Balancing Good, Evil, and Leadership with Dr. Michael Robillard

Chris Albert 00:00:00 (link to this point)

What is going on ladies and gentlemen? I wanna thank you for coming over here to check out the Warrior Soul podcast. This is where we talk about tools, tactics, ideas, and issues to help active duty military members and US military veterans and anybody else who's willing to listen to live their best lives. And today's guest is somebody we've had on the podcast before, doctor Michael Robillard. Doctor Robillard or Michael as I call him, he is a graduate of West Point.

He served as a US army officer in the infantry, and then he went on to get his PhD in philosophy from the University of Connecticut. Since then, he's become a fellow over at the University of Oxford in England, and he studies war and ethics. And he goes around and he trains different military organizations in war and ethics and decision making. And he brings a really awesome and unique perspective to everything. Having been a soldier and having been a philosopher, he's able to really comment on both.

He started his own podcast that I highly recommend along with, his partner, Lieutenant Colonel Bob Underwood. And, they, started the Homo Furens podcast. And that is a podcast about war and ethics and war in society. So you guys should definitely go check that out. I'm gonna link it in the show notes below.

Before we get into our conversation with Michael, I wanna tell you about a new project I've been working on for Warrior Soul, and that is the Warrior For Life newsletter. I alluded to this a couple of years ago. I wanted to create something that was going to help men in the veteran community to take their rightful place as leaders in this society. And the best place in my opinion to start with this is to help men to begin taking care of their own bodies. So what you're going to find in Warrior For Life is a place where you can connect with others on the same path as you, and the best information and tips you can get on improving your health, fitness, and mental fortitude.

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With that, I'm gonna stop yapping my trap over here, and we'll get into our conversation with doctor Michael Robillard on the Warrior Soul podcast.

This is Chris Albert, and I'm here to remind you of one thing. Someday, you're going to die. Now that's not some morbid statement or scary idea. It's solid fact. Your time here on this earth is limited.

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Chris Albert 00:04:39 (link to this point)

What's going on Michael? How you doing man?

Michael Robillard 00:04:41 (link to this point)

Not too bad, how you doing?

Chris Albert 00:04:43 (link to this point)

Good, good. So you're out there in at the University of Oxford in England, right?

Michael Robillard 00:04:48 (link to this point)

Yes I am. And it's surprisingly sunny today. A rare rare occasion.

Chris Albert 00:04:55 (link to this point)

What do you do? Yeah. What do you do without the sun? Like, because I've been out there a bit and it's it's it's I love England. I think it's awesome, but I can't imagine living near long term without, you know, having the sun all the time.

Michael Robillard 00:05:11 (link to this point)

Yeah, mean the answer is I've popped lots of vitamin D pills and I have a vitamin D light and I try to travel as much as I can to somewhere sunny in the winter time. Yeah. Because it it wears down on you in ways that you that you wouldn't expect. It's not like a immediate sort of thing, but over several months, I think it it really starts to steal your your capacity to focus and and to have high energy.

Chris Albert 00:05:40 (link to this point)

Yeah. Do you think it affects people's moods over there? Like, know in the Northeast, people people around the country say, you know, people from the Northeast have an edge or something like that to them, you know. I'm from Connecticut, you're from Massachusetts, but you know, does it affect people's moods over there? Because everybody I met over there seemed like really friendly, really awesome.

Michael Robillard 00:06:02 (link to this point)

Mean, affects my mood. In a place where rather there were there was snow, but some amount of sun versus no snow and no sun. And I think even a little bits of sun that you get in in the Northeast, it actually it actually does a lot of good. Whereas around here, if it's so cloudy, it really can wear you down.

Chris Albert 00:06:28 (link to this point)

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you gotta think about that because the Northeast, they I mean, they settled there for the reason. You know, it's one of the first places they settled in The United States. And the weather was was I mean, I've been through a New England winter.

You know, the weather was was was more more climate friendly than than apparently what they came from. So Mhmm. It's interesting stuff. So as far what's going on in your world right now as as as far as things go with with, you know, the things you're studying, the things you're looking at?

