When I was going past slums in India I was thinking this. "What separates me from these people?" My answer was, nothing but geographical location and the lottery of class.
@@johnhill762 because of an international capitalist propaganda machine, and the spoils for the working class of the first world that go with imperialism
Oh please, and do you think that food is made in the supermarket? People had to carefully labor for things to be good, it wasn't luck, you are denying their blood and sweat that they spent, it's like you are a still child, were you actually 12 years old when you made this comment?
I don't ever comment on TH-cam, but I really feel the need to comment on this. Thank you, Wallace Shawn, and Haymarket Books, for releasing what has to be the best essay I have contemplated in a long time. This is thoughtful and poetic, and I truly hope is shared widely. I hope we make the future where our costumes and roles are discarded, where we share a deeper and true equality.
Torgrim doing that classic thing where broflakes who're deeply insecure about their latent homosexuality project it onto other via lame insults. You can't keep hiding your secret forever, bud. Just come out and be your best self, unless that best self is a complete tool...
@@Booyaka9000 Latent homosexuality? Is that even a thing? That sounds completely made up lmao. Sorry bro, not everyones gay or wants the penis. Lot of us like the ladies lol, every part of them.
I was hesitant to view this, expecting a political rant from a typical Hollywood actor. I am so glad I watched and listened to this brilliant work written and presented by Wallace Shawn. I categorized the costume he would wear, just as he so aptly described in this essay. It is human nature to quickly categorize people based our our own teachings or experience. Individuals can only escape this classification by proving otherwise, in many cases over and over again. Wallace Shawn challenges us to open our eyes to the soul within the costume, being receptive to the characters they might have played given a different set of circumstances. Thank you, Wallace Shawn, for this insightful and intelligent message!
That is so neat that it played on you exactly as intended. As a socialist, I admit to myself I thought, “but of course Wallace Shawn is a socialist, he’s brilliant, like me!” And to myself I’m holding to hear him support my world view. But instead it is so much more resilient and telling about humanity as a whole. Beautiful.
"if the baby who wears the costume of the hustler, in fact, had the capacity to become [their own greatest version of themself], *then the division of labor as we know it is inherently immoral...*"
Wow ! There is now way it could be said better I've been wondering about this same subject now I know but the way of putting it in characters is so amazing thank you
Nice going Wallace Shawn. Also don’t forget to say “thank you for watching this video and don’t forget to like comment subscribe and turn on post notifications.”
I owe the podcast Chapo Trap House a solid for introducing me to this wonderful man. Wallace Shawn is a brilliant actor with a heart of gold and it makes me happy knowing that there are some people out there like him. People who can truly see and feel the suffering of others and make a conscious decision to speak out against the baseline injustice of our world. I respect the hell out of anyone who's willing to openly declare that the systems we live under are evil - and should be seen as such. He challenges us to see all the bullshit and cruelty of our "normal" world. These things can be hard for us to see now, but will eventually be easily discernable by our grandchildren and so on. They won't mince words about it. The economic roles we're forced to carry out within the current global order are grossly unfair, arbitrary, and often downright evil. Just like how we see, with clarity, the evil of slavery. But only in retrospect. People like Wallace are trying to get us to think of the present day world without that absent-minded normalcy filter on, for once, if for no other reason than to convince us that this reality is NOT the only way things can be. Things can be better. It's hard but it's possible and we owe it to ourselves to at least make a try for it. Thank you Wally! :)
Came here after watching a video of Shawn's 1999 performance of "The Fever", which just blew me away and is still rattling around my brain. Thank you, Wallace, for your incredibly powerful work.
In school he had a close friendship with Jonathan Shell a talented writer who died an early death of a medical condition. But the "stage they played upon" was all made possible by his father William who few came to know as Managing Editor of The New Yorker magazine which had a huge social influence before television and social media.
I think the most important part was the end when he said we have to start naked. We should elect the next president in the buff without fancy clothes or jewelry and shed our costumes
If men were perfect, we wouldn’t need government. Hence, governments are comprised of the same fault ridden humanity. The least amount of government is best for all.
