Michael Shellenberger
speaker
1,228 appearances
6 recordings
4 series
first heard Oct 2024
last heard 18 Feb
Michael Shellenberger’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Feb 2026 with 1.
Appearances
I mean, first of all, there was never any evidence that the fire departments were like systematically or structurally excluding qualified people. I mean, it's not to say that never happened. There wasn't some racism. I mean, of course there is. But it's like. They got into a situation where people are getting promoted who were not as qualified as other people on basis of race.
I mean, that is anathema to the American system. And by the way, the people of California have now twice rejected racial preferences. One of them in 1996, I believe, and then the other, again, in 20—was it 2018, I believe?
Well, yeah, and they haven't. No, they haven't. I mean, the spirit of California, I mean, there's a true spirit of California that I do think is very American, which is really egalitarianism. I mean, the American creed, If you believe Daniel Bell's analysis of it, you know, it's liberty, it's laissez-faire, it's individualism, and it's egalitarianism. That's the state I grew up in.
It was the most American of all states. That's right. It's not equity. It's equality of opportunity.
That seemed like a great system to me. It's great. I mean, that's what I love. I mean, it's the part I love about California. It's like, I lived on the East Coast for like a year. It was a traumatic experience. You'd go to parties and someone would be like, oh, what school did you go to? Oh, totally. Totally. And then they'd be kind of looking over your shoulder and you're like, well, what?
Like, who cares what school I went to? Like, you know, who am I? Exactly. Where are my passions? Exactly. So that was like I was like, wow, that is like that is weird. You know, in California, it's like, what's your jam, dude? You know, it's like really like, what are you into? You know, it's that's like the best of it. Who are you as a person? Yeah. Who are you as a person? It's the human.
You know, it's like obviously there you can get culty and whatever. But I mean, it is the best of that human potential.
Right. Your decency. Which is actually radical individual responsibility.
Yeah. I mean, that was always, for me, it was like, you know, Viktor Frankl, who wrote Man's Search for Meaning, was this incredibly Holocaust survivor. The whole thing was like, you know, being in a death camp shouldn't control how I think about the world. I mean, that's about as radical of an individual mentality as... point of view.
And now, of course, that's viewed as very right-wing and very unsympathetic and whatever. But Viktor Frankl was just loved by the existentialist California left in the 60s. I mean, he would sell out these huge auditorium in Berkeley and they would, you know, they'd go to Esalen. And so, I mean, you go from that to basically nobody taking responsibility. I mean, it's incredible.
Is it not? That's so well-spoken. No, no, it's totally brilliantly well-spoken. Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, it's like we, in our next book, we're working on this idea of these singularities, meaning like these just awful events in the past, the Holocaust, slavery, indigenous genocide. Yes. And they become like gods for secular people. They become like super present.
Like, you know, there's – it's just everything that we do is affected by slavery and, you know, everything. This is indigenous land. I mean, I was going through the – I was just going through all of like the various documents over the years of like water and fire and disaster in Los Angeles. And they like all open with land acknowledgments. You know, you're just like, well, yeah, but –
Literally, you think that white people don't belong here. That is literally what you're saying in those land acknowledgments. You're saying, we don't belong here. And you may have seen, there's a clip that went viral on social media with the deputy fire chief of Los Angeles.
Where she's sort of saying, oh, yeah, people will ask me, you know, can you carry my husband out of a house, you know, in danger? And she's like, well, you know, your husband got himself in a place that he shouldn't have been. That was her response. It was like.
It's crazy. Crazy. You're like, yeah, that's literally your job is to be able to carry someone. Can you imagine, like, someone being like, oh, yeah, your father, your elderly father, you know, we couldn't carry him out of the house. And he shouldn't have been in that house when it was burned down.
Well, she shouldn't have been wearing a skirt. Right. Yeah. I mean, like, what? Yeah. That's like the left campaign. Like when I was in college, like that was the whole don't blame the victim. That was the whole thing. Of course, they're all. Which I would kind of agree with, by the way.
I know. She should have been fired as soon as that came out. I mean, and Gavin Newsom should have called for her to be fired. The mayor should have called for her to be fired. She's still in that job. I mean... That's dangerous. It's a violation of firefighter ethics. That person is a danger.
In other words, she's going around suggesting to all of her people that work for her that they're not responsible for saving. But I think it reflects the mentality, which is a nihilistic mentality, which is that we don't belong here. We stole this land. And this is this let Malibu burn. I mean, it is...
definition definitionally nihilism i mean it's anti-civilization nihilism you know there's sort of two forms of nihilism one of them is basically anti-civilization anti-human anti you know modern life and it stems from this earlier nihilism which is that life has no meaning we're just like animals in the famous russian novel fathers and sons by turd you know the the nihilistic character
dissects a frog and says, we're just like this frog. You know, we're just matter. You know, we're just dead matter, just this assembly. So it's a very dark, nihilistic story that then leads to this just, yeah, nihilistic anti-civilization ideology, which became very fashionable.
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