Michael Robillard 00:07:07 (link to this point)

I'm juggling several I have several projects that I'm running and then several of them trying to start up. The main one that I'm here for is a four year project on the ethics of counterterrorism. So we're looking at everything from the ethics of targeted killing to preventative detention to how privacy rights trade off against mass surveillance to considerations of suspension of civil liberties in terrorist effort or counter terrorist efforts and questions of I guess cultural integration as a possible counter radicalization feature, know, what are the what are the ethical elements of that? So it has, you know, a variety of, you know, really difficult ethical issues in both the domestic and military spaces that we're trying to think carefully about, and then hopefully, translate these sort of high church principles into something that is actionable policy guidance with respect to strategy, law, and institutional redesign.

Chris Albert 00:08:16 (link to this point)

So You work on do you work on the you work with certain military organizations too and and kinda kinda school them up on these things as well?

Michael Robillard 00:08:26 (link to this point)

Yeah. Like, occasionally, I'll be brought in to talk to to various institutional agencies about what they what it is, what ethical situations that their practitioners are dealing with. And then just to kind of give them my 20,000 foot view to say, hey, know, here's some frameworks that and some some ethical lenses that you can use to to kind of give some some concepts and better language to your practitioners as they're either about to go into a particular situation or thinking retrospectively on past decisions that they've made. Maybe these concepts can help them make, know, better sense of some of the the murky ethical spaces that they've already they've already been in.

Chris Albert 00:09:14 (link to this point)

So, like, in a like, in a typical kind of you know, that this stuff can get, like, deep, like, far as rabbit holes and and and that kind of stuff. But, like, in a typical kind of situation, because you have a history as a US army officer and and and then you're approaching it from this this kind of helicopter view too. What would you go back and tell yourself on deployment that you know now?

Michael Robillard 00:09:43 (link to this point)

I would say probably it's a really good question. I would say probably think more about how ethics connects up with political theory and how that that connects up with an extension. How military and foreign foreign policy connects up with various political theories and how that there's a there's more of a seamless connection between the ethics, the politics and the military than I imagined. When I was younger, I kind of regarded these things as being very sort of compartmentalized. And, you know, on strong ratings of a of a traditional just war theory, a lot of people think that it's it's just not a soldier's business to consider what it is the politics are that are informing the war that that they're fighting.

And I mean, to a certain point, you're not gonna have a military if everybody's always questioning the politics of every single thing. Right? So I can understand the prudential value of that. But at the same time, I think, in retrospect, I wish that I was a bit more just astute and questioning of the the politics behind the invasion of Iraq, for instance. And, you know, I'm not sure if my decisions would have changed as a young officer at that time, but at least just to, you know, it's one of the regrets that I have, I suppose.

Chris Albert 00:11:24 (link to this point)

As far as so as far as like, questioning the validity of the war or questioning your own actions in the conduct of that war?

Michael Robillard 00:11:35 (link to this point)

Not even, I guess both, but it's less even what I was referring to was maybe just exercising more due diligence in just read reading more journal articles, reading more views from from the media, intentionally exposing myself to conflicting views to you know, kind of just maintain that epistemic humility. And yeah, I think that's what I would have liked to have done more of prior to deploying. And then yeah, then there's a whole host of other things in theater that I wish I'd done differently too.

Chris Albert 00:12:19 (link to this point)

Yeah. It's it's an interesting concept because I think if if you're reading one news outlet, especially these days, and you're only reading that particular news outlet, a lot of times that's an echo chamber. And, you know, if you're gonna get completely different perspectives, if you go from CNN to like Fox News, to, like, MSNBC to Al Jazeera to BBC, all of these different outlets, they have their own kind of spin on things. And I think, you know, prior to to, you know, this current presidency, I'd never seen that as strong as it is now. I mean, you go to CNN, you get a completely different reading from any other news outlet.

And then you go to Fox News, different. And then you go to Al Jazeera, it's completely different. And in some ways, it's weird because Al Jazeera seems almost more even handed on our own policy than than than than, you know, CNN or Fox News does.

Michael Robillard 00:13:23 (link to this point)

Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah. They're not because they're they're in less of a competitive battle with an opponent.

Chris Albert 00:13:29 (link to this point)

Yeah. Yeah. It's it's insane. Where do you think that's coming from, man? What what do you think's going on?

