Episode 38 - Kanye’s Desalination Tweet
Date: 2018-06-18 | Duration: 9:52
Topics
Kanye takes things up a level and demonstrates the high ground maneuver Imagine if the world focused on tech that makes a difference
Transcript
[0:09] Bum-bum-bum-bum-bum. Hey everybody, gather round. Come on in here, take a seat. I’ve got a little space back there. Oh no, this seat is taken. So there’s a new tweet by Kanye that got me thinking about a topic I liked so much. Apparently he’s with Candace Owens, which is interesting enough, and they’re visiting some kind of science exhibit—SCI-Arc, whatever it is. Yes, but the interesting part is that Kanye tweeted that he was excited about some kind of desalination technology. Now, first of all, everything that I just said shouldn’t be happening. There’s nothing about anything I just told you that should be happening right now, including me talking about it. It’s just a strange and wonderful time.
[1:12] It reminds me that I’d been saying that one of the things I wished President Trump were doing—that maybe Kanye would be a better fit for—is simply putting a government, or not even a government, a public focus on key technologies that are world-changing. Desalination is maybe the most fundamental world-changing thing there. It could be—I know we’ve got some maybe some fusion energy stuff that’s exciting, there might be some medical things. Suppose President Kanye—let’s just use him for a thought experiment—suppose you’re in the future now, and President Kanye says, “I’ve looked around, and the most important technologies for not just us but the world…”
[2:12] “…are these things, and we really ought to get to it.” It could be indoor gardening. It could be new kinds of fertilizer—that’s a pretty big deal. It could be like The Boring Company, Elon Musk’s company that tunnels very efficiently. It could be 5G. It could be some kind of cancer treatment. You can think of another twenty yourself, but imagine if we, the public, could be informed accurately by our leader—let’s say President Kanye—where to invest. And let’s say there was a mechanism where an individual could make an individual investment and it would be, let’s say, diversified, so that even the small investor didn’t have as much risk as they might have had. So just imagine how much the world could change and how quickly if there was a focus.
[3:18] If we had a focus on the technologies that made a difference. So that’s what was interesting. On a totally different subject: what’s happening in the Middle East? It looks like… doesn’t it feel like something’s about to happen in the Middle East? Specifically the Palestinians and the Israelis and Saudi Arabia and maybe Iran is on to something. It feels like the will to fight might be less than the will to get rich and be happy. So it could be that people who had psychological blocks before have fewer of them now. I don’t know that John Bolton has made a…
[4:19] …difference yet. He hasn’t been there long, but Bolton might be a good finisher. He might be good to have on the team if you want to make sure the other side knows you mean business. What did he tweet? So Kanye tweeted that he’d seen some desalination technology, but he couldn’t talk about it. So Kanye is using the high ground maneuver on the world. Yes, and thank you for saying that because that was a topic I actually wanted to cover. Before, I’ve told you about the high ground maneuver. The high ground maneuver is when people are arguing in the weeds. So here’s an example: people would say to Kanye, “Hey, why are you supporting President Trump and saying good things about him? You should not do that.”
[5:20] Now, that discussion is what I would call “in the weeds” because you’d really be talking about the details of why you did or did not like President Trump, or what he did or did not do to earn your condemnation. Kanye, instead of dealing on that level—we’ve never even heard him talk about policies or anything else—just took it up a level and made it about his right to have an opinion that was not with the crowd, or done specifically to love the human being Donald Trump without necessarily embracing every part of him. So he took it up a level, and instead of saying Donald Trump is good or bad, he took it to the high ground and he said, “I have a right. I’m just gonna do this.” So that was impressive. And then when you saw John Legend and Kanye get into it again…
[6:23] …it could have easily once again become a discussion about the specific objections to Donald Trump. And what did Kanye do? He did not discuss these specific policies or problems or complaints about Donald Trump. He brought it up to the topic of love. So he just took it up a level. Now, when you watch how often he does that—those of you who read my book Win Bigly, you know that I talked about that specifically as possibly the strongest form of persuasion. It’s the other strongest form of persuasion. Fear is pretty strong, but he’s trying to do everything that’s the “not fear” side. So if you’re not going to use fear—and you shouldn’t, if you could avoid it, don’t use it—you want to tell people where they should be.
[7:25] “Should” is the wrong word. You want to create an aspirational picture for people so that they rise to your expectations. So what Kanye has done—I hate to say “like Jesus,” but we’re talking specifically in the realm of persuasion. I’m not saying Kanye’s Jesus, so don’t take this out of context. But just specifically in this technique: part of the power of the historical Jesus was he would tell you how to be a better person, and people like to elevate themselves to that better person. Kanye’s suggesting that we be free thinkers and that we’re loving people even when we disagree with them. That is a Jesus-like thought. Not saying he’s Jesus—don’t get me wrong. He’s not as awesome as Jesus. I’m not saying that. I’m just saying that the technique…
[8:27] …if you’re going to sample somebody’s technique, well, who are you going to sample? Wouldn’t you sample the best technique that has ever been known? Outside of fear—fear is always going to be pretty strong. It’s tough to beat fear if it’s strong enough. But if you don’t count fear and you’re saying, “Who are the great persuaders?” you’re thinking your Martin Luther Kings, your Abraham Lincolns, your Jesus, right? And they all use the same technique, which is to try to elevate you to a higher ground and say, “Hey, there’s nothing stopping you. Come up to this higher ground.” So Kanye is doing that now. That doesn’t make him Jesus, doesn’t make him Abe Lincoln, doesn’t make him Martin Luther King. But if you’re gonna steal technique, why would you use bad technique?
[9:28] You would take the very best technique as it has been clearly demonstrated to be effective from people who’ve used it before to great effect. You probably didn’t hear that today. Anyway, I’m gonna keep this short, and I’ll talk to you later.