure. 371 00:27:56,789 --> 00:28:07,233 in a rational world, or at least in a world where cause and effect were allowed to actually play out, that pressure would eventually explode into political action like it's 372 00:28:07,233 --> 00:28:09,394 done in the UK and France. 373 00:28:09,954 --> 00:28:12,735 It would lead to strikes. 374 00:28:13,096 --> 00:28:23,080 It would lead to riots or, Thor forbid, it would lead people to actually vote for structural redistribution of wealth. 375 00:28:23,500 --> 00:28:26,141 But then December hits. 376 00:28:26,375 --> 00:28:28,166 That pressure valve opens. 377 00:28:28,666 --> 00:28:30,067 We have food drives. 378 00:28:30,067 --> 00:28:31,187 have toy runs. 379 00:28:31,187 --> 00:28:35,670 have celebrities on TV asking you to text a code to donate $10. 380 00:28:35,670 --> 00:28:44,275 We drop our spare change in the red swinging buckets outside of the supermarket. 381 00:28:44,956 --> 00:28:46,606 We see a family in crisis. 382 00:28:46,606 --> 00:28:48,427 We give them a turkey. 383 00:28:48,678 --> 00:28:54,881 We see a struggling waitress, we give her a bigger tip, then what happens? 384 00:28:55,002 --> 00:28:56,522 The pressure goes down. 385 00:28:56,773 --> 00:28:59,594 The family doesn't starve this week. 386 00:28:59,875 --> 00:29:02,656 The kid gets a plastic truck this year. 387 00:29:02,936 --> 00:29:06,038 The immediate visible crisis is averted. 388 00:29:06,178 --> 00:29:11,741 And crucially, and this is the most important part, you feel better. 389 00:29:11,992 --> 00:29:16,314 The giver is absolved of all prior sin. 390 00:29:16,565 --> 00:29:18,236 or at least feels that way. 391 00:29:18,487 --> 00:29:24,611 This is performative altruism as a carbon offset for your soul. 392 00:29:25,405 --> 00:29:27,494 I should turn that one into a book. 393 00:29:27,494 --> 00:29:32,325 Performative altruism as a carbon offset for the chicken soup soul? 394 00:29:32,325 --> 00:29:33,397 I don't know. 395 00:29:34,198 --> 00:29:40,895 We treat holiday charity like an indulgence, right, in the history of the medieval church. 396 00:29:41,065 --> 00:29:50,522 I donated a bag of canned yams to the food pantry, so I don't have to think about why the minimum wage in this country is still stuck at 2009 levels, right? 397 00:29:50,802 --> 00:29:58,468 The act of charity buys us the emotional right to ignore the rest of the injustices in our country for another year. 398 00:29:58,719 --> 00:30:03,442 It privatizes the solution to a public problem. 399 00:30:03,743 --> 00:30:07,175 And let's be honest, it's pretty inefficient. 400 00:30:07,426 --> 00:30:09,826 Let's talk about the canned food drive, right? 401 00:30:09,826 --> 00:30:15,965 The canned food drive is the perfect example of how our brains are broken by this system. 402 00:30:16,326 --> 00:30:24,226 If you talk to anyone who runs a food bank, and I have, they will tell you quietly that they hate your canned goods. 403 00:30:24,526 --> 00:30:29,726 They hate your cream corn, they hate your pumpkin pie mix from three years ago that you found in the back of your pantry. 404 00:30:29,726 --> 00:30:30,506 Why? 405 00:30:30,506 --> 00:30:33,406 Because logistically, it's a nightmare. 406 00:30:33,539 --> 00:30:36,359 They have to sort it, they have to check the dates, they have to store it. 407 00:30:36,359 --> 00:30:41,379 But more importantly, a food bank can buy food at wholesale prices. 408 00:30:41,499 --> 00:30:45,119 They can take $1 and turn it into five meals. 409 00:30:45,619 --> 00:30:54,599 When you spend $1 on a can of beans at a retail price and give it to them, you're giving them 20 cents of value and a storage problem. 410 00:30:54,850 --> 00:30:56,430 So why do we do it? 411 00:30:56,430 --> 00:31:00,190 Why do we insist on giving stuff instead of money? 412 00:31:00,730 --> 00:31:02,690 Because we don't trust the poor. 413 00:31:02,941 --> 00:31:10,797 Deep down in the American psyche, we believe that if we give a poor person cash, they'll use it wrong. 414 00:31:11,048 --> 00:31:12,345 They might buy beer. 415 00:31:12,596 --> 00:31:14,538 That's what I remember hearing as a kid. 416 00:31:14,880 --> 00:31:16,022 They might buy cigarettes. 