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Pray for Kenney but meet your neighbors with Normal Quest UNLISTED
62 Plays3 years ago
Tyler Ogilvie and Sean Willett of the Alberta Advantage join us to discuss a Youtube video encouraging Christians everywhere to pray for Jason Kenney even though, "he's been off his game lately," as well as a project they're working on called Normal Quest. It's a simple idea that could actually save the world – if we want to win we're going to have to log off and start talking to our neighbors and coworkers like normal people.
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Transcript
Urgency to Pray for Jason Kenney
00:00:01
Speaker
Hello there, friend. I'm sending this video out to our beloved premier, Jason Kenney, who I love, who I voted for, and I still believe in. All right, I still believe in him. And I'm sending this out to every praying Christian I know and can find to ask you to pray with me.
00:00:20
Speaker
for Premier Kenny. I woke up a few days ago with this strong urgency that we need to pray for Premier Kenny. And then I had intercessors writing to me saying, I feel like we need to pray for Jason Kenny. And I know many of you, maybe right now, you're going, I don't want to pray for that guy. Listen to me. I get that.
Introduction to The Progress Report
00:00:58
Speaker
You're listening to The Progress Report on the Harbinger Media Network. We're one of just many excellent left-wing podcasts on Harbinger, and a new episode on the network that I want to recommend is the latest from Off-Court Pod. Abdul Malek and Eitan Tobin dismantle preconceptions about the world's most boring sport as they explore cricket as decolonial praxis, with special guest Nashwalina of another Harbinger Pod, Habib T please.
00:01:20
Speaker
And that's just one of the many shows you can get at Harbinger where we are challenging right-wing corporate media dominance from coast to coast. Get access to exclusive shows and other supporter-only content at harbingermedianetwork.com. Now, onto the show.
Discussion with Alberta Advantage
00:01:34
Speaker
Friends and enemies, welcome to The Progress Report. I am your host, Duncan Kinney. We're recording today here in Ms. Squitchy with Skygun, otherwise known as Edmonton, Alberta, here in Treaty Six territory. Today, we're very pleased to have Sean Willett and Tyler Ogilvie of the Alberta Advantage join us on the pod. Welcome, Sean and Tyler. Hello. Hello.
00:01:54
Speaker
We have these two members of Alberta's most August left-wing political podcast on the pod to talk about a project that they've been working on, a project that has unfortunately been kind of cut short by the pandemic, which makes it really hard to talk to people. That idea is called Normal Quest.
00:02:15
Speaker
And it's a really simple idea. It's one that is, I would argue, incredibly powerful and one that leftists, especially leftists that are too online, really need to take to heart. But before we get to this idea that might save the world, we have a bit of riffing
Analyzing Evangelical Calls to Prayer
00:02:32
Speaker
to do, gentlemen. And I know that y'all love a good riff. Oh, do we? Massaging my riff muscles now.
00:02:39
Speaker
And it is actually a good segue into Normal Quest, but this video came across my consciousness yesterday. It's a good segue because it's extremely normal, what we're about to watch. I like it. This is what Normal Quest is, just recording YouTube videos from your truck.
00:02:57
Speaker
I can think of nothing more normal in a normal province with normal politics than the video that I'm about to play for everyone. It's from an online account, YouTube account, social media account called Oil Patch Pulpit. This is a dude named Steve Holstrom. He is Oil Patch Pulpit. He runs an oil field rental company out of Drayton Valley called Zinger Oil Field Supplies, but he's also an evangelical preacher who sells books, creates a ton of content.
00:03:25
Speaker
YouTube videos, Facebook videos, like the guys everywhere. He makes appearances at churches, religious events, gatherings, all throughout Western Canada. The reason why this video caught my eye is because the video is titled, in all caps, it's time to pray for Kenny. It's time. That sounds like a threat. Is that a credible threat?
00:03:47
Speaker
Yeah, in Minecraft. It's time to pray for Kenny in Minecraft. So I asked Tyler and Sean to not watch this. I mean, it is 17 minutes long. You probably don't want to watch the whole thing just for your brain's sake. But I asked the two gentlemen to not only watch a few seconds of the video just to familiarize themselves with the aesthetic and just to set the scene. It is that classic YouTube bit. It is a guy alone in his vehicle speaking directly to the camera. And here, here is how it starts.
00:04:16
Speaker
Hello there, friend. I'm sending this video out to our beloved premier, Jason Kenney, who I love, who I voted for, and I still believe in. All right. I still believe in him. And I'm sending this out to every praying Christian I know and can find to ask you to pray with me.
00:04:36
Speaker
for Premier Kenny. I woke up a few days ago with this strong urgency that we need to pray for Premier Kenny. Just bolting out of bed. I feel like we need to pray for Jason Kenny. And I know many of you, maybe right now, you're going, I don't want to pray for that guy. Listen to me. I get that. I know he's been kind of off his game lately. I know that probably 80% of the people who voted for him right now
00:05:05
Speaker
or wanting to throw a tomato at him, and I'll confess that I've had my moments too. However,
00:05:16
Speaker
Is he from Tennessee? However, that's how I ended. I ended on the however, uh, he's from Drayton Valley. I don't know. Oh my God. That's such a fake ass accent. Yeah. The, the inflection is very, uh, put on like the very evangelical. Yeah, exactly. Uh, I woke up today and Bell, like I just needed to pray. It's like a Valley girl accent, but for, for guys Valley girls for dudes now. Yeah.
00:05:42
Speaker
I mean, I grew up going to evangelical churches. This is a tone and a kind of approach to speaking that is very familiar to me. I don't know what y'all religious background is, but I mean, definitely getting flashbacks. Mark Dauer. Okay. Okay. Yeah. One more chanting. I grew up in the church of the emperor. Warhammer 44. Yes, that's right.
