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Desh Amila

https://deshamila.com/biography/

https://kitcaster.com/desh-amila/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/deshamila/

https://twitter.com/desh_amila?lang=en

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Desh Amila

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

people,

documentaries, important, Sri Lanka, podcasts, civil war, understand, science,

conversations, film, ideas, country, movie, system, world, truth, Desh,

freedoms, lived, intellectual

SPEAKERS

Desh Amila, Ed

Watters

Ed Watters 

00:00

There's

no better way to close out a season than with a great call to action. To make a

better world, it takes action. Our guest today is Desh Amila. And we talk about

his fantastic documentaries. Now, more than ever, we need courageous men and

women to stand up. We need people to talk; we need communication. Our world can

feel like it's falling apart around us. But all it takes is for people to

educate themselves. With the great documentaries that Desh and his team put

together, they illustrate how important it really is to remember history. And

more important, how to challenge yourself to understand what is truth. Let's

not waste any more time and get into this great episode to finish off this

fabulous season. And I can't wait for next season. Let's get into this.  To overcome, you must educate. Educate not

only yourself but educate anyone seeking to learn. We are all Dead America. We

can all learn something. To learn. We must challenge what we already

understand. The way we do that is through conversation. Sometimes we have

conversations with others. However, some of the best conversations happen with

ourselves. Reach Out and challenge yourself. Let's dive in and learn something

right now. Today we have Desh Amila with us. He is a documentary filmmaker, and

he is a passionate advocate for change. Desh, could you please introduce

yourself and let people know just a little bit about who you are and how you

got to where you are today.

Desh Amila  03:47

Thank

you for having me. I am, as you mentioned, a documentary filmmaker. I'm also an

entrepreneur, and I migrated to Beston, Australia. I migrated to Australia just

over 20 years ago from a country called Sri Lanka. Some of your listeners may

know the country. My journey has largely shaped me during my time in Sri Lanka,

which was 1981. My birth year was the beginning of a civil war. So I've only

known my country as a country of Civil War, which lasted 28 years. So I've

moved to Australia in about 2000. And since then, I have been involved in the

various number of things. My education was in filmmaking. But around 2010, I

started getting involved with intellectual events. So I've been running events

for a very long time, and I had the luxury of working with Some of the greatest

minds in the world. And it's always been my dream eventually to start making

films. In 2019, early 2019, late 2018, I released my first film, Islam and the

future of tolerance, featuring Sam Harris and Maajid Nawaz. And I have a new

movie called Better Left Unsaid, which is scheduled to come out in March this

year.

Ed Watters 

05:32

 Well, both of those are very good

documentaries. And I highly recommend people getting over and watching those

because they explain a lot. History, people forget history a lot. And you bring

up a lot of this brutality that's happened over the history of our nation,

especially as the United States. In this recent documentary, you did you point

out America's roots, kind of were born out of this socialism nature due to

Jamestown. Now, we all know about the Mayflower Compact, but a lot of people

don't get into that aggregate of what really happened there. Could you let us

know a little bit more about why you went that far back to bring up what we are

going through today?

Desh Amila 

06:34

 Well, it's important to understand context,

whatever we are speaking about. And, you know, the purpose of the movie, too,

is to examine some of the now rather mainstream popular ideas from the fervors

of the political left. And they've really become so popular because

entertainers, politicians, are spouting these ideas, as these are new,

fantastic ideas. When it's presented without the historical context, they do

sound like amazing ideas. Now, this is coming from somebody who considers

politically on the center-left. So it was important for us to go as far back as

possible, both from a philosophical point of view in the sense of what

philosophical ideas underpin some of these political ideas. And we go all the

way back to the philosophers of modernism and postmodernism because, at the end

of the day, we are talking about the future of the Western civilization. And if

we do not really dig deep and try to understand the roots we are, we will make

the same mistakes. And that is the main reason we decided to go down the

direction we did for this movie.

Ed Watters 

08:19

Well, I commend

you on the direction you took it, you know, we need that truth. We need that

digging deep inside and finding out why things are the way they are. In today's

world. We are so polarized that nobody wants to talk anymore. People are afraid

to voice their opinion because they might get canceled in the new cancel

culture.  You really highlight a lot of

this. Going back into the Mao, the Stalin, you know, the Lenin, a lot of people

don't really understand history. And if we don't like you just said, we fall

into it. You also stated all groups hold four fundamental truths to be self-evident.

