Modern WisdomSkills For The 21st Century | Alexander Cortes
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
135 min read · 26,605 words- 0:00 – 2:54
Sovereign University: becoming “untouchable” in a volatile digital economy
- CWChris Williamson
(wind blowing) Alex, how are you today? Welcome to Modern Wisdom.
- ACAlexander Cortes
I'm very good. How about yourself, my man?
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, I'm fantastic, thanks. It looks an awful lot nicer wherever you are. I can see there's a reflection-
- ACAlexander Cortes
Oh. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... of some, some good, some good sunlight outside, which we haven't seen in the UK for a long time.
- ACAlexander Cortes
I mean, well, I, I live right on the beach in Venice, so I'm in a pretty opportune spot for weather.
- CWChris Williamson
Oh, man. That is, uh, jealousy inducing, to say the least.
- ACAlexander Cortes
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
So we haven't got an agenda to today. We're just gonna talk about whatever's, whatever's on our minds. So what have you been-
- ACAlexander Cortes
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
... what have you been learning about or reading about or thinking about recently?
- ACAlexander Cortes
Uh, recently? So I, I, I got a few things I'm working on. Um, I don't, I don't have any real structure to my day at all. I mean, like I do, but I don't. I basically just write an email every day and then tweet a lot and then just talk about stuff. So it's sort of like this personal brand influencer strange position-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- ACAlexander Cortes
... uh, that you can't really qualify what you do, yet people pay attention to you all the time.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- ACAlexander Cortes
But, uh, I mean, the bi- the big project I'm actually working on right now that's been constructive is I developed, um, an online website learning portal with a business partner of mine called Sovereign University to teach people how to become sovereign individuals, uh, within, like, the modern sort of digital virtual economy, physical world as they've merged with each other. You know, my- myself, I've been working online for myself about going on three years. And before that, I'd worked with other people. And I've also been a personal trainer for 10 years, training people in person. Um, but I always found myself attracted to surface political conflict. I, I like, I like knowing what's going on, you know, on the sense of like, on a meta- on a meta level, not just on the level of petty politics. But it wa- it's been fascinating to me the last six, seven years to watch the dialogue and discourse devolve into this politicized rhetoric where everything's political and everything you say can and will be used against you. And you see people lose their jobs for what they said. You see people, you know, g- go under fire for every kind of comment. Everything is taken out of context, put into a different context. Yeah, and I realized for someone like myself where I... because I've gone through that... because I've gone through that myself and I know what the consequences are, uh, three years ago, I wanted to be in a position where I never had to worry about backlash of any kind. I didn't want to have to worry about an online mob. I did not want to have to worry about being doxed. Uh, I wanted to be immune to all of that. And I realized if you work for yourself, if you're a sovereign individual in the sense that you are self-made, self-paid, self-employed, you own your own businesses, and especially in a digital world where things really can't be taken from you that way, um, and then you have physical basis, you're very untouchable in a certain sensibility. So Sovereign University is sort of built around that concept. But then, and it's also teaching people the fundamental skills they need and the mindsets to learn how to do this stuff and create high value skills and create leverage. So it's an ambitious project.
- 2:54 – 4:27
Work dissatisfaction and the end of the stable career path
- CWChris Williamson
That's cool. Uh, you're liberating people from the, the monotony of a, a, a world where they might not be that happy at work. I was recently reading a, a study that said over 80% of Americans are either indifferent or actively unhappy with their jobs.
- ACAlexander Cortes
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
And there's only, I think, between 18 and 20% who are, uh, actively engaged with their, with their work.
- ACAlexander Cortes
Yeah. I mean, so- society isn't happy as a whole. I mean, I would say Western society as an... like, a- as a whole is in a big cultural malaise that way, uh, where everyone senses it that something has gone wrong or things are not going well, you know, whatever well means.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- ACAlexander Cortes
But, you know, we, we all feel it. Like, we all feel it. We all see it, you know, within, like, the media itself where every- everything's an outrage every day. But, you know, at the same time, the world is a good place and there's abundant opportunity if you know how to use it, capitalize on it, identify it.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- ACAlexander Cortes
Uh, but, you know, I mean, the job unhappiness, like, the nature of work has changed over the course of 50, 60 years. You know, a, a job used to be something, uh, that you were. Now a job is just something that you do and oftentimes temporarily. There's a whole gig economy now where, you know, how many careers are there anymore where it's a reliable path and you just do the same thing for four years? Th- th- that's almost nonexistent at this point. Um, I, I don't know if that exists at all, honestly. Every- everything has changed. So you have to be, you know, hyper adaptive that way. And for most people, what they want, a set vision of the future and this is how things are gonna go, you don't have that anymore. You know, that... again, that does not exist. Uh, so you have to be perceptive, you have to be self-aware.
- 4:27 – 6:56
The essential 21st-century advantage: thinking, rhetoric, and communication
- CWChris Williamson
What do you think are the important skills then if we're moving into this very changeable time, which I completely agree that we are, and the, the old bastions of a job for life, uh, just don't seem to be there? What, what would be the skills if someone was thinking, uh, if you were able to design a human now that was-
- ACAlexander Cortes
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... gonna start at 18 years old or 21 years old, what would you... what skills would you give them and, and what values would you give them?