The ability to use visual cues, yes, can become the innability to control the use of those visual cues in maintaining a standard of ethics. The greek word, Ethos , meaning character, comes to mind. However, the historical events that pass for the occurence of people losing control of their character can , and must become a matter of dialectical argument. For example, today, based on a skewed and oversimplified version of reality, I am seen as being priveleged to be white, not by any black people I know or work with every day, but only other white people. Baltimore, where I live and work, I see homeless white men and black men, I see no homeless women, it's usually only men and I don't wonder about why, but I only assume my own humility because I don't know because I have no one to ask and no one to trust in finding truth or synthesis in ideas based on statistical analyses of the public via the government and I only travel the same roads every day, but only to work. It doesn't mean that my life is static in driving on those roads or that I don't ever drive other roads. We all have familiar territory, Just like Andre says in my dinner with Andre. The necessity of exploration doesn't mean you can't be familiar with your own habits, or even your old habits. A good dialectical method has a thesis, antithesis and synthesis. That is a good thing to be remembered in general. I am not inherently privileged to be white, am I? Isn't being called white privileged eaqually an example of losing control of character? You ask, are we more brilliant than Thomas Jefferson? Was Thomas Jefferson brilliant? Could it be that people who are seen as brilliant are really only lucky to be brilliant? Are those people who are brilliant privileged to be brilliant and therefore owe everyone else some sort of courtesy for the sake of some made up equity that we would otherwise not even think about? It doesn't seem to me that I am guilty of ignoring some terrible fact of life about my heritage of being white. If we have characters in us that we can play, are the only righteous choices for those characters simply to be in different forms of socialism or capitalism? And is that not as criminally oversimplifying as saying that people from Africa are slaves? The problem with insisting on these ideals is that they ignore the way people were promised to be taken care of under each system. Is the hand of capitalism really invisible? It seems to me that it was established in the form of many promises made by Thomas Jefferson and others concerning the United states Federal reserve. I refer you to the Author Eustace Mullins, who imagined his life as a fanciful writer, but ended up being a writer of something else much more serious. The idea that the people in the play of reality are ultimately seen as either too inferior to be thought about or too happy in their lives to notice those who are suffering is a trap to be caught in as an oversimple and exaggerated version of reality. Perhaps, the role they play has more to do with how institutions shape people and of course how writers have an opportunity to write their escape from this, so called, prison. It simply isn't true that people don't find the time to help eachother out of these prisons, but it is seemingly impossible to know about the real fighters against the institutions that put them there and instead we send ourselves on a guilt trip that we know we'll easily fall into because of our lack of information. People can and DO play many many roles in their life time and this is being blatantly ignored in this dialogue. It seems to me, there are no truly pernicious ideals plagueing society unless they come from an agency that can force them to be there called government. If Thomas Jefferson's 'fantasy' was absurd along with every fantasy that you say was 'absurd in every case', but was also brilliant, perhaps you need to also express that this allows for many subtle permutations of absurdity mixed with brilliance in everyones circumstance and that people in reality are not assumed to be in a societal 'role' at all. My truth is that arguments in American society are of no consequence other than disillusionment of Americans. That being said, I would rather protect that disillusionment than risk my life to change the life of a laborer in mexico. Some problems are simply ones you have to ignore. If your pet dog was being attacked by a grisley bear, you might decide to fight the bear at all costs with the pride of your talents, or you might decide that the risk is simply too much because this bear will kill you or is already in a position where you cannot save or comfort your dog. There are many small things that can change very important outcomes. To call yourself a medium well to do Bohemian, is the opposite of extracting this kind of detail, it is ambiguous and dubious. For anyone to be a socialist for these reasons has not even begun to approach the dynamics of what socialism has to offer, it is only a set of arguments forcing the precept that they are related to being a socialist.