Michael Robillard 00:13:36 (link to this point)

I would liken it. So here's a pseudoscientific theory. I would liken it almost to something like the the creation of of going from spoken language to written language or going from written language to the printing press or going from printing press to the radio or the radio to television. In each of these these epics, you know, when you saw a jump to the the printing press for instance, at the same time, that's sort of on the on the back end of that was the Protestant Reformation in virtue of this sort of expansion and diaspora of knowledge that could occur because of this new medium of communication. And then with that you saw a very sort of plurality of views emerging.

Then likewise with radio, likewise with television, saw these sort of jumps in terms of each of these technological mediums provided an opportunity for new actors and new speakers to voice new ideas that weren't accessible before. I mean, I'll give you one example. Ayatollah Khomeini was a fringe figure in Iran prior to the advent of the cassette tape. But then once the cassette tape came out, you know, he could record his his sermons on a very small and portable device and and spread those around quite easily and and that, you know, that created a tremendous amount of political upheaval that was not anticipated at all. And I think we're in a similar sort of space right now where the old mediums of prints journalism of getting your news through, you know, cable television, that those those hierarchies have have begun to to wither and and begun to to level.

Sadly, I say the same thing about academia too. So what ends up happening is that there's a trade off between vertical expertise that's very narrow and but as that withers, there's there's more opportunity for more voices, but then it's very difficult to sort out, well, where where the experts anymore within the sort of cacophony of of ideas and cacophony of of views. So in the maelstrom of all that, I think people just sort of circle wagons around whatever view or set of ideologies that they find most comfortable with. And I'm not even sure to what extent that that's that's even conscious. It might just be a feature of, you know, the five people that you hang around with most or your work your coworkers or or what you listen to on YouTube for fun, that like that actually could be the the formation for like an entire world view.

Chris Albert 00:16:53 (link to this point)

Well, I think it's interesting too because, you know, you're talking about this kind of Gutenberg style, you know, revolution as far as as media goes. And with with podcasting, for example, very different from what you got on the nightly news. I mean Yeah. You know, this is longer form. You have the opportunity to express longer, longer form ideas rather than like two minute sound bites.

And what it seems to me is that in some ways, these more complicated ideas, these more nuanced ideas Mhmm. Which wouldn't have been threatening before are are now like seeming like they're threatening net people. And and you know, a good example of that is like Jordan Peterson. Right? And what I think happens to

Michael Robillard 00:17:42 (link to this point)

Him and Sam Harris were here last week in London, like, I don't know if they sold out, but they packed the house. Yeah. Oh, yeah. That like, it's normally like a sporting music venue.

Chris Albert 00:17:54 (link to this point)

Yeah. And that's the thing, like, I think what's because there's some and it's weird because people categorize, you know, Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson as like these these alt right people, kind of super conservative, but they're not conservative. They're they're they're they're, you know, neoclassical.

Michael Robillard 00:18:11 (link to this point)

Yeah, they're like, yeah, they're classic liberals.

Chris Albert 00:18:14 (link to this point)

Yeah. And so the thing is, it's like, I think what what's going on there is that you have this mix of things where some people are trying to utilize the the old media way of doing things where they're they're paraphrasing and giving like these these short sound bites and not giving a very nuanced view of the picture. Some people only want to listen to that. And then others are giving a a more complicated view of things. But it's interesting how that information is being twisted and turned for for certain causes. Right?

So like, the people who consider, you know, Peterson and Harris to be threatening, they're focusing on those sound bites and they're utilizing a lot of the weapons of the old media to try to mischaracterize what they're saying.

Michael Robillard 00:19:02 (link to this point)

Yeah, yeah. And you can imagine somebody if, I mean, look, we all are sort of caught up in this information overload age. And we only have so many hours in the day to do what we care about and to try to focus on our projects that we regard as meaningful. So you got to delete and filter certain things out and we need to take certain informational shortcuts on something. So if one's initial exposure to hearing about Jordan Peterson is that he's an alt right neo fascist or whatever the stigma is and that's the first thing that you end up hearing about this guy, then if I'm going about my day, it's it's probably not on my top of my list to spend three hours to really, really tunnel into the nuances of somebody's views who prima facie has been called an alt right fascist.