417 00:31:16,022 --> 00:31:18,695 That's what I remember hearing as a kid. 418 00:31:18,946 --> 00:31:24,928 They might actually buy something that gives them a moment of joy that we didn't authorize. 419 00:31:25,179 --> 00:31:29,823 So we give them a can of beans because the can of beans comes with moral control. 420 00:31:29,823 --> 00:31:34,196 It says, I'm feeding you, but I'm determining what you eat. 421 00:31:34,657 --> 00:31:37,619 It's not about the recipient's need. 422 00:31:37,619 --> 00:31:39,480 It's about the giver's ego. 423 00:31:39,861 --> 00:31:45,024 It's about that warm, fuzzy feeling of handing over a physical object, right? 424 00:31:45,065 --> 00:31:50,270 And this leads us to the most dystopian part of the season, the heartwarming news story. 425 00:31:50,270 --> 00:31:51,031 I can taste it. 426 00:31:51,031 --> 00:31:52,870 You know exactly what I'm talking about. 427 00:31:52,870 --> 00:31:59,465 You will see it on your local news tonight, wherever you're listening to this, or it will pop up in your Facebook feed for you boomers. 428 00:32:00,447 --> 00:32:08,453 Local eight year old boy sets up a lemonade stand to pay for his mother kidney transplant or our high school robotics team builds a wheelchair for student because insurance denied 429 00:32:08,453 --> 00:32:13,198 it or coworkers donate sick days to teach her with cancer so she doesn't lose her health insurance. 430 00:32:13,198 --> 00:32:14,669 and the news acres. 431 00:32:14,920 --> 00:32:16,150 I mean, I guess it's not their fault. 432 00:32:16,150 --> 00:32:17,551 They're just reading teleprompter. 433 00:32:17,551 --> 00:32:20,861 They'll smile their vapid smile and say, how inspiring. 434 00:32:20,861 --> 00:32:21,772 What a wonderful community. 435 00:32:21,772 --> 00:32:23,952 Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. 436 00:32:24,013 --> 00:32:25,393 That's not inspiring. 437 00:32:25,393 --> 00:32:26,933 That's a horror story. 438 00:32:27,254 --> 00:32:32,095 That is a systemic failure set to upbeat piano music. 439 00:32:32,675 --> 00:32:33,456 Yacht rock. 440 00:32:33,456 --> 00:32:37,917 Every time you see a story like that, you're witnessing a policy failure. 441 00:32:37,958 --> 00:32:42,971 A child should not have to engage in child labor, selling lemonade. 442 00:32:42,971 --> 00:32:46,059 to prevent his mother from dying of a treatable condition. 443 00:32:46,310 --> 00:32:47,933 Why is that hard? 444 00:32:48,275 --> 00:32:53,486 A teacher should not have to beg for the charity of her colleagues to get chemo. 445 00:32:53,737 --> 00:32:55,918 These aren't stories of human triumph. 446 00:32:55,918 --> 00:33:02,274 They're stories of a society that has abdicated its contract with those around them. 447 00:33:02,525 --> 00:33:09,650 And this charity industrial complex I mentioned earlier of the holidays just kind of helps to hide that, right? 448 00:33:09,650 --> 00:33:16,975 Every toys for tots bin is a monument to the fact that we have decided child poverty is fine. 449 00:33:17,455 --> 00:33:20,237 As long as we mitigate it slightly once a year. 450 00:33:20,768 --> 00:33:33,780 If a society requires a volunteer Marine Corps to collect plastic trinkets so that children don't feel psychologically abandoned in December, that society is not generous. 451 00:33:33,780 --> 00:33:36,121 Our society is broken. 452 00:33:36,372 --> 00:33:44,858 When we rely on the precarious generosity of the rich to ensure the survival of the poor, we're not practicing goodwill. 453 00:33:45,419 --> 00:33:46,650 That's feudalism. 454 00:33:46,650 --> 00:33:48,901 Like I've talked about it before. 455 00:33:49,461 --> 00:33:58,604 We are waiting for the Lord of the Manor to toss a few measly scraps from the table so the peasants don't slice their throats. 