1st off his thoughts are like a child's imagination not based on real life or real examples. It's easy to say you will create some kind of "fair" "equal" system but it doesn't matter if it is socialist, communist or democratic because people's own nature will get in the way every time. Someone will ultimately grab the power. That is why every socialist or communists system has presidents and they also have thousands of people who operate on the black market to get more things and better things. People by nature want more, are competitive, greedy and power hungry. So you would have to make the whole world like minded which is impossible. People are not robots. Even the communists who try to shove ideology down peolple's throats end up just killing tens of millions of innocent people. And what do they do with the weak and sick? They kill them off since they can't contribute to the "equal" share of work. It's all bullshit to control the masses. Even if we made some giant computer polling software that allowed the whole population to decide things using their app on their phone that would fail. Next he is not only talking micro but the whole globe following the same equal order. With hundreds of languages, millions of customs and traditions. It's fantasy that would only be brought about through violence and then what would be left. Best to live in reality. Capitalism with a lot of social welfare works the best. Capitalism is economic and Socialism is as a political viewpoint. That is what Medicare or Welfare are. We just need to improve our equality like every society that ever was and we need to improve our social welfare systems. Unfortunately that is much easier said than done with so many cooks in the kitchen..
Nah.. human nature isn't that confusing and ominous. People have the ability to prevent psychopaths, narcisissts and sociopaths from rising into power. They are the problem. People stop enabling them, there's a big part of the picture, right there.
Now let's do a video on the horrors of Socialism and talk about no Socialist society has ever worked. Let's talk about the starving socialists in South America. Or the billions killed by Socialist Regimes.
Nicolás Maduro is not a socialist. He is a dictator con man who took over his government and has been destroying it from the inside. That kind of thing has been happening a lot, lately.
@@TracyInsomiac I think the idea of socialism is nice. But it's implementation and reality are not. I love Wallace Shawn so much. He is such a sweet, gentle soul. I want to just give him the biggest hug. He's coming from a place of love and that's obvious. But the reality of socialism is not love.
Sounds like you're just repeating cold war propaganda. America has the highest COVID-19 infection rate in the whole world, rampant unemployment is leading to an eviction crisis and police brutality to the point that there are giant sustained protests in all of our major cities. Now at what point do you realize that capitalism is failing us?
When I was going past slums in India I was thinking this. "What separates me from these people?" My answer was, nothing but geographical location and the lottery of class.
Yep. Natural lottery. That’s all it is. Fortune and misfortune. Little more, little less. But as Shawn says, too many believe the opposite...
@@johnhill762 because of an international capitalist propaganda machine, and the spoils for the working class of the first world that go with imperialism
@@7kurisu
I wouldn’t easily disagree with a lot of that. Sounds reasonably true.
So the Socialist can create a better world by mastering Chaos? Oh, I get it. We need more regulation.
Oh please, and do you think that food is made in the supermarket? People had to carefully labor for things to be good, it wasn't luck, you are denying their blood and sweat that they spent, it's like you are a still child, were you actually 12 years old when you made this comment?
I don't ever comment on TH-cam, but I really feel the need to comment on this. Thank you, Wallace Shawn, and Haymarket Books, for releasing what has to be the best essay I have contemplated in a long time. This is thoughtful and poetic, and I truly hope is shared widely. I hope we make the future where our costumes and roles are discarded, where we share a deeper and true equality.
gay
Torgrim doing that classic thing where broflakes who're deeply insecure about their latent homosexuality project it onto other via lame insults. You can't keep hiding your secret forever, bud. Just come out and be your best self, unless that best self is a complete tool...
@@Booyaka9000 gayer
@@Booyaka9000 Latent homosexuality? Is that even a thing? That sounds completely made up lmao. Sorry bro, not everyones gay or wants the penis. Lot of us like the ladies lol, every part of them.
Gayest
Conceivable.
Bravo...
😏
1968: we’ll have flying cars in the future
2020: Bertram from Family Guy as a socialist
“In this world, / We walk on the roof of hell / Gazing at flowers.” ~ Kobayashi Issa
I was hesitant to view this, expecting a political rant from a typical Hollywood actor. I am so glad I watched and listened to this brilliant work written and presented by Wallace Shawn. I categorized the costume he would wear, just as he so aptly described in this essay. It is human nature to quickly categorize people based our our own teachings or experience. Individuals can only escape this classification by proving otherwise, in many cases over and over again. Wallace Shawn challenges us to open our eyes to the soul within the costume, being receptive to the characters they might have played given a different set of circumstances. Thank you, Wallace Shawn, for this insightful and intelligent message!