Right? So it there's I think that there's very there's very pragmatic reasons why people might, at firsthand, dismiss Peterson and Harris based upon these sort of just these labels. You know, it's a shortcut. It's a it's a time saving device to just categorize them as, oh, that's what those guys are. I don't have to bother myself with with digging into that abhorrent view.

But then it turns out that a lot of the time, this is a lot this is just mudslinging and and a radical mischaracterization of of a lot of these views.

Chris Albert 00:20:52 (link to this point)

But, you know, it's and and I gotta ask you this because you're somebody, as a philosopher, who who deals with nuance. I mean, like, that's that's your bread and butter.

Michael Robillard 00:21:02 (link to this point)

Right? That's we we split hairs just to split hairs. Yeah.

Chris Albert 00:21:06 (link to this point)

Right. I mean, what's that feel like for you? You know, being in in in a time and place where you can't really, you know, you can't really color yourself in a black or white argument. And in this time and place where these types of views are easily getting mischaracterized. You know, what does that feel like for you as somebody who who who who is an academic who deals in this kind of nuance?

Michael Robillard 00:21:35 (link to this point)

Yeah. Yeah, it's it's kind of it's it's complicated. I mean, I I see some things that like my Facebook feed looks like a schizophrenic person because you know, I have friends that are more conservative leaning largely from my military days and then I have friends and colleagues that are more left leaning from my academic career and you know I think I've always sort of been oddly just in the center of these things trying above all to exercise due diligence and to give every argument it's sort of it's fair due and to try to treat the reasons and the arguments on their own merits. So seeing some of the Seeing some of my non academic friends see some of the moves that Peterson and Sam Harris make, and they're like, oh my God, these guys, this is the most brilliant dialogue I've ever heard in my life. And I go, well.

You know they're making some good points but you know they're skipping some steps or they're being loose and fast with a couple of concepts that you know like I've kind of find frustrating but at the same time more on the academic side I feel that, you know, Peterson and Harris might get dismissed as as as not being worthy of lit being listened to at all because they're, you know, they they don't have the because they have these these stigmas put on them. You know, so I think they they do make some some good points. But like I said, I think I'm just kind of caught in a in a sort of bizarre middle space trying to adjudicate either side.

Chris Albert 00:23:25 (link to this point)

Yeah. But there's some people out there that would say that even by giving them a platform or even by by giving credit to their views at all, you're

Michael Robillard 00:23:34 (link to this point)

you're You're legitimizing a

Chris Albert 00:23:37 (link to this point)

Legitimizing it. Yeah. And you're reinforcing the patriarchy and you're reinforcing tyranny and all this stuff like that. And what would you say to that?

Michael Robillard 00:23:51 (link to this point)

I, I guess I just maybe I have Pollyanna glasses on, but I have I think I have more faith in human reasoning and human rationality to be able to to hear bullshit when they hear it, right? And to be able to work to you know, not fall under the spell of a bunch of propaganda or rhetoric or sophistry. So I'm very much of the view you know, let persons articulate their reasons and let their their arguments sort of stand to fall on their own merits and and let the you know, the morons speak and get their voices out so that you can you can recognize them and and then maybe even correct some of their thinking. So I that's what my understanding of what what I think a functional academia should be should be a place of controversial views, even sometimes very unsavory views. Doesn't mean we have to celebrate these things, right?

But I don't think it's the type of thing that would warrant official institutional censorship.

Chris Albert 00:25:07 (link to this point)

I gotta I mean, I think that what's weird about us as human beings is that certain extremist types of thinking, they're really intoxicating, right? Yeah. Both on the left and the right, right? So, you know, colleges these days, we see a lot of people running around with you know, Che Guevara, Suratson, and communism, pro communism We kind of we saw the rally in Charlottesville Yep. Virginia with guy white guys walking around with tiki torches and things like that, calling themselves white supremacists. But in my mind, the media looks at these things in two different ways.

Michael Robillard 00:25:57 (link to this point)

Mhmm.