- ACAlexander Cortes
S- skill wise, I would almost approach it from a, like, a classical, classical liberal arts education, um, where... and the, the big skill that's been lost in the modern era is people's ability to think. You know, that, that's been the biggest one. People's ability to think, people's ability to express themselves. Um, you know, but how is that a skill? It's, it's a soft skill. But soft skills have hard consequences and hard capitalization within the modern economy. So if a... you know, if I had an 18-year-old and I want to make them as capable as possible in the job market, or a teenager, let's say, 12, I... three things, rhetoric, logic, ability to argue, ability to speak, ability to write. If you can communicate very effectively in any environment that you're in, you're always going to be near the top. I, I've seen that so many times in so many different fields that I've worked with and consulted in where the people that can talk best are the ones that get ahead. It is. Be... wha- what, what does talking do for you? What does communication do for you? It means you pay attention to people and you can assess what their needs are. And if you're creating a product or even if you're writing code or whether you're even writing an article or, or if you're just doing customer service and you're receptive to people-... that is, you know, it's, uh, I mean, I'm being very cliché but that has been lost by a lot of people because digitization has removed human communication. You know, we're so used to talking through text now or, or showing an image but then you get people face-to-face and you see how awkward they are.
- CWChris Williamson
They crumble, yeah.
- ACAlexander Cortes
Yeah, so, so those people that can speak on camera, those people that can talk at length, those people where they can... and those people where they can have a conversation with someone and they know how to listen.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- ACAlexander Cortes
Just doing those three things, you can identify so many opportunities, uh, you know, within the digital economy and even, even the real world economy. You know, social media now has become such a big market for businesses and e- even online as well, the same thing, is basic stuff like copywriting, uh, web- web copy, article writing. You know, that- that's essentially what search engine optimization is on a meta level. So yeah, tho- those, those three, being, being able to speak, write, argue, uh, let's say, say for persuade, that's who I would start with, you know, with a young person.
- 6:56 – 9:51
Practical leverage skills + the return of apprenticeship over college
- ACAlexander Cortes
And then from there, it'd be more sort of like tangible, you could say, skillsets like knowing how to build a website, knowing how to take good photos, knowing just basic, uh, you know, business arithmetic and math. Uh, the way, the way modern education is set up where you go to college and you learn all this information, and then you go to, let's say, some kind of job and then you have to relearn everything again, that's, that's completely backwards. You know, I s- I said this the other day on Twitter where, you know, I think in the next probably year to 10 years to 20 years what you'll see is sort of this return of apprenticeship where people get out of high school, they go work hustle jobs or they go work paid internships and they develop these necessary skills, and then maybe they go back to school for a specific education to augment that.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. Yeah.
- ACAlexander Cortes
That- that's how I would set it up. And then, you know, if I had, you know, a kid now, that's what I'd be telling them to do. I wouldn't be... I would not be telling them, "Go to college. Y- y- you'll, you'll find yourself at college." No, no you won't. You're gonna be made to take two years of worthless GE classes, you're gonna be in a room with 100 people, you're probably gonna be taught by a TA, uh, you, you'll switch majors four times. Yet, and there's not enough time to get into the quality of education which has precipitously declined. So yeah, I, that's kind of this sh- like a shitshow at this point.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) I have to say, so I did five years at Newcastle University here in the UK, uh, finished with a Master's in International Marketing, and I became incredibly disenfranchised and disenchanted with academia as I moved through that. And me and my business partner sat next to each other in our first ever seminar and pretty much from that day we started working together. And now, almost 13 years later, I've still not got rid of him.
- ACAlexander Cortes
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
And he, (laughs) we, um ... I was being shown a world of business in academics which was saying one thing, and then I was experiencing one in the real world which essentially bore very little resemblance. And I think the time that I was doing it as well was very crucial because this was 2006 to 2010 and that was... So I did a business management course, then international marketing master's, and there was not a single course on social media for the entire time that I was there.
- ACAlexander Cortes
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
And that's like... 2006 was when you still needed a university address to be able to sign up to Facebook.
- ACAlexander Cortes
Yeah. Yeah, um-
- CWChris Williamson
Do you remember that? You had to have like a, like a, um, the correct suffix to your @.