00:06:07
Speaker
Which is pretty similar to Ukrainian Catholicism, actually. Their sister, religion. The funniest part of this intro is the fact that even oil patch pulpit, even a guy who is like, I voted for him, I love the guy, we need to pray for him, is like, hey, things aren't great right now. I've never heard he's off his game before being used to describe a politician, which is pretty funny. I love that.
00:06:31
Speaker
All right, all right, so here's the second
Kenney's Politics and Conspiracy Theories
00:06:33
Speaker
clip. Premier Kenny is a good man. He's a man of integrity. He's a man of character. Look at his track record. He is a fighter. He fights for Alberta. I remember, do you remember just a few months ago, I don't know if you ever watched this video, but somebody was asking him about the great reset. And he, man, he went off. I actually wrote it out because I wanna read this to you. This is Premier Kenny. I just feel like I need to rebind some of you.
00:07:00
Speaker
What a fighter he is. So is someone actually asking him about the great reset? There was a Facebook live question where the great reset came up and he spent a good five minutes talking about it and they clipped the video and like sent it out on the premier candies and the UCP social media feeds. Oh no, that's sad.
00:07:21
Speaker
The Great Reset, did you try turning your society off and then on again? Ooh, dope, dope. Good one. I've not heard that one before, but I like it. Good dad joke. You're a dad, right, Tyler? I am a dad. There you go. Fantastic dad joke. Yeah, so we get into the Great Reset as well as a couple of other
00:07:40
Speaker
fantastic kind of conspiracy theories in the next clip, but it is. I mean, the Great Reset has become this kind of like talking point for the right now, right? And especially the conspiracy right and the evangelical right. And this isn't going to be a podcast about the Great Reset, but like there are- I have all these notes though.
00:08:02
Speaker
Like it's true that there are like bad evil people who have a lot of money like Klaus Schwab and you know his various confederates and Davos who have a thing have like a book called the great reset that exists but it's like then they frame it as this like you know liberal socialist conspiracy and it's like you know man like Klaus Schwab is not a socialist. We haven't been invited to join the great reset that's for sure yeah. Okay here's a third clip. And we have never seen such wicked
00:08:32
Speaker
heavy-handed government control in the province of Alberta in the history of this nation. It has never happened. And for whatever reason,
00:08:44
Speaker
the fifth
00:09:03
Speaker
But Kenny was so it sounds like you do You know, it was like he was the one who was basically saying, you know, we can protect the vulnerable without destroying the economy No, we're not shutting Alberta down and then all of a sudden one day just a few months ago It's like he does this full one and he's been a liberal ever since
00:09:30
Speaker
I don't know what happened. I don't know. They got to him. What did they say? They got to him. They got a heart attack gun. Do you say, you don't do this, we're going to do that? The liberal brain gun. No, it was a claw swab and it's ill. They put a gun to his head. Oh, God. Here we go. Who knows? But we know this. He's not where he was. And we can either hate on him and rage and spew about him on social media, or we can pray for the man.
00:09:59
Speaker
conservatives rise up. I like I like how he he's he says like, you know, like we we Jason Kennedy is like, look, we can protect the economy where we can protect vulnerable people without destroying the economy. And then we just went ahead and did not do that.
00:10:15
Speaker
We could do that. We could protect vulnerable people without destroying the economy by locking things down and paying people and shutting down rent and everything, rent-freeze. But we just didn't do those things, and so vulnerable people got hurt and the economy got destroyed. Yeah, that's the thing that I always love when
00:10:35
Speaker
someone like this is trying to toe the line where clearly they're not, they're either like COVID denialists or they're taking the stance, which is impossible, which is like, if we just kind of kept everything open, we would still, yeah, we'd still somehow be able to like not have people die. And it's like, look, the binary is you either shut things down and do like a full lockdown or not. And depending on what you choose, your outcomes are kind of predetermined. And the great thing is
00:11:03
Speaker
if you do the full lockdown, there are actually mechanisms economically you can use to kind of keep people solvent and keep people economically viable. Now we've kind of chosen to hit the middle road on all of those things to make sure that none of them kind of work properly, but like you can actually deal with the economic side of things. That's something that humans have control over, but if you don't do the lockdown, then there's nothing we can do. But these guys never, they never want to break things down that clearly.
00:11:32
Speaker
There's a big chunk of this video. He dedicates a good eight minutes of this 17 minutes video to talking about this incident that happened where some religious acquaintance of his was detained at an airport and put in a quarantine hotel or something because they tested positive for COVID or they didn't test positive. The details are a little foggy on his retelling. I think I even saw Jason Kenney address this in the media.
00:11:55
Speaker
But, like, when he starts talking about, like, government tyranny and stuff, like, that is what he is referencing. He is referencing, you know, people who travel abroad, in this case, this woman traveled to the United States to, like, record a gospel album or something. Oh, okay. Oh, my God. And then came back and had a positive test. Again, the details are foggy and was put in one of these quarantined things, apparently against her will.
00:12:16
Speaker
And like, he gets into it, he's like, oh, people were emailing me, like, how many guns do we need and stuff? And I was like, whoa, calm down. Like, this is what the guy is saying. The guy is saying no violent insurrections, but apparently he has people on his list who are like, how many guns do we need to rescue our- I bet that was one guy and he emails him that every time. I'm still waiting for answer. Please circle back. How many guns do we need? Yeah. There's something very spiritually sad to me about, um,
00:12:45
Speaker
old, old men of this age that are like rural, uh, you know, live in a rural town or city that use like affected YouTube things where he's like, you can't let the haters win. And all these things that just, it makes me so sad. Like this is the reason why my biggest, uh, my biggest, you know,
00:13:05
Speaker
social media take. All social media must be destroyed in order for us to have some sort of functioning society. Never post and destroy it all. Yeah, destroy it all because look what it's done to the brains of old people. They're all talking like they're a Zoomer, TikTok people now.