That is so neat that it played on you exactly as intended. As a socialist, I admit to myself I thought, “but of course Wallace Shawn is a socialist, he’s brilliant, like me!” And to myself I’m holding to hear him support my world view. But instead it is so much more resilient and telling about humanity as a whole. Beautiful.
Thanks for sharing this piece Wallace Sawn.
Thank you for your words!
Rex out here killing it
"if the baby who wears the costume of the hustler, in fact, had the capacity to become [their own greatest version of themself], *then the division of labor as we know it is inherently immoral...*"
Wow ! There is now way it could be said better I've been wondering about this same subject now I know but the way of putting it in characters is so amazing thank you
I'm something of a socialist myself
I dabble in the red arts myself also
You are great Wally!
Thank you for your essay, Mr. Shawn.
Nice going Wallace Shawn. Also don’t forget to say “thank you for watching this video and don’t forget to like comment subscribe and turn on post notifications.”
I owe the podcast Chapo Trap House a solid for introducing me to this wonderful man. Wallace Shawn is a brilliant actor with a heart of gold and it makes me happy knowing that there are some people out there like him. People who can truly see and feel the suffering of others and make a conscious decision to speak out against the baseline injustice of our world. I respect the hell out of anyone who's willing to openly declare that the systems we live under are evil - and should be seen as such. He challenges us to see all the bullshit and cruelty of our "normal" world. These things can be hard for us to see now, but will eventually be easily discernable by our grandchildren and so on. They won't mince words about it. The economic roles we're forced to carry out within the current global order are grossly unfair, arbitrary, and often downright evil. Just like how we see, with clarity, the evil of slavery. But only in retrospect. People like Wallace are trying to get us to think of the present day world without that absent-minded normalcy filter on, for once, if for no other reason than to convince us that this reality is NOT the only way things can be. Things can be better. It's hard but it's possible and we owe it to ourselves to at least make a try for it.
Thank you Wally! :)
Came here after watching a video of Shawn's 1999 performance of "The Fever", which just blew me away and is still rattling around my brain. Thank you, Wallace, for your incredibly powerful work.
The Grand Socialist.
I love it. ❤️😂
Did you guys know that he’s now a guest voice on Summer Camp Island? He voiced Morris Mole in “Molar Moles” and Barry in “When Harry Met Barry”.
WOW!!!!! He's exposed himself as one of today's greatest philosophers (i.e., lovers of wisdom).
What a brilliant artist
Beautiful
"I suddenly see what is happening..."
I only know you from ds9 so its so weird seeing you so calm.
Perfect. heartbreaking
Here from a tik tok rec about the free Palestine movement and this is incredible and awe inspiring. Bravo!
In school he had a close friendship with Jonathan Shell a talented writer who died an early death of a medical condition. But the "stage they played upon" was all made possible by his father William who few came to know as Managing Editor of The New Yorker magazine which had a huge social influence before television and social media.
He is the best book reader voice
I love Wallace ❤️
This was uploaded the day before Scoob! came out.
"ANYBODY WANT A PEANUT?"
sorry, I HAD to.
ENOUGH!
I think the most important part was the end when he said we have to start naked. We should elect the next president in the buff without fancy clothes or jewelry and shed our costumes
a New York intellectual can not call him or herself anything else and still get invited to the right parties .
i call myself a constitutional libertarian socialist... why can't we have the best of both worlds??
I’m not happy bob, Not. Happy.
Nice job rex!
"You could be either, or both."
Quantum mechanics for a five year old.
That’s what’s up
As Beast Boy would say
If men were perfect, we wouldn’t need government. Hence, governments are comprised of the same fault ridden humanity. The least amount of government is best for all.
People being elected at random would be better than the way we select representatives nowadays.
based
Mr Huph is a socialist? When did this happen
Wise old man.