- ACAlexander Cortes
E-D-U, I think it was.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, yeah. Oh, for the UK .ac, .au, yeah, exactly. So, um, yeah, we had that and then you think like imagine, like, you're doing a marketing course now and no one anywhere mentions social media, you'd want your money back, um, because it's just that a massive selling .......................... So I, I- I think that you're right, I think that these soft skills, they're the ones that are difficult to, to acquire but they're definitely the ones that are scalable, right? And it doesn't matter what happens to the market, if you can sell and you can communicate.... Um, so I did a, I did a, a podcast the other day with a guy called
- 9:51 – 11:44
Attention as a skill: why people can’t focus (and what focus really is)
- CWChris Williamson
Leon Scott from the UK and afterwards he commented on the fact that it was the first time that he's had a one-hour conversation with someone where he was completely focused on just what was being said-
- ACAlexander Cortes
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... the, the content that we were going through. No one... obviously no one has their phone out, no one's, you know, even looking-
- ACAlexander Cortes
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... looking at anything else other than to gesture or to remember. And I think that, like, having someone to practice conversing with, it sounds so bizarre that you need that, but like-
- ACAlexander Cortes
No, people do need it. People do need it. Um, I mean, I- I agree. Like that's... if it's the quality of f- like the quality of focus, uh, I- I get asked that question constantly all the time. Like, you know, "How do I focus better? How do I study better?" And I was a natural... Well, one, I never really studied much at all. I was always just... I, I have a very good memory. I was not, I was not the person that was like a good studier where I was studious that way. I was not... I was a terrible student all through high school, adolescence, college. I did the bare minimum to get by because I didn't... I never saw the point in doing something, um, just for the sake of doing it that way, which seemed to me to be the reason for education. But that quality of focus, now I get asked that question a lot by young guys, young gentlemen in late teens, early 20s, yeah, even, even lady followers and it's always the same thing. Like, "How do I focus better?" And I always tell them, "Focus is just doing one thing at a time." Like that- that- that's it. It doesn't have... there's not a complicated definition. You're doing one thing and one thing only. You're having a conversation, you're making eye contact with somebody, even if it's through a screen and you're just ... you're talking. You're not looking at this, looking at that, clicking this, clicking that while trying to carry on. Like, it's one thing, you know, what about that's so difficult? You know, but we live in this, we live in this culture now where people pride themselves so much on multitasking, the ability to switch through apps and switch through devices and their attention is constantly going to the next thing and the next thing and the next thing and the next thing. And I- yeah, I realize it trains your thinking to not be able to think.
- 11:44 – 17:59
Rebuilding deep work: routines, environment design, and reading again
- CWChris Williamson
It's very fractured and, you know, as a... not to deliver a sob story but I am on the receiving end. I'm like... I feel that I am patient zero for someone who's been able to see this. So I was a later adopter of an iPhone. I was still holding onto the hope that BlackBerry was going to be good until maybe five years ago, something like that, which is a shame because, you know, I miss the buttons. I genuinely, genuinely do.
- ACAlexander Cortes
I do mean...
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) Yeah, and BB pin, having to change your BB pin every time you get a new handset. So-What I've noticed is that, um... Uh, I was a voracious reader when I was younger. I did a number of degrees, again, without a smart device that was as attention grabbing as an iPhone is now, or a similar device.
- ACAlexander Cortes
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
And my capacity for, um, low stimulus activities, i.e. things like reading, like deep reading-
- ACAlexander Cortes
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... has had and is still so heavily damaged that it is, um... Uh, uh, it's not even comparable. The way that I'm able to focus my attention doesn't even feel the same now, and I've had to construct this hilarious, um, series of, uh, instantiation initiatives, as James Clear from-
- ACAlexander Cortes
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... Atomic Habits would. Uh, implementation initiatives, as James Clear would call it, um, where... So, no phone in the bedroom. Phone is in- i- is outside because I can't have it in here because if I'm working, then it's that. If I'm at work, there's a special drawer where the phone lives that goes in my desk. Like, I've got a-
- ACAlexander Cortes
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
My morning routine has very specific, like, order of things that I go through because I'm, like, having to create, uh, the equivalent of, like, a toddler's environment where, you know, you've got the little foam cups that go on the sharp edges of all of the, the sets-
- ACAlexander Cortes
Uh-huh. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... of drawers and the desks and stuff. I've had to create (laughs) ... I've had to create myself an attention equivalent of that because I essentially am a child who can't be trusted with technology anymore. And for me to, uh, relearn this deep work, the sort of Cal Newport approach to it, this single focus-
- ACAlexander Cortes
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... onto one particular topic at one time, I'm having to essentially place myself in a hermetically sealed environment, um, where there's no danger of, of distraction, uh, so I can, uh... You know, for the guys that are listening who maybe do struggle with their focus, I can completely empathize-
- ACAlexander Cortes
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... with what they're going through and sympathize with it.
- ACAlexander Cortes
Yeah, yeah, it's, it's funny because recently in the past, I guess past two years I realized I, I did the least amount of reading I'd ever done, which, you know, on one level I got the most done I'd ever gotten, done, so, you know, it wasn't as if that, you know, I was at a loss. But at the end of l- at the end of last year, I realized, you know what? I probably read about three books last year, like, in completion. Um, like, that was it. Th- that was it, and I wanted to get back to reading, so that was my... That was a New Year's resolution this year. I told myself, "I'm gonna read a book a week," like I u- like I used to. Um, and it's been, it's interesting because now, like, I... So, I've, I've started reading again. I've got a whole bunch of books on my bed, like right here. (laughs) Like, I read this... Here, let's grab it. Yeah, I read this book last week, Empire of the Sun and Moon. It's about Comanche tribe and the history of the United States, a great, fascinating, like, phenomenal book. I read it and was like, "This is an awesome, awesome book." Non-fiction. Um, yeah, you know, I have a few others. So I'm at, like, five for the year so far, so I'm on, I'm on track.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, man.
- ACAlexander Cortes
But the experience of reading again (paper rustling) where I was just... You know, I had days, like, I've had days where I just am in my room the entire day just reading the whole book-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- ACAlexander Cortes
... you know, for four, five, six hours, like, reading a whole book just, "Well, okay. Done. On to the next one."