00:13:24
Speaker
And so this final bit,
Prayer's Power and Politics
00:13:26
Speaker
this is the finale. This is the like the lead up to the prayer and the actual prayer for Kenny of the titular praying for Kenny part. So I just want to be clear, we're not making fun of this guy for his faith or his religious belief, but I mean, he is legitimately like saying whackadoo things. So here's the finale of it's time to pray for Kenny. But the pressure that he's under, whatever buttons they're pushing,
00:13:51
Speaker
has been
00:14:08
Speaker
What does he talk to you about? I don't know. And he promised it wouldn't happen. He also promised there'll be no mandatory administration of the COVID vaccine. And is he going to keep that promise? Or when they start putting more pressure on, is he going to bow again? I don't know. All I know is this. We need the old Kenny back. And we're not going to get the old Kenny back unless
00:14:36
Speaker
This pressure gets off of, we've got to relieve the pressure. And Christians who pray, you know it works. Prayer works. And so I'm asking you, will you join me? Okay, I'm hoping that you'll catch this today. Pray for Benny. Pray for Benny. Will you join me? And for 18 days or right till the end of February, would you set an alarm on your clock? I do mine for 121 every day. Reminds me of
00:15:03
Speaker
Deuteronomy 121, that God is giving us the land. We're taking Canada back. We're taking out her back. But set your alarm for 121 every day or whatever time you choose. And when that alarm goes off, would you pray fervently? At least three, four, five minutes. Pray fervently for Premier Jason Kenney. Maybe you'd join me right now and just praying for him. Father, we lift up our Premier, God, who we believe you chose for this time.
00:15:33
Speaker
You chose for this time in history. He's a man of strength. He's a man with a backbone. He's a man of courage. He is a man who is created to fight and to bring Alberta into a greater place of prosperity and blessing.
00:15:48
Speaker
We lift up our premier to you and we say God would you protect him from the forces that want to crush him? Would you protect him and free him from the fears and whatever? Outside pressures are being pushed on him from the federal government or any other outside forces that we don't know about father in the name of Jesus
00:16:09
Speaker
Fill his heart with strength. Fill his heart with fire again. Give him the courage and the strength to be the leader that you created him to be. Filling his heart with fire is called to have a heart attack. Don't do that. Amen. Amen. Praise the Lord.
00:16:29
Speaker
Okay. Amen. So prayers up for Kenny. So, uh, yeah, Benny. So, so Duncan, I'm unfamiliar with the sort of, uh, uh, evangelical theology. Do, do evangelicals believe that if you, like enough people pray at one time, it's like a dragon ball spirit bomb. And that like does something like this, like the mass prayer have like, uh, like, uh, like an effect on reality. Is that like.
00:16:58
Speaker
I left the church when I was 16 years old and I didn't get deep into enough. I didn't level up enough to really figure out if this is what people really believed or not. I definitely think my particular sect definitely did a lot of prayer and believed in the power of prayer. I was never sure whether it was
00:17:20
Speaker
we thought it was real, like angels are real or whether it was like a metaphor or not. But I think there is that power of positive thinking stuff certainly affects a lot of the kind of evangelical Christian right on this call. That's called the secret, if I'm not mistaken.
00:17:35
Speaker
Yeah, it's I mean, it's it's just like a yeah that the Catholic tradition would would see you turn inwards and ask what is wrong with me How can I feel bad about myself? I'm gonna use this as a lens for guilt And so it's interesting to see the other more positive thinking approach to problems. But the other thing I noticed there was His sort of framing of the world is that like Jason Kenny would if he could
00:18:02
Speaker
do an even worse job with coronavirus. But there's like some sort of shadowy unknown force that is stopping him from achieving that potential. What's happening is actually Justin Trudeau is basically like Jason Bourne and he has a sniper rifle trained on him and he's on the phone to Kenny and he'll be like, you've got a great blue suit today. And Jason Kenny looked out the window like, what? And Justin Trudeau's just there looking through his scope. So that's why he actually has to do liberalism. That's pretty cool actually. Yeah.
00:18:32
Speaker
It's giving Justin Trudeau a lot of credit. Yeah, I wish Justin Trudeau was that cool. There's another point that I think is worth raising up. One is to take back Alberta, take back Canada part. Take it back from who? Take it back from who? And then the other part is the prosperity. He actually mentioned Jason Kenney was chosen by God to bring prosperity to Alberta.
00:18:55
Speaker
I don't see how what that has to do with Christianity or the Bible. You know what I mean? Like I'm aware that there's this strain of evangelical Christianity, like prosperity gospel that exists. Even in the shitty sect of Christianity that I was raised in the Christian missionary alliance, I don't remember any prosperity gospel bullshit. Like I'm sure it exists. And my church, my former church, like was the like Harper church and like my former pastor, Brent Trask, like was a like advisor to
00:19:22
Speaker
Stephen Harper and stuff, but maybe I wasn't paying attention. I was a fucking depressed teenager who knows. I think it's like a Tennessee thing. I think it's like a southern US thing. It's strange to see it get imported up here because it certainly feels ... His whole shtick feels very put on, very imported from
00:19:45
Speaker
Basically just like southern US culture. Yeah, and and it's I think that like ideology or that that type of like prosperity gospel inflection I don't even know if he realizes he's doing it. I think he might just be copying like other people he's seeing Yeah, I think that's a big part. It's almost like a viral like the especially, you know since Trump this is you know, there's always obviously been evangelical not always but for a long time a strong evangelical wing and
00:20:11
Speaker
of like the republican party in the u.s but since kind of the popularization of social media and youtube and things like it's it's definitely changed over in recent uh... you know recent ten years or so to what it has been under trump and and it it it feels very much that like you know that stuff is just crosses a very porous border uh... and and kind of the same affects get kind of taken up on both sides of the border but i i think he is an interesting kind of
00:20:38
Speaker
capsule of Alberta, right? He clearly, you know, he feels he has an audience, right? He's ministering to like rednecks and like people who work in the oil patch who, you know, require or want some type of Christian ministry, but like he's obviously approaching it from like, look, I wear a hard hat too, and I put on coveralls and I go to the oil field, I do the same job you do. And it's a really fascinating little niche he's carved out for himself.