Chris Albert 00:25:57 (link to this point)

And I think that when we look at Charlottesville, we think evil. When we look at, you know, the the kid in the Che Guevara shirt, you know, in my mind, I see sees and and I'm not trying to put words in your mouth at all on this, but in my mind, I see an ignorant kid who's who's promoting somebody who was a mass murderer, who was, you know, factually a mass murderer. Yep. Why do we look at these things in different ways, and why are human beings so attracted to those extremes like moths to a light bulb?

Michael Robillard 00:26:36 (link to this point)

Yeah. I mean, one might even look at these things as surface structures of just a greater desire for people to want to belong to something bigger than themselves, right? So you know, could conceivably, you know, throw in any sort of pernicious like tight in group into that that mix. You know, mean it wouldn't surprise me. Mean a lot of motivation behind ISIS recruitment is probably very the psychology behind it is probably very similar to a lot of recruitment on the far left and far right.

And I think it appeals to a more general desire within the human condition to want to be part of something bigger than oneself and to want to to be part of a group that that is for something and and thereby against something else. And then, you know, there are ready made narratives on the left and right that that organize one's life quite easily along those lines, whether it's class solidarity or race solidarity or something along like that. But as we talked about before, simplicity of that is it's dangerous, but it's you can also see how inviting that is to somebody who just doesn't want to think that much that they don't they don't want to think about the nuances. They just go, give me my ideology, give me my my received views. Okay, this is who I am.

We're the good guys, those are the bad guys. The end. I mean that there's something very psychologically mean it generates a meaning and purpose and identity for a lot of folks.

Chris Albert 00:28:31 (link to this point)

I think in a lot of ways, particularly for those who've never served in the military, it feels good to feel like you're fighting evil. Right? Yeah. Know? And it it probably goes back to us, you know, when we were cavemen living in small groups Yep. The person who saw the saber tooth tiger lurking around the village was probably a hero. Right? The person who saw the poisonous snake or all these things, probably got lauded and rewarded for those types And of I think I think it goes back to that. And so, you know, we have a generation of young people who who most of whom have never never known military life or or violent life.

Michael Robillard 00:29:18 (link to this point)

Right?

Chris Albert 00:29:18 (link to this point)

And, you know, it's it's less. We've we've had a lot of people serving overseas and everything like that, but the population is percentages less than it's ever really been during a war. And so we get a lot of people out there who are looking for their own fight, their own battle, their own thing too. And and I think it goes back to to that.

Michael Robillard 00:29:40 (link to this point)

Yeah. Yeah. I think so. There is there is something really, yeah, primal that might be be activated with these these types of ideologies. And yeah, you wonder to what degree is the is the tail wagging the dog in those scenarios, right?

Is it you know, the folks really, really believe in these these ideologies or they just want to be the hero and want to have a narrative of defending the group and they help themselves to whatever ideology most allows for that.

Chris Albert 00:30:17 (link to this point)

Yeah.

Michael Robillard 00:30:18 (link to this point)

I don't know, you know, but like I yeah, I'd imagine sometimes it's probably a little of both.

Chris Albert 00:30:24 (link to this point)

Yeah. It's it's just this interesting thing because, you know, when you got I mean, it's and I can go go deep into some different different facets of this, but, you know, you take kids who've been raised in Western lifestyle who who have everything they ever needed, got sent to, you know, a top line college that costs a ridiculous amount of money per year, and then carrying around an iPhone and iPad and all these different things, but railing against capitalism. Mean

Michael Robillard 00:30:56 (link to this point)

Right. Yeah.

Chris Albert 00:30:57 (link to this point)

It's insane. And the logic, it almost defies logic, but if you look at it from those other terms where they're actively going out there looking for something to fight, it becomes a little bit more sensical, I guess, from a animal behavior standpoint.

Michael Robillard 00:31:18 (link to this point)

Right. Yeah. Yeah. I might have mentioned this in the last podcast, but William James, the pragmatic philosopher and really one of the founders of psychology in the early nineteen hundred's wrote a paper called The The Moral Equivalent of War and he talks about how war would be, it would be the ultimate sport or not the case that it had so much suffering and dying attached to it and you know it's the type of thing for the modern mind that it's become somewhat of a surrogate for maybe a what would have been a tribal, know, initiation ritual in earlier times. And, know, I wonder if something like that similarly might be going on where if if it's not necessarily combat anymore.