Could you go over those with us? And let us know why you believe these things.

Desh Amila 

09:21

I want

to be clear about one thing, and I think it could be quite important. We set up

another call with the writer of this documentary. I'm the producer, and I've

come in as an editor as well. So the writing of this and this is directed by a

gentleman called Curt Jaimungal. And he categorized those four truths that

you've mentioned; I would be doing an absolute injustice trying to break that

part down. So I'm going to withhold my commentary on that. But I will

definitely do. Make sure I introduce you to Curt. So he can really do justice

explaining those four categories.

Ed Watters 

10:14

 Yeah, I think that is vital to understand,

especially today, you know, just to clarify, for our listeners, those four

fundamental truths are, number one, Lens Claim, number two, Evidentiary Claim.

Number three, Separation Claim. And number four, Call to Action. I found that

to be very important for people to understand because people do get into this

mindset, kinda like we've all heard of the hive mind. And we don't really want

to do our own homework with what your crew and yourself have done; you've

really put together some homework that a lot of people should be doing for

themselves. How did you put it all together? And how did you even start with a

beginning to this?

Desh Amila 

11:26

Well,

with regards to how did this all come about? Thanks to my first film Islam and

the future of tolerance, I have managed to reach a certain audience. And in

that audience was a first-time filmmaker, Curt Jaimungal, who reached out to me

and said he has an idea for a new documentary. And he wanted some advice, as

I've done it. So I was giving free advice to edit, who then eventually

presented to me a version of the film that he thought we should, I should see.

And that was about a just over a year ago. And when I saw what I saw, I saw the

potential of what this movie could be; it was in a very different form. So I

decided to put my hand up and said, I will produce this, and I will edit this.

Let's do this together. Because I could clearly see what was happening around

the world. And I, again, going back to my first point, my origin story, coming

from a country that has been through Civil War. And seeing once freedom has

been curtailed, seeing hundreds of 1000s of people dying. Just some of those

freedoms in the West we take for granted, and I don't I know lots of people do

it. What people don't realize is how fragile those freedoms are. They don't get

taken away from you over overnight, but they get chipped away, slowly but

surely. So this is something I've been worrying for a little while. So when the

movie came to me, and I realized how important this could be, and I want to

make a claim, up front here, there are parts of the movie, I actually disagree.

Curt and I, we made the film together, we disagree on certain parts. And we

actually have fundamental ideological differences. But that's okay. This is me

living what I preach, which is that this problem, political extremism in

today's world, is such a global problem, we need to address it. And when we do

so, we are going to come short at some point, but we need to start the

conversation. So that's why I've made this documentary with Curt, where I agree

with 80% of the content, and I disagree with 20% of the content, but that's

okay. We need to have the conversation, and the movie will force you to think

and present you with ways of thinking that you may have not come across.

Ed Watters 

14:33

 Yeah, that's the reason for Dead America right

there. And that's why I started this. People are not talking. We don't have to

agree. But we really need to have conversations, because conversations Well, it

helps us understand the people and if we don't understand and we just assume

that's how those wars start and here in America, you know, I've been praying.

And I've been really worried about the aspect of a possible Civil War. And

people are like gung ho for this. I don't really understand that mindset where

they want to start a civil war over things that we have already gone through.

truth is very vital. A lot of people. They can't handle the truth, or they

don't know how to talk the truth. You talk a lot about the differences on

transgender and the differences between politics. I find that to be refreshing

that people are actually challenging what people think they already know. I

thank you for coming on Dead America and giving us the details about your

documentary and what you do. You have come from a country that went through

Civil War; like you stated, the brutality of that Civil War, a lot of people do

not recognize. Now, you said that you actually lived through portions of that

before you immigrated?