00:21:06
Speaker
Um, but, but the broader question I think is also worth raising, right? Like, like these cultural institutions like the church, uh, are super important to conservatives and to their establishment and maintenance of political power. And the left, I mean, we just did an episode with Dean Dallof who's a Christian Catholic. You should go listen to that episode.
00:21:25
Speaker
The Christian left does exist. There are religious, there are radical left traditions in almost every religion, but I would argue that they're probably not as a senator. Not in an organized way right now. At least in a powerfully organized way. Exactly. And so I think the left
00:21:43
Speaker
Since the left doesn't have these cultural institutions that help create and build relationships and build up strong kind of like mutual social relationships between people like in the neighborhood in the workplace throughout kind of the community.
00:21:57
Speaker
that is where something like NormalQuest comes in, right? And NormalQuest is this project that you two have been working on that seeks to kind of do something similar, not necessarily to church, but to the soft social aspects of church that are like the going to a thing every week and talking to your friends and having a coffee or having a social or whatever, right?
00:22:18
Speaker
Yeah, I think you could probably make the argument that the equivalent on the left, at least for some period of history, was unions, broadly based. And obviously, the institution of unions has been weakened a lot over the past, pick whatever amount of decades you want. Especially the cultural power of unions. Yeah, big time. And I'll maybe touch on this later, because this is something that we've been talking about.
00:22:45
Speaker
I know some union people and I've talked about this with them, but like the social sort of side of unions has really died away and doesn't really exist anymore the same way it used to. And on the church side too, I think there are certainly churches that are more liberal, at least that's my understanding as not really a religious person, but they seem to be liberal in the capital L liberal sense in terms of ideology being much more about
00:23:15
Speaker
individual freedoms and that type of thing, as opposed to kind of working as a coordinated wing of, you know, politically. Now I know, you know, there are some
00:23:25
Speaker
Some people in the US, some churches that seem to be quite active, and reverends and pastors that you see kind of pop up on talking head shows that, you know, including Cornel West, right? Super, super left-wing person who, if I'm not mistaken, is still quite religiously active. And his dad was a preacher, yeah. Yeah. But they just don't seem to, they seem to be outliers as opposed to representing like a,
00:23:55
Speaker
mass movement or collection of as opposed to evangelicals which like truly like vote and act as like a block of people across the country.
00:24:05
Speaker
Okay, so we've kind of danced around it, but I mean, I got asked the question, what is normal quest?
Origins of Normal Quest
00:24:10
Speaker
How does it work and how will it save the world? Wow. Very easy. Should we tell the story of its creation first? Yeah. Okay, so there's this organization that's now called Justice International that held this sort of Twitch competitions called the
00:24:33
Speaker
super dialectacular spectacular and it was super fun it was they invited a few different people across the Canadian left to come on and basically give a pitch for a project that could be taken up by Justice International and turned into sort of a
00:24:57
Speaker
focus for organizing or or even just for for rallying people online to do something so We thought long and hard about it and the the we were sort of the Alabama advantage as to do it and Tyler and I were sort of appointed as the court representatives and we had a hard time thinking of what we wanted to do because every sort of
00:25:23
Speaker
sort of problem we wanted to try to solve, we ran into the same issue, which was how are we actually going to affect any serious change? Like how are we going to actually put any sort of pressure on any sort of government or decision-making body to be able to actually enforce any sort of change? Because what we kept finding is that the
00:25:47
Speaker
sort of core problem that undergirded all of these things because we kept on thinking like, oh, we want to do more transit or defund the police or a whole litany of these leftist policy goals. But the issue was always there are not enough of us. There are not enough people who care about this. There are not enough people who agree with us. We do not have any sort of cultural hegemony. And even for the things that we do, we don't have enough people who are willing to actually get out there and
00:26:17
Speaker
Do something about it because a lot of these ideas a lot of things we're talking about are actually like widely supported by the majority of people They just don't have any way to actually They're not mobilized they're not organized so they don't have any sort of ability to put their hands on the lever of power as it were Yeah, exactly so, you know what we kind of pitched was exactly that which was
00:26:43
Speaker
under the banner of normal quest, which is really just a way that we kind of tried to organize it because we wanted to make it something where, um, you know, there would be some accountability, some tracking not gamified in the way that you might, um, that is used a lot, but, but just kind of have a veneer of something that, that gives it a little bit of, um,
00:27:04
Speaker
of personality. So we kind of imagined it as like a very loosely RPG type concept where you know you would have as a person kind of some different goals every month and you know those goals could be something as small as and this is why it's obviously on hold during COVID.