It's it's some heroic struggle against something fill in the blank. And you know, I I think I mean, maybe this is me projecting a bit, but I would imagine if like a lot of young men, if they're looking for for some dragon to fight and conquer and and to go back to the village victorious, wear the dragons anymore. Right? It's it's not in the form of of the the rival tribe or the tiger or the physical elements either, right? There's no real physical frontier to conquer.

You know, so I wonder to what degree you know, people start looking for these, for something that looks similar to that. And some of these these more far right and far left ideologies provide the conceptual categories that then generate the enemy that they're that they can then vanquish.

Chris Albert 00:33:15 (link to this point)

Yeah. That's it's a weird concept, man. You know? You gotta think sometimes, think what it's like to be young and to Yeah. Yeah.

You know, what was that band? It's had this lyric. It was again it was called Against Me and

Michael Robillard 00:33:34 (link to this point)

Okay.

Chris Albert 00:33:34 (link to this point)

I remember those guys. Yeah. Remember those guys? Yeah. Interestingly, the the lead singer, she is transgendered.

But Okay. They had this crazy lyric. It was what's it called? I was a teenage anarchist looking for a revolution, and it talks about, do you remember when you're young and you wanted to set the world on fire? I mean, like, that's pretty much what it comes down to.

Like

Michael Robillard 00:34:05 (link to this point)

Yeah.

Chris Albert 00:34:06 (link to this point)

Yeah.

Michael Robillard 00:34:07 (link to this point)

Well, mean, Heidegger talks about he has this notion of thrownness. Right? We're we're just thrown into the world and you know, we become conscious to realize that the play of humanity has already started without us. And you know, we're we just kind of have to figure out what the hell is going on, but there's really no, You know, there's no agency or you know, administrator that we can go to and say, know, what's my role? How did I get here?

And what ends up happening, I think a lot of time, particularly for adolescents is that everything yeah. You didn't decide on any of this. Right? There are all these institutional mechanisms in place telling you what to do, who you are, and and you had no say in the legitimacy of any of it. So I could imagine, you know, for, yeah, more sort of rebellious youths, there's like a good, there's there's like a true sentiment behind that of like, why do I have to follow any of these rules that I had I had no autonomous say in whatsoever?

Chris Albert 00:35:15 (link to this point)

Yeah.

Michael Robillard 00:35:15 (link to this point)

But then as you get older, you realize, oh, well, maybe maybe there's a good reason to keep certain things in place. There was some wisdom behind why they put that line there and that other line over there.

Chris Albert 00:35:28 (link to this point)

Yeah. I think too, I mean, we empirically overweigh our importance in other people's minds and and our our impact on the world. And I think that in a lot of ways, you have to get to a point where you understand the world doesn't revolve around you. It revolves, you know, you're a very small part of this world. And there's power in that because it keeps you from having to worry about a whole lot of shit that you used to worry about.

Right? So if you just focus on your own life, you focus on on you rather than than being negative about the things you can't control.

Michael Robillard 00:36:03 (link to this point)

Mhmm.

Chris Albert 00:36:03 (link to this point)

And you can have more control over your life, and you can you can do things with your life without constantly worrying or constantly living in fear or things like that. Mhmm. And I think that's that's important for young people to realize. You're not as important as you think you are. And that's something in the military I learned very quick.

Michael Robillard 00:36:25 (link to this point)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Albert 00:36:26 (link to this point)

Very, very quickly. But, you know, it's a yeah. I I wonder what could be done to get young people to understand that and to realize that. But the thing is when you head off to college, it's like, oh, you're so smart. You're gonna go out there.

You're gonna have an impact on the world and everything like that. And and you're going to you're going to, you know, make your stamp here and make your stamp there. And and, I think a lot of people, we get told that from the time we're kids and and

Michael Robillard 00:36:59 (link to this point)

Mhmm. Mhmm.

Chris Albert 00:37:00 (link to this point)

You know, that's what happens. You know, people go in and and when they find that they don't have that impact or that they that that the world isn't the way they want it to be, then they get mad.