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- ACAlexander Cortes
S- it's strange because it feels good and, like, the r- the process of reading it is actually very relaxing. There's an, there's a mental nourishment to it.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- ACAlexander Cortes
And when I do get back on the device now, or the computer, th- there's a harshness to it and there's sort of this, like, this, uh, farcical rapidity where you're just going through everything scrol- you're scrolling the feed over and over and over again, refresh, refresh, refresh, refresh, and you're trying to, you know, you're responding to everything at once. And it's not overwhelming in the sense like, "Oh, I'm so overwhelmed by it," but it feels fake.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- ACAlexander Cortes
Um, and there's this substantive... I realize there's this lack of thought to it. There's sort of, there's this lack of deep thought, deep focus to it where you're like-
- CWChris Williamson
100%.
- ACAlexander Cortes
... it's ta- uh, it just it's training you to think on such a superficial level. And you see that with how people communicate with each other, where all arguments now, all headlines, all, all articles, everything, it's all written in emotional sound bites. You know, there's, there's very little of facts, reason, context. It's just written to get your attention, fire up your emotions, um, get you pissed off or confirm your biases, and then you move on to the next thing, and you can do that 1,000 times a day.
- 17:59 – 19:40
Millennial burnout and “death by a thousand cuts” efficiency culture
- ACAlexander Cortes
Uh, uh, it's f- I... My, my girlfriend, I, I tell her this sometimes now since I'll be looking at my phone. I get... I just ha- I... Because the Twitter following I have and then, like, the email list and, you know, all, all social media accounts, it's just a constant, um, you know, torrent of notifications and-
- CWChris Williamson
Just a barrage.
- ACAlexander Cortes
... messages. Yeah, and I, I... You know, I'll look and be like, "Oh," like someone else wants a piece of my time. And I, I think-I read, I read an article recently, I think it might have been on BuzzFeed or maybe it was not, but it was about millennial burnout and i- the article was quite insightful and there, there were people, of course, commenting that this is, this is bullshit, this article, millennials are just weak. I'm like ... but there was something very real to it to the effect that millennials, um, the writer elucidated this very clearly, millennials deal with this environment of such overwhelming stimulation, like we just said, all the time and there's so many things grabbing our attention and every task takes another piece of it. Every task takes another piece of it and at the same time, we have the socioeconomic pressure of trying to just survive and people have the socioeconomic pressure of will they ever be able to get ahead? And then you have, you know, you have all these factors that you're dealing with that doing simple things like getting back to somebody on the phone or having to respond to an email or having to go send a package, you know, is, is it laziness or is it just that you cannot do another thing?
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- ACAlexander Cortes
You know, like we are so driven now towards this god of efficiency where everything has to be efficient and optimized and fast and speed, but then we do all that, but does it make our lives better in the sense that we actually get more done?
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- ACAlexander Cortes
Or are we actually just having to serve these death by 1,000 cuts or pinpricks (overlapping) -
- CWChris Williamson
Totally, tot- totally correct, yeah. Like is it-
- ACAlexander Cortes
And then you have to drop something off and you're like, "I don't feel like doing this at all."
- CWChris Williamson
"I can't, I can't, yeah, I can't go to the post office. It's too much today."
- ACAlexander Cortes
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
- 19:40 – 23:03
Personal brand boundaries: consistency without obsession, detachment from outcomes
- CWChris Williamson
It's like, um ... I keep on thinking while you're talking about that about RAM in a computer and it's that you still have the same total amount of RAM, but that the number of tasks that it's trying to do at one time is now, you know, 10X, 100X, 1,000X, and switching between those is just so exhausting. I, um, I wonder, I, I wanted to ask someone who works in an industry similar to yourself where personal brand is a big deal, at least for quite a while, how do you draw the line between when you're doing work and when you're being wasteful on social media? Because there's always that excuse, right, "Oh, well, if I just do, if I spend another X amount of time on Twitter, maybe I'll find something which I quote-tweet or retweet or reply to and that bangs and that adds another 100 subs onto the, this channel or the, that email list." Mm-hmm. How do you, how do you try and control that?
- ACAlexander Cortes
So this, this is gonna be like a sort of contrarian, sideways perspective. I, I, I don't control it, but I- I have a different model of how I see this. So, n- my, my background's the fitness industry. That, that's where I started. I've been in personal training for 10 years and I, when I got online, when I got on Facebook about 2007, um, I was in the sort of the Facebook fitness community for a long time until 2016. I, I deleted Facebook over a year ago, uh, well over a year ago, but what I saw happen for people as they try to develop their brand, like this idea of a personal brand now that has like become very preeminent where because we are in such a search for truth and authenticity and we no longer trust institutions at all. Like we don't, we don't trust news, we don't trust government, we don't trust authority figures, so we're looking for individuals that we can sort of have be our digital friends and we'll trust them because it's a one-to-one interaction. So I saw people doing this in the fitness industry, you know, years ago before personal branding even became a hot term and I realized that those people that had the healthiest relationship with their audience and had the healthiest relationship with these, uh, these tools, these platforms, they didn't obsess over the value they delivered on a daily basis. They didn't obsess over productivity. They tried to be consistent in what they presented to the best of their abilities and then those things that were not in alignment with the brand or in alignment with the domain that they were working in, they didn't worry about it because they had the perspective that, "You know what? I'm human. I am not just one thing. I am many things. So I'm just going to show essentially my personality as it is. You know, and whether you connect with it or not, that's upon you." So I, I, I've said this before many times, if you want to have a really good relationship with your audience and with your work, you have to be fully invested in it on the sense that you want to be consistent in value, but you have to be detached from it in regards to the outcome that it gives you.