00:27:23
Speaker
Something as small as, hey, let's say you're in an apartment building or complex, or even you're in a detached house in a neighborhood, this month your goal is to learn the names of three of your neighbors. It could be on your floor, it could be in your complex, whatever. Pretty straightforward, simple stuff like that. To connect that to what Sean was saying,
00:27:44
Speaker
I think one of the problems that we have on the left is that most of the discussion of the left takes place online. And when it doesn't, it's something that is kind of caught in this realm where people are either maybe too scared to talk about it, and there are many reasons that they might be, some legitimate, some not. They might feel that they just don't want to interact with people, because what if those people aren't leftists and, oh, oh, God, heaven forbid,
00:28:12
Speaker
you know, someone that we're talking to has a political opinion we don't like, how will we get past that? Will it be too awkward, uncomfortable, whatever? You know, those are the problems we want to try and bridge with this, which is, I think, very important to that. Number one, that people who are on the left are kind of viewed as members of their community in good standing, that we're not necessarily seen always as people who just kind of come and go don't interact with our communities, even though
00:28:40
Speaker
that is kind of the core of our belief system, right, is building up a strong community of people who will fight for each other, who will help each other, who will work cooperatively together. We want to, number one, I guess, embody that. And number two, we want to put on a good face. We want to give the left a actual rebuttal against the kind of framing that a lot of the right gives, which is like,
00:29:04
Speaker
We're all crazy Marxists. We're all, you know, nefarious. We're all ne'er-do-wells. None of us are working. We're not essentially, quote unquote, normal people. And I think the beautiful idea of socialism is that it's all about normal people acting together. And how can we kind of bring the community that does exist offline and kind of engage in the community?
00:29:30
Speaker
Yeah, so Tyler kind of touched upon one of the, I think the three, we'll call it like three like core pillars of this, which is the like social facing aspect, which is like making leftists like actually appear to be normal parts of their community because we are, I mean, we just have to, you know, we are normal. Trust us, we are very normal. But like, you know, actually like, you know, put some put some
00:29:58
Speaker
walk behind that talk, as it were. But the other parts of it are, of course, as we also talked about, expanding our base of people we can actually mobilize to do things, because the more people you can talk to, the more people that you have a relationship with, the more people you can leverage that relationship with to be able to get them to do something. And then the third part of that is, oh, so I think a sort of internal sort of
00:30:27
Speaker
good thing that we wanted to do for people. So I think it's actually good for people to go out and talk to strangers and like have that sort of awkwardness because here's the thing. It's not just us. It's not just leftists that are feeling this. It's not just leftists who are feeling alienated and weirded out. And it's not just us who don't know the names of any of our neighbors and like barely talk to anyone outside of our social circles. This is everyone. This is the entire planet.
00:30:57
Speaker
And it's actually good for us to try to fight back against that actively because it only serves people in power, it only serves the capitalists to feed into that and to buy into that because the more disjointed we are, the more alienated we are, the worse it is. So we have to actually build up the skill
00:31:18
Speaker
of being able to fight against that because it doesn't feel natural anymore. It doesn't feel normal to just go up to people and start talking to them. It's socially coded as not being normal because other people will not want you to do that. It's tough. It is difficult, but you have to start small with your neighbors, with your coworkers, and build up and just start building more relationships. It's good for you. It's good personally. It's good for the soul to be able to talk to more people and interact with them.
00:31:47
Speaker
It reminds you of the multiplicity of human life and human interactions and how weird other people are. That's certainly something that you'll discover. There isn't a straight line between getting a cup of sugar from your neighbor and a revolution that overtones capitalism, but it has to start with having the ability to go to your neighbor and get a cup of sugar. Yeah. I think the thing that leftists are great at doing is
00:32:17
Speaker
figuring out how they want society to be and even figuring out, you know, at a high level what policies we want, what we seem to not be as good at. And I'm not talking, you know, there are some people who are very good at this and there are a lot of people who organize for a living or in their spare time that are very proficient. But I'm talking about as kind of the mass of people on the left.
00:32:38
Speaker
Um, this is a skill that we all need to work on. And, um, you know, that's why when we talked about normal course, we didn't talk about any specific goals, no policies, no like, um, societal change that we wanted to enact. What we want to actually do is have people start
00:32:56
Speaker
building up this skill that I think has gone dormant in society over the last few decades, right? Which is just, hey, and it may even be one generation away. Like my parents, for example, they know like half of their neighborhood really well. They see people, they go on walks, they stop behind people's yards and chat to them. That is a skill that seemingly has completely disappeared.
00:33:21
Speaker
And that is a weakness because if you do, when you do get around to the point where you're either, you know, I want this specific person elected or I want us to push this specific change or organize around this thing, it's infinitely easier not only to ask people, but to get people to actually agree with you and help you when you're making demands of their time and their effort when you have a relationship with them. So it's... I would even argue it's the only thing that will get them to do something.
00:33:50
Speaker
Right, exactly. Because I think anyone who's done door knocking realizes that when you're talking to strangers, it's very, very difficult, frankly, to have the first conversation that you're having with someone, be about something political or you're making a demand of them. Even if the demand is as small as like, hey, this is a good cause, can you sign this petition? It's a hard conversation to have. If you have even the smallest relationship with someone, that discussion just becomes infinitely easier. So you have to kind of start there.
00:34:21
Speaker
Yeah, it's even the case with things like union organizing like you you half of it is just getting people to just start talking to each other in their workplace to start being comfortable with each other and sharing information and developing relationships because
00:34:37
Speaker
And this sounds like really weird, but this is something that I think leftists have to grapple with a little bit is that like it sounds manipulative to say you're building relationships with people so that you can use them for politics, but that's just like that's just like what politics and relationships are. Relationships are about asking other people for things and them doing those things for you and because
00:35:01
Speaker
Yeah, because you're going to the implicit sort of thing inherent to that is that we expect people to reciprocate that. Because if it is like a real relationship, you're not just like drawing on them, you are also helping them and you're also giving back to them. Because, and Tyler talked about this earlier, like, I think a part of what we want to do with normal quests as well, is to get leftist to sort of reconnect with the, I guess, like,
00:35:26
Speaker
humanist sort of aspect of socialism, the side that embraces helping other people, the side that embraces doing things for other people, shoveling your neighbor's sidewalks and volunteering at food banks and things like that.