Michael Robillard 00:37:12 (link to this point)

Yeah, yeah, I think so. Yeah, because the narrative is that all the effort and student loans will therefore generate a meaningful livelihood on the back end of it. And I mean, maybe at some point that was that existed. I I don't know if it if it if it was always so rocky or or if that was a more accurate narrative that mapped onto the world at some point but now maybe it's it's a bit outmoded. I don't know but yeah, end up with an entire generation of folks that they go along that arc and then there's, I don't know, the the the promised job or the promised career at the back end isn't it's either not there at all or it's not the the utopian sort of thing that they imagined it to be.

Chris Albert 00:38:14 (link to this point)

Yeah. I, you know, I think at one time, going to college was this, like, your key to to going up the hierarchy. Right?

Michael Robillard 00:38:24 (link to this point)

Yeah.

Chris Albert 00:38:25 (link to this point)

Yeah. At one point. But now we're seeing that that it's actually it could actually be a hindrance in some cases. I'm not saying every case. Mhmm.

But in some some cases, can be because you you then take on student loans. So and all of a sudden people who took out these student loans, they think that, well, the world is unfair. I wasn't, you know, I'm being kept down by having to pay these.

Michael Robillard 00:38:51 (link to this point)

By the way, that must be the 1% that tricked me or Yeah, well Something like that?

Chris Albert 00:38:56 (link to this point)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. The 1% tricked me but literally they realized they are the 1%. Yeah. I mean, anybody making above, I think, what is it? Is, one of your colleagues says it, so I think anybody making above $33,000 a year is above the 1%, right?

Michael Robillard 00:39:14 (link to this point)

Oh yes, Will MacAskill, talking about the effective altruism.

Chris Albert 00:39:17 (link to this point)

Yeah, yeah, effective altruism.

Michael Robillard 00:39:19 (link to this point)

Anything over 30,000, I mean, you're living quite comfortably in the developed world. You're not, you know, experiencing any degree of poverty that nothing comparable to what poverty looks like elsewhere.

Chris Albert 00:39:32 (link to this point)

Yeah. He must have gotten a really good deal when he went out and did his Ph. D. Not had to admit he got any student loans whatsoever, guys.

Michael Robillard 00:39:41 (link to this point)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The British system might be a bit different over here. I'm not sure.

Chris Albert 00:39:47 (link to this point)

Yeah. Yeah. It's awesome. But yeah, man. I I mean, I really I don't know.

I mean, I look at young people today. I I I really hope well, I know that a lot of them have their heads screwed on tight. I know that there's there's a minority of them that don't.

Michael Robillard 00:40:06 (link to this point)

And Yeah.

Chris Albert 00:40:07 (link to this point)

Yeah. Problem is we're seeing the minority out there that do not, who are making the most noise and and and getting themselves, you know, into the spotlight. And I think it's always interesting how, you know, I think the media skews these kinds of things.

Michael Robillard 00:40:28 (link to this point)

Yeah. Yeah. And yeah. I think I think that there's, once again with like the new media of social media, I think that that throws like a huge curveball into one's felt sense of existence and way of being in a way that you and I never experienced. So I you know, I know millennials get like a really hard time for you know, always being addicted to their phones and addicted to social media, but I mean, I have no clue what the like amount of you know, Foucault's Panopticon like pressures that it must feel like growing up as an adolescent with social media.

I was super paranoid in a a 200 graduating class of 200 people. I was super paranoid as a kid, you know, worrying about curating my social image in a way that I wasn't looked at as a nerd or I wasn't bullied. Now I can't I can't imagine how mentally sort of vigilant one would would be at that age, knowing that like every photo, everything you say, everything you do on social media, it's on the internet forever. That's a different type of social world that and and with a different set of obstacles.

Chris Albert 00:41:49 (link to this point)

I don't think our generation did this age without getting arrested. I mean, like, I mean, and just being honest, I think I give half the things I did were chronicled that would have I would have been screwed. Might have walked a more straight and narrow path too. You know what I mean? Yeah. Just knowing that I was being watched. I could not and and this is gonna sound really, really bad, but I could not imagine getting from the ages of 12 to 15 in the age of Internet porn.