But.... he's the Ferengi Emperor!
❤️🙏🏻
Here after Young Sheldon
John Oliver sent me here.
I knew I wasn’t the only one.
"What about socialist slumber partiers?" A Goofy Movie reference? No? too obscure?
I'd love a socialist slumber party
Also yes I get the reference
The ability to use visual cues, yes, can become the innability to control the use of those visual cues in maintaining a standard of ethics. The greek word, Ethos , meaning character, comes to mind. However, the historical events that pass for the occurence of people losing control of their character can , and must become a matter of dialectical argument. For example, today, based on a skewed and oversimplified version of reality, I am seen as being priveleged to be white, not by any black people I know or work with every day, but only other white people. Baltimore, where I live and work, I see homeless white men and black men, I see no homeless women, it's usually only men and I don't wonder about why, but I only assume my own humility because I don't know because I have no one to ask and no one to trust in finding truth or synthesis in ideas based on statistical analyses of the public via the government and I only travel the same roads every day, but only to work. It doesn't mean that my life is static in driving on those roads or that I don't ever drive other roads. We all have familiar territory, Just like Andre says in my dinner with Andre. The necessity of exploration doesn't mean you can't be familiar with your own habits, or even your old habits.
A good dialectical method has a thesis, antithesis and synthesis. That is a good thing to be remembered in general. I am not inherently privileged to be white, am I? Isn't being called white privileged eaqually an example of losing control of character? You ask, are we more brilliant than Thomas Jefferson? Was Thomas Jefferson brilliant? Could it be that people who are seen as brilliant are really only lucky to be brilliant? Are those people who are brilliant privileged to be brilliant and therefore owe everyone else some sort of courtesy for the sake of some made up equity that we would otherwise not even think about? It doesn't seem to me that I am guilty of ignoring some terrible fact of life about my heritage of being white.
If we have characters in us that we can play, are the only righteous choices for those characters simply to be in different forms of socialism or capitalism? And is that not as criminally oversimplifying as saying that people from Africa are slaves? The problem with insisting on these ideals is that they ignore the way people were promised to be taken care of under each system. Is the hand of capitalism really invisible? It seems to me that it was established in the form of many promises made by Thomas Jefferson and others concerning the United states Federal reserve. I refer you to the Author Eustace Mullins, who imagined his life as a fanciful writer, but ended up being a writer of something else much more serious.
The idea that the people in the play of reality are ultimately seen as either too inferior to be thought about or too happy in their lives to notice those who are suffering is a trap to be caught in as an oversimple and exaggerated version of reality. Perhaps, the role they play has more to do with how institutions shape people and of course how writers have an opportunity to write their escape from this, so called, prison. It simply isn't true that people don't find the time to help eachother out of these prisons, but it is seemingly impossible to know about the real fighters against the institutions that put them there and instead we send ourselves on a guilt trip that we know we'll easily fall into because of our lack of information. People can and DO play many many roles in their life time and this is being blatantly ignored in this dialogue. It seems to me, there are no truly pernicious ideals plagueing society unless they come from an agency that can force them to be there called government.
If Thomas Jefferson's 'fantasy' was absurd along with every fantasy that you say was 'absurd in every case', but was also brilliant, perhaps you need to also express that this allows for many subtle permutations of absurdity mixed with brilliance in everyones circumstance and that people in reality are not assumed to be in a societal 'role' at all. My truth is that arguments in American society are of no consequence other than disillusionment of Americans. That being said, I would rather protect that disillusionment than risk my life to change the life of a laborer in mexico. Some problems are simply ones you have to ignore. If your pet dog was being attacked by a grisley bear, you might decide to fight the bear at all costs with the pride of your talents, or you might decide that the risk is simply too much because this bear will kill you or is already in a position where you cannot save or comfort your dog. There are many small things that can change very important outcomes. To call yourself a medium well to do Bohemian, is the opposite of extracting this kind of detail, it is ambiguous and dubious. For anyone to be a socialist for these reasons has not even begun to approach the dynamics of what socialism has to offer, it is only a set of arguments forcing the precept that they are related to being a socialist.