00:35:45
Speaker
You know, we I would say don't believe that mutual aid is like the solution to all of society's aid. Yeah, exactly. But it's it's actually I think a way to help people in the short term and also to genuinely build like a better sense of community within
00:36:10
Speaker
Your community which is lacking and so so yeah, that's I mean we've been rambling on for a bit here, but That's a well, I mean just how about I run I feel like I do some of these things I don't know maybe just run down some activities that we That me and my household do and with these fall under the rubric of like normal quest quest. Okay, so like
00:36:35
Speaker
My partner's on a baking cake. She's stuck at home right now during COVID and in the work. And she's baked. She's baking. Yesterday, the other day she baked two loaves of bread. We do not need two loaves of bread. Her and I are not going to eat two loaves of bread in a week. So I was like, Hey, you should give it to that new person down the hallway who just moved into the building.
00:36:55
Speaker
That is wonderful. That's huge normal quest vibes there. That is like killing a raid boss. That is yeah, that is that's gonna use so much XP Yeah, that's awesome. I think that things like that can seem kind of like cheesy at times But they're actually like really nice the person is going to appreciate it It's the perfect way to like get to just introduce yourself to the person Yeah, and then just sort of like slowly build a relationship from there
00:37:20
Speaker
No one, no one, no one doesn't like receiving baking. Like no one, even if you're like someone who can't eat it, it's still like one of those classic, the thought that counts things. Joel from the Albert advantage will every now and then like drop off some baked goodies at some of our homes. And it's one of the most purely joyful things that can happen to you as a human.
00:37:40
Speaker
Yeah. And it's also a good way to start talking to people right now because obviously we've put a lot of this on hold because of coronavirus times, but dropping off baked goods. I mean, that's a way to show someone that you're there and that you're thinking of them. And importantly, you're not dropping it off with like an ode on it, which is like, hey, here's like a link to a PDF copy of capital volume.
00:38:05
Speaker
Volume one or something. It's just doing it because it's a good thing to do and you want to like build a relationship Yeah, so good job Duncan the first one you're killing it. Okay.
Community Engagement through Normal Quest
00:38:15
Speaker
Here's another one So until obviously we don't do that We haven't done this since the pandemic started but I think we usually do six or seven times a year usually when it's cold out is we invite people over to our building and we have a big
00:38:28
Speaker
Uh, like that's the word I'm looking for. Potluck brunch. Yeah. And so we invite people from the building. We invite, I try to make a habit of inviting, not just friends, making, having a new person or a new couple or a new family show up to each one.
00:38:42
Speaker
We'll have like, you know, seven to 10 groups of people show up to like, we have a fairly large common room in our building and host these events. And so yeah, we try to host these like semi-common, semi-regular branches, potluck branches. Yeah. Totally. That's great. I think the key there is bringing in people that aren't maybe necessarily already your best friends and like having them like mingle and like extending your, your social circle a little bit. I think that's awesome. Yeah.
00:39:11
Speaker
Cool. I have a dog. I frequently have to walk the dog, even though he's walking a little less these days. A couple of times a week, I'm sure. I mean, he's 12 years old. He's not the spring chicken he was, but I do have to walk him twice a day. And so I go through the neighborhood. And one thing that I like, and I also have a daughter, and she frequently comes with me on walks, and we go to the playground.
00:39:37
Speaker
And I'm just like talking to parents at the playground or we're talking to people on dog walks. Those are the two. Yeah. Yeah. I'm a parent and a dog owner. So I'm, I'm with you. And, uh, that's perfect. And, and the thing is too, I think sometimes when, when we talk about this, people get hung up on the, like, okay, yeah. So how do you do the soft sell of like socialism and stuff? And I always, we always pull back and we're like, it's not, it's not about that. It is about that in the, in the broader sense.
00:40:04
Speaker
But what it's more about is that people leaping like, hey, that's a really nice guy. Hey, that seems like a nice family. Oh, hey, if we're going to be here, we should strike up a conversation with them again next time. It's just the building up that feeling of we're all part of a community. We're friendly. Even if we're not, don't become friends, quote unquote. Everyone's friendly, interacts pleasantly with one another.
00:40:31
Speaker
And that it doesn't actually just stop at some kind of test where you have to be like, Oh, so who did you vote for? Or like, what's, you know, that's not the important thing. You know, in fact, it might actually be more helpful in the long run.
00:40:46
Speaker
if you're able to have these conversations with people who you might politically disagree with, but you're still able to come across as normal and sociable and kind, because ultimately that helps break down that barrier that people have politically. And it's not about a like, oh, it's polarization is bad. It's more, I think that the true kind of kernel of truth in that is that people aren't willing to interact across the divide. It's not that they, that having different
00:41:11
Speaker
Opposing political opinions is bad. That's fine, but it's the fact that we have a hard time as a society even interacting with people we disagree with and Kind of trying to cross that barrier and make it permeable again so that people have they don't think of you as these like You know sleeper cell Marxist agents, you know as sitting away in our apartments shitposting online that we're actually normal
00:41:36
Speaker
And to be a bit of a nerd, there's a Stuart Hall quote that Joel shared in our Alberta Advantage Discord earlier today, or maybe it was yesterday, but it was talking about how political correctness sometimes can, like, oh, that's what he sort of called it in the era of the 90s, I guess, can sort of lead us down this,
00:42:03
Speaker
path of thinking that the way to solve problems is by just changing the way we talk about them and the way that we act about them and shutting out the people who don't agree with the socially accepted positions, which is ignoring the fact that those people do exist and that they do have to be approached and dealt with in some way.