456 00:33:58,855 --> 00:34:01,196 So I'm saying, don't give? 457 00:34:01,196 --> 00:34:02,557 No, I'm not saying that. 458 00:34:02,557 --> 00:34:09,099 I'm saying, am I saying that you should walk past the red kettle and sneer at it? 459 00:34:09,099 --> 00:34:10,081 Don't sneer at it. 460 00:34:10,081 --> 00:34:12,655 You know, don't donate to the Salvation Army. 461 00:34:12,655 --> 00:34:13,117 They suck. 462 00:34:13,117 --> 00:34:14,826 We can do a whole episode on it if you want to. 463 00:34:14,826 --> 00:34:15,329 I don't know. 464 00:34:15,329 --> 00:34:17,236 Maybe I'll do a mini episode on it. 465 00:34:17,487 --> 00:34:24,619 Am I saying that people, that we should let people go hungry to, to heighten the contradictions and accelerate the revolution? 466 00:34:24,619 --> 00:34:27,373 No, that's cruel. 467 00:34:27,624 --> 00:34:31,025 And to be honest, accelerationism is a privileged position. 468 00:34:31,085 --> 00:34:34,306 Real people suffer while you're waiting for the revolution. 469 00:34:34,306 --> 00:34:35,396 And that's the facts, right? 470 00:34:35,396 --> 00:34:38,547 If you see someone that's hungry, feed them, obviously. 471 00:34:38,587 --> 00:34:41,068 If you have extra share it, obviously. 472 00:34:41,868 --> 00:34:43,768 But stop lying to yourself. 473 00:34:44,089 --> 00:34:46,949 Stop telling yourself that you're fixing anything. 474 00:34:47,850 --> 00:34:50,490 The red kettle isn't saving the world. 475 00:34:50,671 --> 00:34:54,631 It's just buying the system a little more time before the engine explodes. 476 00:34:55,512 --> 00:34:56,272 So. 477 00:34:57,094 --> 00:35:04,649 Now that I've thoroughly depressed you, now that I've taken your holiday cheer and effectively wet blanketed it, where do we go from here? 478 00:35:05,509 --> 00:35:08,530 Is there a way to do this without being a hypocrite? 479 00:35:09,031 --> 00:35:13,553 Is there a way to participate in the season without being a cog in that machine? 480 00:35:13,804 --> 00:35:19,106 Actually, yes, but it does require us to change our vocabulary. 481 00:35:19,106 --> 00:35:20,606 know, I know. 482 00:35:20,707 --> 00:35:22,127 Pronouns are hard. 483 00:35:23,037 --> 00:35:28,992 It requires us to stop thinking about charity and start thinking about solidarity. 484 00:35:29,052 --> 00:35:32,795 And trust me, there's a massive, massive difference. 485 00:35:33,046 --> 00:35:35,678 So here we are in the home stretch. 486 00:35:35,678 --> 00:35:44,437 If you stuck with me thus far, you're either nodding in agreement, fueling your own sense of righteous indignation, or you're hate-listening while aggressively wrapping a scented 487 00:35:44,437 --> 00:35:47,139 candle for your coworker, and you barely know them. 488 00:35:47,139 --> 00:35:50,081 Either way, I guess I appreciate you being here. 489 00:35:50,843 --> 00:35:54,646 Let's tie this all together before I let you go back into the wild. 490 00:35:55,307 --> 00:35:56,989 So we've covered a lot of ground today. 491 00:35:56,989 --> 00:35:59,050 We started by realizing that... 492 00:35:59,050 --> 00:36:03,993 The tradition we're so stressed about is largely a marketing campaign designed to isolate us. 493 00:36:04,654 --> 00:36:13,880 We just finished discussing how the charity we use to make ourselves feel better is often just a relief valve that keeps the system from literally exploding. 494 00:36:14,480 --> 00:36:22,585 And when you combine those two things, the isolation and the pressure valve, you start to see the loop. 495 00:36:23,246 --> 00:36:26,508 It's the hamster wheel of festivity. 496 00:36:26,759 --> 00:36:28,160 Think about the cycle. 497 00:36:28,911 --> 00:36:33,783 Step one, the system extracts value from you. 498 00:36:34,623 --> 00:36:41,866 It makes you work too hard for wages that are too low, leaving you exhausted and lonely. 499 00:36:42,787 --> 00:36:48,169 Step two, the system sells you Christmas as a cure for that loneliness. 500 00:36:48,169 --> 00:36:50,050 Buy this thing to feel connected. 501 00:36:50,050 --> 00:36:52,090 Stay home to feel safe. 502 00:36:52,971 --> 00:36:56,432 Step three, you spend money you don't have. 503 00:36:56,633 --> 00:36:57,839 Funneling profit. 504 00:36:57,839 --> 00:37:01,482 back to the same corporations that underpaid you in step one. 505 00:37:01,733 --> 00:37:10,157 Step four, you look around and see people who didn't survive the grinder, the homeless, the hungry, and you feel guilty. 