- CWChris Williamson
It's a difficult position to be in, right?
- ACAlexander Cortes
It's very paradoxical. Like so, you know, it's one of those, it's almost like a, a, you know, sort of paradox that like if you really want, if you want to love people, then you also have to be able to hate them in equal measure.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- ACAlexander Cortes
You, you can't, you can't only be one. It has to be both. So that's, that's how I work it now. So on a daily basis, if I, as ideas come into my head and, you know, things synthesize, you know, I'll share them and then there'll be times where I'll just be in a humorous mood, you know, snappy mood and I'll just, I'll tweet whatever I feel like. Um, you know, and it's, it's worked for the ... and I re- realized, and the reason it's worked is when people see you and they realize you're not trying to be serious all the time, you're not trying to present yourself just one thing, you have flaws, you are a person, you're, you're not, you're not a bot, you're not, you're not boring.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- 23:03 – 26:06
People trust people: personality power, guru fatigue, and predatory marketing
- ACAlexander Cortes
If you're selling on personality that way, that's highly, highly, highly effective. Yeah, and, and on a certain meta level at the highest levels of any industry, the people that are most successful are the ones who have that kind of power personality.
- CWChris Williamson
You're totally right. Well, I mean, as a good example, Elon Musk, 40 million, I think it's about 20 million followers or 40 million followers. SpaceX, like four million and he deleted, he deleted Tesla's Facebook.
- ACAlexander Cortes
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Like, uh, Cristiano Ronaldo, 30 to 40 million, Real Madrid, 12 million. Like people connect with people, they don't connect with brands.
- ACAlexander Cortes
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
And you can do ... the mistakes that you make, like imagine if, um, imagine if Real Madrid started tweeting stuff with typos in and, or like, you know, a- accidentally putting up just random bits of content and stuff like that. Everyone would be like, "What are you doing? You're supposed to be this professional." But you can get away with that when you're a person. That's definitely a- an asymmetry in the delivery of ... in the ability to deliver a message between personal brand and corporate brand.
- ACAlexander Cortes
Oh, I, I, I use this, I used this, uh, example when I was training personal trainers where like the term personal trainer, what's the first word in it? It's-
- CWChris Williamson
Personal.
- ACAlexander Cortes
... personal. So you should be personable with the people you train and it's, uh, two humans having a conversation and you're trying to help them and they're teaching you something. The trainer part comes second.... you know, and I would say that because, you know, for a lot of trainers, where people get into these very prescriptive, dogmatic mindsets as to how they're supposed to interact and what they're supposed to say, and they want to fit people into boxes. I'm like, that- that's not what it is. There is no prescription, there is no ultimate philosophy, there is no magic solution. It's speaking to peoples, individuals. You know, you are a human being, they're a human being, it's personal first, and then you train them second. You know, so even personal branding. Are you a person who has a brand that has coalesced around you, or are you this sort of contrived brand and you're trying to be personable through that brand? You know, the- the former, people will take to. The latter, they'll think you're boring or just purely just full of shit.
- CWChris Williamson
Or a sociopath.
- ACAlexander Cortes
Yeah, or a sociopath. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- ACAlexander Cortes
You see that online all the time, where people ... They- they- people will turn on their- their guru or their, you know, whoever they idolized after a while because they realize it's just the same repetitive message and there's no real depth to it.
- CWChris Williamson
I-
- ACAlexander Cortes
They're just basically repeating this ad hoc, for the sake of selling something.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. I get that with Tai Lopez. Like, uh, you know, Tai Lopez for me now, I- I don't know what I've clicked on but that man has pixeled me hard and I am getting re-targeted like an bastard (laughs) on every form of social media that I log onto. It's like, it's like the Tai Lopez machine now. Like, when I go on. And a lot of, a lot of his stuff, like, Tai ... I- if I see another video of you telling me, uh, in front of a jet or in front of a Lamborghini or in- in your garage about how people need to start working online, I'm like, man. Like, it just- it- it has lost an awful lot of that authenticity, um, i- i- in my opinion. I- I totally get what you mean there.
- 26:06 – 34:04
Fyre Festival as a case study: sociopathy, influence, and predatory capitalism
- ACAlexander Cortes
Oh. Well, that- that- that's a good example too. I- I talked about this in an email last night, where I called it sort of, like, predatory capitalism. Um, which ... So I mean, I've, uh, I s- I say that, and I go, let me give you some context. So, so capitalism, you know, as a, as an idea, as a concept, obviously you- we can say it's done a great good for the world. You know, free markets, you know, the ability to, you know, the ability to earn. You know, like everyone having, you know, the e- equal opportunity at least to create earning power, to, you know, to have their work valued, ............................ and so forth. But, you know, uh, like- like any system, like any idea, there's always negatives to anything. And I was using the term last night predatory capitalism. I was referring to the Fyre Festival, which, you'll remember two years ago was this spectacular, massive failure, this sort of, like, peak apogee of, uh-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) .