00:42:33
Speaker
A lot of people can get into their heads that people are a bit more like fixed in the way that they believe and the way that they behave than they actually are. And I think that part of what we want to do with pushing for people to interact more with other people is it just like get people to remember that like
00:42:53
Speaker
like things are not as hostile as they are online uh in real life generally that people don't generally have those extreme like uh entrenched positions that they're unwilling to budge on and like especially if and we want to say that some like we say like don't start talking about politics like don't force it but we never want people to lie about their politics
00:43:14
Speaker
Do you ever want people to pretend that they're not socialists? Or else, what would the point of this even be? You need to still have your beliefs and still have your values. If a conversation comes up or someone's like, oh, there's no snow clearance in the neighborhood, doesn't that suck?
00:43:32
Speaker
You'd be like, yeah, the city should probably put more money into that. Just say what you believe. You'll find people being like, yeah, no, that would be great. Also importantly, doing it without the political labels attached is usually helpful too. I've found in conversations with people that I disagree with politically,
00:43:56
Speaker
It's much better to just frame things in terms of like, okay, here's the problem and here's the actual solution I would like to see and you don't have to say like look as a socialist I want this or like this is the socialist way of doing things or vice versa, right? What you just say is like look here's the problem like Sean identified a lack of snow clearing You're like, you know what? I wish the city would take this into account more and I wish they would have the guts to maybe do more progressive and
00:44:23
Speaker
taxation on expensive properties so we could afford more snow clearing in our neighborhoods. And that's a pretty straightforward solution. And I think you could talk to a lot of people that are on the right who would say, yeah, you know what, we do need more snow clearing. And I could get behind that, or whatever. And you don't have to put labels on it. You can kind of slow sell some of these things. And you'll find a lot more agreement than I think people would anticipate.
00:44:52
Speaker
So I guess, I mean, one of the big, um, you know, things that is going to stop people from doing this is I imagine, I mean, I'm an extra, I don't necessarily suffer from this, but like anxiety, a lot of people suffer from anxiety.
Overcoming Anxiety in Community Interactions
00:45:07
Speaker
We live, we live in a society that breeds anxiety and like, you know, bowling the loan was written 20 years ago or whatever, right? Like, like we know, I mean, capitalized capitalism wants us to be atomized and to be an individual, not part of a larger group working together.
00:45:22
Speaker
And I think people are very anxious about talking to people that they don't know. What are some of the entry-level things that are part of the normal quest package? The level one stuff. What's the intro? The killing bores. The one thing I love to say on this, which is I think the bare minimum, is we have to get away from just doing the GameStop smile at people when you walk by them.
00:45:48
Speaker
And that's just kind of the flat, you're kind of signaling that you're smiling, but not actually. We need to get away from that. And even it could be as simple as you walk by someone and say hi and keep walking. That's like an easy first step.
00:46:06
Speaker
Yeah, you can also sort of figure out where you have the best sort of comfort and just like take sort of small steps from there. So let's say, because we've been talking a lot about communities and like where you live,
00:46:22
Speaker
Um, but the other sort of big valence here is your workplace. Um, because a lot of people, uh, in their workplaces, like maybe no, like two or three other people don't really talk to anyone and just sort of like stick their own little bubble. Um, but starting to talk to more coworkers, like maybe there's a coworker that like, um, you've like talked to a few times. They seem nice. Like maybe you strike out a new conversation with them.
00:46:46
Speaker
Like maybe make some sort of excuse to talk to them and get to know them a little bit better. Like sort of building on what you already have is sort of the good first steps if you're feeling anxious. Because here's the thing, I'm an extremely anxiety riddled person. I way overanalyze every social interaction.
00:47:06
Speaker
Like especially like with things like with with neighbors and stuff like that. I'm always so concerned about like I want to be a good neighbor I don't want to be weird, etc, etc. Um, but like the best thing to do is is just to like just like remember like just be nice just like be normal and like other people are The other people in the conversation also want the conversation. Yes. Okay, there's look there's
00:47:33
Speaker
You have to sort of internalize the fact that sometimes there are going to be complete whack jobs who are going to actively want to cause you pain in the conversation. Those people can't be accounted for. They're very rare. But you can't live your life in fear. You're doing that online anyway. You're getting more of that online anyway.
00:47:52
Speaker
Most people, they just want to want interactions with other people to also be really pleasant. I think a big part of it is just taking small steps with what feels comfortable to you, but just doing it and forcing yourself at your comfort zone a little bit by a little because all it is is just trying to
00:48:15
Speaker
get yourself used to it like getting used to like cold water or something you could just sort yourself right into the deep end if you wanted to but that sucks yeah and could kill you potentially so uh so yeah just just just a little bit at a time try to see like uh for example like maybe even even something as much as like maybe you have some old friends you haven't talked to in a while
00:48:37
Speaker
maybe like reach out to them. So like, hey, how's it going? And try to like, let's get a zoom going or something, you know, or even another easy way, especially now in COVID is most communities have some sort of, you know, for example, my like little complex here, we there's like a Facebook group.
00:48:54
Speaker
I don't have Facebook, so I don't do this directly but my partner does so we kind of use hers as like our avenue for that, but as a way to just start ingratiating yourself with community now there's usually those communities as you know as anyone knows like next door.