Huh? - homeless white woman
Brilliant.
Wex
A millionaire socialist....shuuuut uuuup!!!!
Oh, look, another moron who doesn't know what socialism is.
@@Ahov Oh, look, another moron who doesn't know what capitalism is.
🙏♥️🙏♥️🙏♥️🙏 I love you on Noahs Ark 🎬
In conthezable!
Humankind* not species
There is a real sincerity to Wallace Shawn's political activism whereas Susan Sarandon comes across as a pious narcissistic phony.
LOL 4:29
I'm not happy Bob. Not happy.
This is very conceivable.
INCONCEIVEABLE!!
Wallace, I used to be a socialist but in these times we are living in I'm thinking about going full on communist.🥴
1st off his thoughts are like a child's imagination not based on real life or real examples. It's easy to say you will create some kind of "fair" "equal" system but it doesn't matter if it is socialist, communist or democratic because people's own nature will get in the way every time. Someone will ultimately grab the power. That is why every socialist or communists system has presidents and they also have thousands of people who operate on the black market to get more things and better things. People by nature want more, are competitive, greedy and power hungry. So you would have to make the whole world like minded which is impossible. People are not robots. Even the communists who try to shove ideology down peolple's throats end up just killing tens of millions of innocent people. And what do they do with the weak and sick? They kill them off since they can't contribute to the "equal" share of work. It's all bullshit to control the masses. Even if we made some giant computer polling software that allowed the whole population to decide things using their app on their phone that would fail. Next he is not only talking micro but the whole globe following the same equal order. With hundreds of languages, millions of customs and traditions. It's fantasy that would only be brought about through violence and then what would be left. Best to live in reality. Capitalism with a lot of social welfare works the best. Capitalism is economic and Socialism is as a political viewpoint. That is what Medicare or Welfare are. We just need to improve our equality like every society that ever was and we need to improve our social welfare systems. Unfortunately that is much easier said than done with so many cooks in the kitchen..
Maybe you could actually pay attention to the fucking idea instead of believing bullshit propaganda by Capitalists
@Kevin Willems Are You mad?
@@edwinve4112 you know what, yes
@@edwinve4112 shitheels spewing capitalist propaganda makes me mad.
Nah.. human nature isn't that confusing and ominous. People have the ability to prevent psychopaths, narcisissts and sociopaths from rising into power. They are the problem. People stop enabling them, there's a big part of the picture, right there.
Arrogant actor feels bad for “regular people”
This mfr is worth 8 million dollars. I don't see him spreading that around any.
So?
so...hypocrisy@@DaHogWeed
Hayes a socialist but plays a capitalist
Capitalism is better
@@Kode154 false
@@Kode154 if you dont care about third world exploitation and ecological collapse among other things sure
@@caramel7050 national socialists and stalinists are the true tyrants.
@@caramel7050 chances are he doesn't seeing as he's flying the Union Jack
Now let's do a video on the horrors of Socialism and talk about no Socialist society has ever worked. Let's talk about the starving socialists in South America. Or the billions killed by Socialist Regimes.
Nicolás Maduro is not a socialist. He is a dictator con man who took over his government and has been destroying it from the inside. That kind of thing has been happening a lot, lately.
you should watch this video. It says a lot.
@@TracyInsomiac I think the idea of socialism is nice. But it's implementation and reality are not. I love Wallace Shawn so much. He is such a sweet, gentle soul. I want to just give him the biggest hug. He's coming from a place of love and that's obvious. But the reality of socialism is not love.
@@virtualgrace251 The best parts of America are socialist. I think that you are mistaking authoritarian systems for socialism.
Sounds like you're just repeating cold war propaganda.
America has the highest COVID-19 infection rate in the whole world, rampant unemployment is leading to an eviction crisis and police brutality to the point that there are giant sustained protests in all of our major cities.
Now at what point do you realize that capitalism is failing us?
gross
ratio + socialist + galunga rip Bozo
Beautiful