- ACAlexander Cortes
... Millennial narcissism and the desire for beauty and envy and wanting to be known and wanting to be where the action is, and uh, living for, living for the 'Gram, living for Instagram. I was talking about the Fyre Festival and the guy that came up with it, Billy McFarland, and I said he ... this is a guy who's an example of sort of predatory capitalism and sociopathy where he created this great, cool idea for the festival. He wanted to deliver this experience, but his actual regards for the people that signed up, he didn't regard anybody as being valuable at all because he- he just doesn't. He doesn't because he is legitimately sociopathic. And, you know, even after the Fyre Festival ended and very, like, hardly anyone got refunded and everyone lost money, he was still using that email list he had from everyone that had bought tickets, and he was sending them fake offers for other tickets, uh, other, you know, fake offers for concert tickets, fake off- offers for, you know, going to be- uh, Beyonce and Jay-Z, and he's trying to get cash out of them. And like, and is that capitalism? Like, yes, it is. Like, he's trying to earn money and he has an email list. I'm like, it absolutely is. But is it exploitation of people? Like, 100% it's exploitative.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- ACAlexander Cortes
Uh, you see that now with- within the personal branding realm, and even on, like, the larger realm of, like, you know, this sort of big food, big pharma, the oi- opioid crisis in the United States where this motivation for profit at any cost, you know, and, you know, with complete disregard for the human cost. And then the argument, "Well, you know, it's making money. It's creating- it's creating jobs," or, like, you know, "Someone's profiting from that." Like, that's great. You know, but for someone like Tai Lopez, like I have nothing against Tai Lopez, obviously I ... it seems like he has helped people, but like what you just said. You realize, like, you know what? Like, as soon as I get marked within your, whatever your social media network web is, I'm just another target for you to hopefully eventually get some cash out of.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- ACAlexander Cortes
So I'm gonna keep getting ads over and over again, I'm gonna keep seeing your stuff over and over and over again. Like, does Tai Lopez really care? May- maybe he does, maybe he thinks that's a good thing, I don't know. But if it's-
- CWChris Williamson
But if he does, if he does, it's not coming across, which is the issue.
- ACAlexander Cortes
Look-
- CWChris Williamson
You know, like, if I can sense ... If someone's trying to sell me something and I get the sensation that they don't care, they either are being willfully neglectful of my feelings as a potential customer of theirs, or they're shit and naive about what their message is that's coming across. And I don't wanna be coached by either of those people. So, you know-
- ACAlexander Cortes
Mm.
- CWChris Williamson
... that ... But I mean, to go back to the Fyre Festival thing, man. I- I've watched that twice, the Netflix documentary. I know there was-
- ACAlexander Cortes
Oh, yeah?
- CWChris Williamson
... I know we said on Twitter I was gonna try and hack the Hulu version but I haven't been able to do that. Um-
- ACAlexander Cortes
Yeah. And I watched the new one too. I- I ... Yeah, yest- day before yesterday.
- CWChris Williamson
Is it s- is there any new information or is it just similar sort of stuff?
- ACAlexander Cortes
(laughs) It was really insightful. I- I did not expect to watch the documentary at all. I- I remember when I was on Twitter, you know, two years ago when the Fyre Festival went down on Twitter.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- ACAlexander Cortes
And ev- ... And I was ever- ... it was a pile-on and everyone was, like, making fun of it and all these stupid rich kids ............................ cheese sandwich.
- CWChris Williamson
That cheese s- that cheese sandwich photo.
- ACAlexander Cortes
Cheese sandwich, yeah. So, like, it was funny and I remembered it and I couldn't tell you why I actually watched the first documentary. I think I was just ... I- I- I know why. I was talking about it with my girlfriend and she had no idea what the Fyre Festival was. So she- she's very sort of out of the loop on, like, social media s- stuff, which is great.
- CWChris Williamson
She sounds perfect, yeah.
- ACAlexander Cortes
And ... Yeah, she'd never-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- ACAlexander Cortes
... she'd never heard of it. Like, "Oh, we should watch the documentary. Like, I'll ... you know, you can see what it is." Um, she- she works in the tech. She actually works in tech and she has a company. Um, but yeah, she's sort of like ... she manages to sort of stay out of the loop of the s- the- the daily whatever Twitter cycle.
- CWChris Williamson
She's got the balance right. We need to- we need to get her.
- ACAlexander Cortes
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
We need to get her to prescribe us the digital-
- ACAlexander Cortes
That's po-
- CWChris Williamson
... the digital, uh, reduction method.
- 34:04 – 53:29
Success seduction and moral luck: would we praise him if it worked?