00:49:13
Speaker
There are a lot of psychos there. But what I'm saying is there will always be some things on there that are pleasant, that are nice, that you can interact with in a way that feels totally fine. You don't have to get on there and start giving fights with people. That's bad. That causes anxiety. It makes things worse. Don't do that. But what is good is someone's like, hey, my kid is, for example, we had an example of this recently where
00:49:36
Speaker
Um, uh, a family wanted to take their family out to them to, um, and this was actually before COVID, but they want to take them out to, um, BAM for a night or something. And we have a park pass and we lent it to them for the day. Maybe that's illegal and maybe I'll get arrested after, after this podcast. But, you know, we found out about that on that group. It gave us a nice little interaction. We walked over there, handed it over. Um, and then automatically you've got this relationship. Um, and that feels really great to do. And, and I think too, to the point of like,
00:50:06
Speaker
I'm someone who is, fortunately enough, not struggling with anxiety, but I do one of my favorite writers, Mark Fisher, unfortunately dealt with it in a very serious way.
00:50:17
Speaker
and wrote a lot about it. And one of the things that he did talk about was how there's a certain amount of mental health and depression and anxiety that is socially determined based on the way our society is set up now, which includes a lot of the isolation that has been positive and profitable from a capitalist standpoint, but has been done really a lot of psychic damage to people in the society.
Community as a Remedy for Isolation
00:50:42
Speaker
And this is one kind of small way that you can kind of pre-figuratively fight against that is to actually start putting some of this back out into the world and try and start building that up. And what it's going to take and the reason that you have to kind of
00:50:58
Speaker
have some faith in this process is it can't just be you, it can't just be one of us. This is a project we really have to kind of take up broadly on the left. And we can kind of start pushing things in the right direction. It's going to be slow and take some time. But you can, that's one small way that you can actually try and start working for, you know, a society that you actually want to live in, which is one where people are friendly to each other and know each other.
00:51:26
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. I couldn't have said it better myself. I think that's a fantastic place to leave it. Tyler and Sean, if more people want to learn about normal quest, even though you said it's on hold right now, what is the best way for people who want to get into it once this hellish pandemic is somewhat over? What's the best place for them to go?
00:51:48
Speaker
So there is a normalQuest subreddit. Let's see if we can just, I think it's just called normalQuest. Yeah, I think it's just r slash normalQuest, if you're familiar with Reddit. But if you just Google r slash normalQuest, you'll find it.
00:52:01
Speaker
Yes, it is just normal Quest. So it's kind of on hold right now. There's not really a lot of people there. But just keep your eye out for Alberta Advantage channels. And I'm sure you will be seeing some stuff soon. I think Alberta Advantage Patreon donors actually got some normal Quest stickers. Yes. I did get a normal Quest sticker. Beautiful, beautiful little design there that Karen did for us. So join the Reddit for sure.
00:52:30
Speaker
because once you're there, when things do kind of turn on, you'll start seeing notifications for things going on. The other thing that I'll just give a quick plug to is Justice International, which is the group who kind of did, who kind of set this all in motion. You can find them on all the different platforms, and it's international with an E on the end of international. And you can find them on Instagram and Twitter and all those places. Find them. They've got a pretty active community.
00:53:00
Speaker
and are doing some good stuff. And if you like what they're up to, you can get involved there as well. And they've got kind of a channel about normal quests on their kind of messaging app they use as well. Well, Justin Trudeau has assured us that everyone who wants a vaccination from COVID-19 will have one by September. So I assume we'll all be back.
00:53:19
Speaker
in the fall, you know, got a baby's shaking in the hands of all the dogs notorious for always following through and expect this would be any different. I would like to urge people like even though it hasn't started yet
00:53:37
Speaker
Try to just start being a bit more conscious. Start looking for ways that you can try to start living the normal quest life in your life. It's snowing a lot right now. Shovel people's sidewalks for them. That's the easy, really nice one you can do.
00:53:55
Speaker
And yeah, I want people to start keeping an open mind about these things. Start being more conscious of these things. Start considering them more. And hopefully, by the time normal quests actually kicks off,
00:54:11
Speaker
We will have a lot of questers ready to get out there and become normal. That's what we are all seeking. We all deeply, deep down just want to be normal. Thanks again so much to Tyler and Sean for coming on. Folks, if you do not listen to the Albert Advantage, listen to that podcast. Follow their social media channels. They are very good. We're big fans here at The Progress Report.
00:54:39
Speaker
Yeah, thanks again to Tyler and Sean. Not only should you be supporting the upward advantage, but you should also be supporting our little independent media operation. We are nearing about 400 or so. I have to get an accurate count of folks who support this podcast and news website on a monthly basis. Those monthly donations are super key for us and Jim to continue doing the work that we do. If you like the podcast, if you like the website, we just had
00:55:08
Speaker
a big exclusive story we just broke this morning on shady business between Tyler Shandrow and the UCP operatives. The evil Tyler. Yeah, the bad Tyler. Go to theprogressreport.ca slash patrons, put in your credit card. I got to give a shout out here, Duncan, because I did this on the Discord and I tagged you. I should have tagged Jim. But one of the reasons I love supporting you guys is the
00:55:35
Speaker
the newsletters that come out. It's like the best distillation of everything you need to know from a news perspective. But seeing through a lens that I think is more palatable to people who would be listening to this podcast, it's honestly probably the best way to keep up with what's going on with Alberta politics. So Shadow Jim, good newsletter. That's worth the price of entry alone.
00:55:58
Speaker
Yeah. Shout out to Jim. He's, he does it. He's fantastic at it. I'm very blessed to have him. Um, also, if you, uh, think that we said anything wrong or stupid, I am very easy to get ahold of. You can reach me on Twitter at Duncan Kinney. Uh, you can reach me by email at Duncan K at progress, Alberta.ca. I also accept compliments, not just hate mail, but, uh, but feel free to get ahold of me. Uh, thanks so much to cosmic fam, you communist for the amazing theme. Thank you for listening and goodbye. See ya. Bye.