Desh Amila 

16:35

Absolutely,

I definitely did. You know, again, when you're living through that, and if that

is the only known, you know, you don't find that to be abnormal, you, one has

to leave and look back at it from fresh set of eyes to realize what you live

through is horrendous. You know, I was born in a small town in Sri Lanka, where

I was born, was been the Civil War broke out, which is primarily in the north

of the country. But at the same time, on the south of the country, there was a

Maoist rebellion. So we were squeezed from both sides; my dad had to go into

hiding because of his political views. And it was absolutely normal for me to,

whenever we are going out of the school, to see soldiers with AK 47s walking

around checkpoints that will force us to get out of the bus and handle the

National ID card. So the the army could check that you're not a rebel or you're

not an  (LTTE) The Liberation Tigers of

Tamil Eelam. Terrorist. So that's what I grew up with. And I've seen, and my

parents did an amazing job of trying to give a normal childhood. But, you know,

I remember seeing middle of the road, these burnt tires, which is a common

sight, and what I now know, what was in the middle of those burnt tires was a

human being. And because that was a tactic, one of the Maoist rebels in Sri

Lanka used to curtail political dissent. So, you know, I've heard stories of

journalists being abducted, and we had a white van syndrome in Sri Lanka, where

you know, a white van will appear, and that's the last time somebody has seen

somebody, and then that that person's disappeared, you know, there's still I

believe, about 100,000 people who are missing in Sri Lanka. A this is growing

up then. And suicide bombs were at a regular occurrence. I know a story of a

number of students from the school I went to they died because they were in a

bus that blew up because of a suicide bomber. So that was normal. And, you

know, I remember when I was like, six or seven. In the playground, we would

talk about how many of ours died versus how many of theirs died; you know, it

was like a game for us. That shouldn't be ones childhood, but that's what

million and my experience is not unique in the sense of, you know, millions of

kids grew up in that time in my country. And again, it's also not unique to Sri

Lanka; there are many other countries that are still going through similar

experiences. See in there is something to be said about lived experiences. And

for me, the gratitude I have for the freedoms I have in the West. You know,

whenever I see people in the West try to head down a direction that may end up

in a civil war, I genuinely do not think they understand what they want. It is

a, there are systemic failures in, in many societies in the West, you know

there're things could be improved. But as a solution for that breaking down

those systems, and calling for revolution, calling for civil war, are

absolutely and utterly short-sighted. And if you put it like your podcast, the

documentaries I make are a reminder to people; there are better solutions than

breaking down the system. Because, you know, if you look at revolutions, and

whether it's the recent ones like the Arab Spring, I encourage you to look at

what happened after the revolution. How many revolutions don't have utopian,

perfect, or not even perfect, any semblance of normal reality to those people.

It doesn't work; we have a better system. We have a democracy; we have an

economic system, capitalism, that it has its own shortfalls. But it is a system

that we can mold and shape to continue to have the abundance we already have.

You know, it's extraordinary for me to even comprehend when people call for

things like Civil War, they do not know what they ask for. It's just; it is not

an answer to any other questions and issues you have.

Ed Watters 

21:58

Yeah, I

agree. 100%. It's brutal. You know, and a lot of people they say, well, that

can never happen here in America, but it already has. And it's because of the

indifferences. So communication and diplomacy is the way we see through these

things. The beauty of our system is it's a constitutional form of government,

and outlined inside the document itself, gives us the ways to ensure the safety

of the Union. And a lot of people go on social media nowadays, they get sound

bites, and then they become an expert on it. Instead of, like we said earlier,

digging into the aggregate of the issue and finding out what is really going

on. It's important, like you said, for these documentaries, podcasts, any form

of communication, to get reality back into our mindset. With with the onset of

the internet, I have noticed there's been a decline in people actually doing

their own studies, especially when it comes to political issues. How do we fix

that? Do you have any idea, Desh?

Desh Amila 

23:35

Well,

this is this is a very complex situation. And I urge anyone to run away from

anyone who's giving simple answers to that because it isn't simple. We're going

through an extraordinary time in human history, where we have this incredibly

powerful tool, social media. Not so long ago, this was a tool that was used to

spawn revolutions; it was considered like, again, I mentioned Arab Spring,

right? It was primarily organized and run, thanks to social media. Now the same

what people didn't realize the flip side of the same coin, you can use the same

tool to divide and utterly decimate society, and it is happening. So what the

solution needs to be is we need to really look into the power of this system

and understand the motivations of this system. We have come up with ways to

regulate almost every industry; you know, when the seatbelt was introduced to

cars, lots of people didn't like the idea, but now you would be hard-pressed to

find somebody who would think seat belts are somehow curtailing your freedom.

It's still you; you can still drive around. But you just have to put a seatbelt

because it is 100%. Safe. So I think we are going through that now. I think

regulate regulators are looking at ways to regulate the social media platforms.

Because at the end of the day,...