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. I can relate on a slightly deeper level. I've got that, that degree of anxiety. But you're totally right, the Billy McFarland character I'm so conflicted about because there is, there's something so, um, seductive and, and romantic and, and admirable about someone who has this single-minded purpose and is able to, to follow something through like that. The difference is he wasn't doing it from a place of passion, he was doing it from a place where he wanted the status and he wanted the money and he wanted all the stuff that's associated with it. But because naturally, especially in this world, we're so drawn to success, like success is this, it is the zenith on the hill of, of what everybody wants in this world. And here's the thing that, uh, a friend said to me a few weeks ago and I can't get it out of my head, that Billy McFarland, his virtue and his integrity was basically nonexistent throughout the whole festival, the whole project. All he wanted to do was look cool on as grand of a scale as possible. And-
- ACAlexander Cortes
Mm-hmm. For sure.
- CWChris Williamson
... the only reason that anybody on the planet is slating him or that the vast majority of people are slating him is because it didn't work. Now, if all of the stars had aligned and that guy, his operations director or whatever had sucked the cock of the customs guy and got the water out and then... (laughs) And then, you know, somehow they'd managed to get some villas and maybe it hadn't been that weekend where, um, the, uh, population doubled for, like, basically yacht week and maybe the food had arrived and maybe the catering had worked and blah, blah, blah. Let's say that in a different set of random circumstances, another iteration of this particular festival, everything had come together correctly, but none of it had been due to preparation, it was just a more luck upon luck upon luck and somehow maybe they'd petered out like a six out of ten, seven out of ten festival. We would be hailing this guy as the new festival creator on the planet.
- ACAlexander Cortes
Uh, we would.
- CWChris Williamson
The, the difference, the only difference between iteration one in the real world and iteration two that we're talking about here is the fact that it didn't work. So we're so seduced by success at any costs that we forget... You'd be like, "Oh, yeah, but it doesn't matter about his virtues, man. Like, look, like, you know, he knew it was gonna be okay in the end." And you're like, "Right, but does the ends justify the means and do the means, are the means justifying the...... value, his values?
- ACAlexander Cortes
Th- th- that's a very good question. Like, I don't have a ... I, I don't have an answer. I, I'd, I'd have to think about that myself and s- ... The thing with the Hulu documentary, which, I mean, I would suggest watching it since ... The Hulu documentary, it goes more into the psychology of, like, himself. Like, uh, he's interviewed a lot more-
- CWChris Williamson
Ah, right.
- ACAlexander Cortes
...
- NANarrator
(laughs)
- ACAlexander Cortes
... of the festival ending and you s- ... And it go- goes more into his personal history, uh, and like sort of how he started as an entrepreneur where he was, like, in kindergarten and he charged a girl, like, $1 for, like, fixing her crown.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- ACAlexander Cortes
That, like ... That was his fir- ... That was his first entrepreneurial endeavor where he le- ... He taught himself how to code, like, on this 1999 computer and hacked his school network and sent out this message that, "I'll fix everybody's crowns for a dollar." I'm, I'm not, I'm not kidding.
- CWChris Williamson
Wow.
- ACAlexander Cortes
It's like he had the instinct, like, you know, at a very young age. He's obviously very ... Qu- quite brilliant that way. Um, you know, and then later on in, in college, it showed his sort of, like, entrepreneurial, you know, you know, projects, you know, which ... Some of which failed. Moving to New York, he wanted to, you know, create something important but his, his first project, Magnises, uh, which it also highlighted where he created this credit card company, which was actually fraudulent but-
- NANarrator
(laughs)
- ACAlexander Cortes
... he made it. But, yeah. It, it was interesting though because y- ... Like, y- ... Like you said, it shows, like I said, like, e- 'cause it's success at any cost and he still got ahead despite this for a very long time but, yeah. It ma- it ma- makes me question sort of this entrepreneurial mindset that so many people have, especially in Silicon Valley where ... Like, move fast and break things. Fail, fail, fail and, like, what are the human consequences of doing this? You know, like, in his first case, he was never really truly successful, I would say. Like, his first business, did he get venture capital? Yeah, he did. Did the people that bought the cards get what they were promised? No, they never did.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- ACAlexander Cortes
But he still managed to walk away with money. Okay. And, you know, when the Fyre Festival, like, the ... The whole documentary goes more ... Much more ... Much more into, like, the inception of it and, like, the nitty-gritty details. From the very beginning, it was this very doomed idea, um, like every step of the way where, like, there was ... It wasn't just a series of like, "Oh, this is kind of, like, a problem." It was, "This is a red flag. This can't get done. We're gonna have to either lie to people, rip them off, or do both and ... Well, it's okay. You know, because we need to be solution-oriented."
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- ACAlexander Cortes
You, you s- ... You see these entrepreneurial clichés all the time, "It's all about solutions," or like, "We ... You know, we gotta ... We gotta, we gotta solve the problem. We gotta solve the problem." You know, the ... You know, the, "W- ... Let's not talk about problems. Let's talk about solutions," and, like, it ... Like it ... And so he goes through this and then later on when he's being interviewed and, like, you know, compared ... Versus, like, his, you know, court transcripts and he's still compulsively lying and he doesn't have any sense that he even is. He's still compulsively lying and they're like, "Well, you said this but then you're saying this right now."
- CWChris Williamson
Oh.
- ACAlexander Cortes
Yeah, you can see sort of-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- ACAlexander Cortes
... that cog- ... So you can see the cognitive dissonance that people have that are legitimately sociopathic where they're, they're caught in a lie but they can't even acknowledge it. It's like, "Well-"
- CWChris Williamson
Which one's the truth?