Don't think I would have gotten anything done whatsoever. Yeah.

Michael Robillard 00:42:24 (link to this point)

The yeah. There were less distractions back then, I would have to say. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, yeah.

So I think millennials get a bad rap for for being so addicted to technology and so focused on social media, but like a part of me gets it like I would I would I would be very vigilant and trying to manage that type of stuff too. If that's if your whole life, your whole social world is mediated through the phone, it only makes sense to to pay attention to that.

Chris Albert 00:43:00 (link to this point)

Yeah.

Michael Robillard 00:43:01 (link to this point)

Absolutely.

Chris Albert 00:43:04 (link to this point)

Got gotta jump off in a second, man. But as far as interesting things you're seeing out there, like and and as you know, we got a lot of soldiers and marines listening to this podcast.

Michael Robillard 00:43:18 (link to this point)

Mhmm.

Chris Albert 00:43:19 (link to this point)

What what what do you think people should be paying attention to? What do you think people should be trying to set their minds on? Books, podcasts, guides, anything?

Michael Robillard 00:43:38 (link to this point)

I could shamelessly start plugging my own stuff right now but I'll

Chris Albert 00:43:43 (link to this point)

Go ahead.

Michael Robillard 00:43:44 (link to this point)

I think the Oxford Uehiro Center for Security Ethics and and military ethics stuff. That's that's always good.

Chris Albert 00:43:57 (link to this point)

Dude, yeah. I mean, like, you're you're army former army officer, you know, philosopher, and you train in this stuff, and think people should pay attention. So absolutely, know, kind of show notes.

Michael Robillard 00:44:09 (link to this point)

Yeah. I mean, yeah, within that space, yeah, that, you know, I got a podcast with Bob Underwood, who's a lieutenant colonel in the army and a philosopher. So our podcast is called Homo Furens, which is taken from J. Glenn Gray's The Warriors, and he talks about Homo Furens being a subspecies of Homo sapien, you know, so it's the the soldier, I guess literally translated into like furious ape or warring ape, but the idea being that you metaphysically change once you you go to to combat. So we talk about war and society stuff on that and and we did a crossover with Chris recently. As far as other things, I in this same sort of vein of understanding political discourse and social discourse in this new age of new media.

I like a lot of Michael Lynch's stuff. He has a TED talk on big data and on how it is we can we can exercise epistemic humility in the sort of cacophony of different voices. And he does a lot of stuff on testimony and and fake news as well. So I think maybe he's technically an epistemologist, but in order to have any sort of political discourse, we need to know we we need to have an accurate notion of what are the facts first. So underpinning any of these sort of battles between different media and journalistic camps are going to be a set of fundamental epistemological considerations about like what is information, what is knowledge, what is you know, and verifiable information, what's bullshit.

So I like a lot of his stuff and he's got a he's got a TED talk if you look Michael Lynch, you can find that. Other people Will MacAskill stuff is good on effective altruism. I think he has a lot of nuanced views. He has a he's on Joe Rogan too. Mhmm.

And Peter Boghossian is also he's a epistemologist out at University of Oregon, but he was all he's also a jiu-jitsu practitioner. Oh, no. So he he was on the Joe Rogan show talking about how getting choked out really it forces you to deal with reality in a way that traditional martial arts just doing kata never never does. Yeah. So those are three

Chris Albert 00:46:52 (link to this point)

I've been there a while.

Michael Robillard 00:46:54 (link to this point)

Yeah. Me too, man. So, yeah, those are three philosophers that are in the the public sphere that I wish would get more more attention. So I would direct people's attentions to that.

Chris Albert 00:47:07 (link to this point)

Awesome, man. Well, thanks for coming on today. Great discussion and Thanks for having out the home Homo Homo Furens Podcast. I think that's that's awesome. We had if you need to check out the last episode with Michael and and Bob Underwood, We'll put a link to that up in the show notes as well.

But, yeah, man, thanks for coming on here. And to everybody out there, I mean, it's a brave new world. Navigate it wisely. That's, I guess, I would say. And get out there and live your best lives while you can.

Michael Robillard 00:47:44 (link to this point)

Cool. Alright. Thanks, man.