506 00:37:10,778 --> 00:37:21,484 Step five, you toss a few coins in a red bucket to alleviate that guilt, which cleans up the mess just enough so the machine can keep running for another fiscal year. 507 00:37:21,724 --> 00:37:28,768 It's a perfect self-sustaining ecosystem of consumption and placation. 508 00:37:29,369 --> 00:37:30,509 So what do we do? 509 00:37:30,760 --> 00:37:37,036 This is obviously the part of the podcast where I tell you a solution or you at least expect one. 510 00:37:37,036 --> 00:37:39,177 Do we cancel December? 511 00:37:39,428 --> 00:37:41,651 Do we become aesthetics? 512 00:37:41,651 --> 00:37:46,015 Do we sit in the dark and eat gruel to prove a point about commodity fetishism? 513 00:37:46,015 --> 00:37:47,616 No, that's miserable. 514 00:37:48,037 --> 00:37:51,039 Although, you know, some people eat gruel for breakfast. 515 00:37:51,290 --> 00:37:53,812 Looking at the news this year. 516 00:37:54,722 --> 00:37:57,033 We're all miserable enough as it is. 517 00:37:57,284 --> 00:38:00,386 We don't need to add the war on Santa to our resume. 518 00:38:00,567 --> 00:38:02,808 The left has a branding problem as it is. 519 00:38:02,808 --> 00:38:09,132 We don't need the people shouting at grandmothers about the geopolitical implications of Tencel. 520 00:38:09,632 --> 00:38:12,234 The answer is not to stop participating. 521 00:38:12,234 --> 00:38:16,336 The answer is to change the intent of your participation. 522 00:38:17,037 --> 00:38:23,191 That's the shift in our mindset from charity to solidarity. 523 00:38:23,791 --> 00:38:29,245 Now know these words sound like they're the same, but they are antonyms. 524 00:38:30,026 --> 00:38:31,748 Charity is vertical. 525 00:38:31,748 --> 00:38:33,068 It's top down. 526 00:38:33,069 --> 00:38:37,952 It's I have, you have not, here's a crumb, please be grateful. 527 00:38:38,113 --> 00:38:40,555 It maintains the power dynamic, right? 528 00:38:40,555 --> 00:38:43,797 It assumes that the rich are the saviors of the poor. 529 00:38:43,838 --> 00:38:45,899 Solidarity is horizontal. 530 00:38:45,919 --> 00:38:52,185 Solidarity is looking at your neighbor, whether they are homeless or struggling to pay rent or... 531 00:38:52,185 --> 00:39:00,690 just exhausted and saying, hey, we're both going through the same shitty broken machine. 532 00:39:00,871 --> 00:39:03,312 Your struggle is my struggle. 533 00:39:03,312 --> 00:39:05,293 If you fall, I fall. 534 00:39:05,544 --> 00:39:09,306 Charity asks us, what can I spare? 535 00:39:09,566 --> 00:39:16,030 But solidarity asks, what do we need to build so we don't have to beg? 536 00:39:16,691 --> 00:39:27,618 So this year, by all means, donate the turkey, feed the hungry, but while you're doing it, recognize that the goal isn't just to fill a belly for a day. 537 00:39:27,839 --> 00:39:32,511 The goal is to build a world where food isn't a privilege. 538 00:39:33,483 --> 00:39:37,815 Instead of just giving a toy, maybe donate to a strike fund. 539 00:39:38,235 --> 00:39:40,567 I know Starbucks is currently striking. 540 00:39:40,567 --> 00:39:46,792 Don't, you know, donate to help the Starbucks workers who are striking get paid. 541 00:39:47,043 --> 00:39:53,407 help workers who are fighting for better earnings so that they can buy their own toys next year. 542 00:39:53,707 --> 00:39:56,779 Instead of just giving money to a soup kitchen, which you should do. 543 00:39:56,779 --> 00:39:58,752 I'm not saying don't do that, right? 544 00:39:58,752 --> 00:40:01,273 Don't stop helping. 545 00:40:01,524 --> 00:40:05,924 but pick up the phone and call your representatives and scream at them. 546 00:40:06,175 --> 00:40:15,423 about snap benefits, about the way snap benefits were used as a tool by Donald Trump's regime to lure it over the poor's heads. 547 00:40:16,305 --> 00:40:21,250 Charity is a band-aid and solidarity is surgery. 548 00:40:21,250 --> 00:40:24,852 We need a whole lot less band-aids and a whole lot more surgery. 549 00:40:25,734 --> 00:40:27,355 And on a personal level, 550 00:40:27,606 --> 00:40:32,508 The most radical thing you can do this week is to rebel against the domestic isolation. 551 00:40:32,508 --> 00:40:34,909 The system wants you inside. 