- ACAlexander Cortes
Yeah. Like, they don't ... They don't even know.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- ACAlexander Cortes
Um, you know, but again, like what you said. Like, what if he had successfully done it? And I'm like, y- ... To have done that, it would've taken a more, you know, sort of like psychopathic person that had some sense of consciousness.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- ACAlexander Cortes
Uh, like, because he's ... I guess, this is the f- ... The m- ... The messed up thing because I was thinking about this. I'm like, "Man, I wonder if I could pull this idea off, like in L.A.?" Like, I was thinking about this because it was a great idea. It was.
- 53:29 – 1:00:15
From hustle worship to leveraged work: automation, AI, and choosing what to do
- ACAlexander Cortes
Well, I, uh ... th- this, again, this is one of those paradoxical things with human nature. Like, everyone loves success, but we also hate the people that are successful.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- ACAlexander Cortes
But the idea of just being a human engine of movement where, like, you never stop ever. Yeah, everyone on some level, like, aspires to that. If they had the mo- if they had the motivation to do that or if they could only be that way, you know, how much more would they get done? Uh, but I mean, we also live in a culture where we j- we worship work. Um, you know, that, I realize that's, that's so ingrained from, like, sort of the 1940s, '30s, like, sort of the Greatest Generation, where it's this cultural sentiment that sort of has taken over sort of the Western world and I, I, I tried to trace why it is and I think it started in the '30s, '40s during, like, the Great Depression during the stock market crash where you had, you know, the world economy had completely, you know, sort of this collapse on itself. Everyone was economically depressed, and the only way to survive, you know, this was over 80 years ago, tw- almost 90 years ago, was that you had to work. You had to work. Otherwise, you were getting nothing. So, like, that, I, I r- truly believe, like, if I had to pinpoint, like, where was the inception of hustle and grind culture, it was then. It wa- it was then and that wa- that, that fol- that had followed the automation revolution of the industrial era where now you can get so much work done through automation, you could leverage productivity. So you have this leveraging of productivity-... and then you have this crash, and then you have the instinctual and the, the, you know, the predication of desire where you have to work, otherwise you're not gonna survive, and that carries over into World War II and then, you know, post-World War II, during, like, the, at least the United States boom, and then, like, you know, how, how do you rebuild Europe? We're gonna have to work to rebuild the rubble literally.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. (laughs)
- ACAlexander Cortes
You have this generation of people where they, they're raised with that mindset, and they instill that, and then they actually do create a pro- era of prosperity, so 19, you know, '60s, '70s, '80s, '90s, you know, overall, relatively speaking, where if you worked and you could get a job and you just, you put in the hours, you would get something in return. You know, and, and the more you work, the higher you would rise.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- ACAlexander Cortes
You know, but then, you know, but then we get to... The, the thing is that we get to, like, the era of technology, late 1990s, 2000s, and now with the advent of AI and the advent of digital media and the advent of social platforms, you could be working hard and you're running faster and faster just to stay in the same place. It's a-
- CWChris Williamson
The Red- the Red Queen effect, for those-
- ACAlexander Cortes
That's pretty much-
- CWChris Williamson
... people who know the, know the event-
- ACAlexander Cortes
That-
- CWChris Williamson
... models.
- ACAlexander Cortes
Yeah. It's the Red Queen trap. So now your hard work really doesn't mean much because someone could be working less than you, but their work leverages way more than yours does. You know, but at the same time, what if you work really hard and it's all leveraged work too? Then you're just like a god of work.
- CWChris Williamson
Yes.
- ACAlexander Cortes
And no one can stop you, ever.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. I, I, you, you, you are right. It's an artifact of this, um, quite noble approach to work, right? When, you know, the, but now that we don't, you know, going back to the very beginning of the conversation, when you don't have a job for life anymore, where, uh, choosing, choosing what is almost more important than choosing how, whereas in-
- ACAlexander Cortes
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... the past, I think how by any means would have probably, "Are you a hard worker?" "Yes." When you work in a factory, when you're not a knowledge worker essentially, when IQ is of a, a, a, a... Well, IQ, I'm gonna get in trouble if I say that. When, uh-
- ACAlexander Cortes
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) When your intellectual capacity is, uh, less important-
- ACAlexander Cortes
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... a lot of the promotion will be based on seniority. Like, well-
- ACAlexander Cortes
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... Bob's been here 50 years and John's been here 45, so Bob gets the promotion even if John's maybe a tiny little bit more competent because that's-
- ACAlexander Cortes
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... the kind o', the way that the businesses worked. Like a family or like a-
- ACAlexander Cortes
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
... like, um, uh, heirs to a kingdom almost. Like, the eldest brother-
- ACAlexander Cortes
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... gets it even if he's a, a complete tit and the, the younger brother would be a much better choice, but he's the older one so he gets it. And you have that noble approach to work, but now you no longer have the same lineage moving forward where you can know that you're gonna be staying in the same place. Like, uh, you know, as a perfect example, self-driving cars. Like, there's, what is it, between two and 4 million workers I think... Oh, no. One, 1 million workers in America are-
Episode duration: 1:00:15
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Transcript of episode TII4x2RAbsU