552 00:40:34,909 --> 00:40:38,601 They want you watching streaming services, buying online, reject that. 553 00:40:38,601 --> 00:40:40,031 Go to a third place. 554 00:40:40,032 --> 00:40:44,653 Go to a park, go to a library, go to a fricking dive bar. 555 00:40:44,834 --> 00:40:52,497 Build a community that exists outside of your nuclear family and outside of a mall. 556 00:40:52,537 --> 00:40:54,588 People don't go to malls, I don't know what I'm saying. 557 00:40:55,586 --> 00:41:05,439 Because if you're gonna survive what's coming, the collapse, the changes, the friction we talk about on the show every week, we are not gonna do it as individuals. 558 00:41:05,580 --> 00:41:07,612 We are going to do it as a community. 559 00:41:07,863 --> 00:41:12,474 And look, before you go, I want to drop the snark for a minute. 560 00:41:12,474 --> 00:41:18,416 I'll take off the, the cynical podcaster hat and I want to say thank you. 561 00:41:19,376 --> 00:41:24,437 We have dragged you through some pretty dark territory this year on the overlap. 562 00:41:24,477 --> 00:41:29,120 We spent weeks dissecting the pow memo, as the blueprint for class war. 563 00:41:29,120 --> 00:41:33,701 We stared directly into the abyss of the dark enlightenment and the manuscript. 564 00:41:33,701 --> 00:41:34,591 We talked. 565 00:41:34,799 --> 00:41:46,035 Through the history of fascism in Italy and Germany, topic by topic, horror by horror, we ask if our own civilization is collapsing. 566 00:41:46,555 --> 00:41:48,196 That's not light listening. 567 00:41:48,376 --> 00:41:50,437 That is not background noise for your commute. 568 00:41:50,437 --> 00:41:54,819 That is heavy and it sits with you, just like it sits with me. 569 00:41:55,200 --> 00:42:02,625 So it takes a specific kind of person to willfully engage with that kind of information. 570 00:42:02,625 --> 00:42:04,226 It takes someone who cares. 571 00:42:04,396 --> 00:42:07,088 someone who refuses to sleepwalk through history. 572 00:42:07,088 --> 00:42:12,371 So the fact that you're here listening to this means you are paying attention, at least still. 573 00:42:12,752 --> 00:42:18,175 In an economy of distraction, paying attention is kind of a revolutionary act too. 574 00:42:18,426 --> 00:42:28,713 Hopefully we'll be back soon, hopefully be full of stories about his family and maybe a little too cheerful so we can get back to work deconstructing the apocalypse. 575 00:42:28,733 --> 00:42:30,874 We have a lot to cover in the new year. 576 00:42:31,115 --> 00:42:32,955 The world isn't getting any simpler. 577 00:42:33,217 --> 00:42:38,369 But for the next few days, take a break, put your phone down, close the news app. 578 00:42:39,249 --> 00:42:49,795 We talk a lot about systems on this show, but the only reason that any of this matters, the only reason we fight for a better system is because of the people inside of it. 579 00:42:49,795 --> 00:42:56,017 The people you're about to see, the friends, the messy families, the chosen families. 580 00:42:56,017 --> 00:43:00,799 So go be with them, eat the food, drink the wine, hug your uncle. 581 00:43:01,311 --> 00:43:09,316 even if his political takes make you want to scream into a pillow, find the common ground, enjoy some human connection. 582 00:43:09,316 --> 00:43:13,889 Because ultimately, that connection is the only thing that 583 00:43:13,858 --> 00:43:15,168 AI can't take away from us. 584 00:43:15,168 --> 00:43:17,284 It's the only thing money can't actually buy. 585 00:43:17,284 --> 00:43:21,594 And it is the fuel that we are going to need for the fights ahead. 586 00:43:21,845 --> 00:43:30,582 From Will, who is hopefully eating a cookie right now, from myself, and from everyone who makes the overlap happen, thank you for listening. 587 00:43:30,662 --> 00:43:33,504 Thank you for thinking, and thank you for giving a damn. 588 00:43:34,686 --> 00:43:37,787 The real gift is class consciousness. 589 00:43:38,228 --> 00:43:39,289 I'm kidding. 590 00:43:39,830 --> 00:43:40,790 Sort of. 591 00:43:41,031 --> 00:43:42,232 Cheers, everyone. 592 00:43:42,232 --> 00:43:43,872 Have a wonderful holiday. 593 00:43:44,253 --> 00:43:46,865 Stay safe, and we'll see you in the new year.