Speak Plainly Podcast
Hosted by 2 time best-selling trauma author, Owl C Medicine. A veteran of the US Military, Owl's no nonsense approach to mental physical and relational health is exactly what you didn't know you need. Listen in for ideas worth chewing on and science based tools for living life after trauma.
Speak Plainly Podcast
Luigi Mangioni: Hero? or Troubled kid? Reform? or Revolution.
Can violence ever be justified when striving for societal change, or is the peaceful path always preferable? This episode of the Speak Plainly podcast sets the stage with a bold examination of the life and actions of Luigi Mangione, a figure whose recent events have ignited a firestorm of public discourse. We unravel how narratives shape reality, questioning the power of storytelling in molding public opinion and its potential to distort truths, much like a game of telephone. As we navigate these turbulent waters, we challenge the listener to think critically about the delicate balance between benefiting from and being oppressed by societal systems.
Our exploration takes us through the annals of history and current events, scrutinizing how figures like Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X harnessed the tension between violence and nonviolence. The conversation digs into the roots of misunderstood groups like the Black Panthers and Antifa, urging for a reassessment of their contributions to societal change rather than dismissing them as mere radicals. We confront the moral and ethical quandaries posed by systemic oppression, inviting listeners to consider scenarios where violence might seem unavoidable, questioning long-held mantras and societal norms that often oversimplify these complex issues.
As the discussion unfolds, we delve into the personal territory, reflecting on empathy's role in decision-making and the struggle between revolution and reform. This episode invites a reevaluation of what it means to be 'good' versus 'whole', encouraging a deeper understanding of personal values when faced with moral dilemmas. Through challenging conversations and provocative questions, we urge our audience to reflect on their own beliefs about violence and change, ultimately sparking a dialogue on how each of us can advocate for a more equitable world.
Music by Wutaboi
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Thank you, hey everybody, and welcome back to another episode of the Speak Plainly podcast, where we speak plainly about things that matter. On today's podcast we're going to be talking about Luigi Mangione, my new favorite crush, but everybody's talking about him right now. I normally don't do this. I don't almost ever talk about current events unless I'm talking about it's Christmas time or family time and that sort of thing. I don't normally concern myself with much that's going on in real time, because everything that we hear in the media is the telephone game being controlled by major power players major power players. So not only is it major power players manipulating the information, it's manipulated information going telephone from person to person to person to person and from network to network to network, because there's really only a handful of like investigators, like there's a few small number of people who are actually involved in these cases, and a million networks that all cover them. And I've already seen where it was a McDonald's employee that recognized him and called in but turns out that that actually wasn't the case. It was a McDonald's employee who called because a person in the McDonald's was like, hey, you should probably call because I think I recognize that guy and that in and of itself, I think is worth talking about this person, recognized this person eating in the McDonald's, recognized Luigi Mangione from the photos, but she wouldn't say anything. She was too chicken shit to say anything. So she told an employee who is in a state of I must do what I'm told because I'm here at work and the customer is always right. So there's all of this priming that if you know what psychological priming is, there's all this priming that already has this person like leaning toward just doing what they're told and going out and calling and reporting on reporting Luigi right. So I think that that is interesting already, because I heard that it was a McDonald's employee that narked on him and then I just listened to a thing that was very anti him and it started with them being like I can't believe.
Speaker 1:People are talking about him as a hero, which spoiler alert, I think he's a fucking hero in a way, but we'll get there. They pointed out that it was this other person in the McDonald's eating area that told a McDonald's employee to call in. But all I've seen and what I keep hearing reported is that a McDonald's employee saw him and reported him and there's a little minor, there's a minor step in there. But those minor steps, when you add them all up, have massive implications on people's actions and reactions and how we think about a certain situation. So just keep in mind that, as you hear about this because it's going to be everywhere for a while as you hear about this, keep the details in mind.
Speaker 1:Take notes today about the things like the most detailed aspects of the things that you hear about this story and see how they morph over time. Write down the exact words that people use and watch how they are manipulated and morphed over time. And I don't even mean necessarily manipulated by a person who is trying to create a certain narrative, but because we've all played the game telephone and that is what happens. On top of there are people trying to control a narrative, because that's the single most powerful thing that there is in any given situation. We know this from all of our trauma stuff that we talk about all of the time.
Speaker 1:But what I actually want to talk about, other than the fact that he's bae, he's fucking gorgeous is how do we affect change in a society that we both benefit from and oppresses us? How do we affect change in a society where slow, purposeful murdering of people is legal and part of the system itself. It is a mandatory part of the system that we live in. How are we supposed to affect change when we are being murdered? That isn't also murder? That's the question I want to talk about today, because I've been online and I normally, like I said, I don't get involved in this stuff, but this one's fucking exciting man this one's fucking exciting because this is how I have always dreamt of making action, of changing things, and it's always going to be a person in their young 20s who does it, because they don't have their prefrontal cortex to tell them not to. But we need to have this discussion and I think every single one of you listening you need to be able to have this discussion with somebody in your life, because this is the shit that actually matters. A regular-ass person shot a CEO of one of the largest health groups in the world.
Speaker 1:We all say we don't want any billionaires, right? Well, I mean, all of my people do, and if you don't, you're part of the problem. But we all say we don't want billionaires. Billionaires shouldn't, they shouldn't exist. That is an obscene amount of money. But what are you going to do about it? What are you going to do? How do you want to deal with people that you love being manipulated and left for dead by companies that they have paid thousands, tens, hundreds of thousands of dollars into over the course of their life? Because, again, these things are mandatory now and you have to play this system. We're being forced to play this system and we're being forced to play a system that does not care if we live or die. So how are we going to affect change? That's what I want to talk about.
Speaker 1:I posted on Facebook what I keep doing, this and I keep thinking that's like innocuous kind of comments or at least somewhat middle groundy, and I thought my middle groundy statement was fine and middle groundy and it's. It said basically something along the lines of If you think the the CEO shooter is the problem, you need to zoom way out like way the fuck out, because again, they live in a system that they occupy the power roles of, a system that we are subject to and we are forced to play the games of. So when I made this post, it's gotten a bunch of comments and stuff, and some with my closest friends and I. This is a hill I will die on, so I'm totally fine being a two against one on this. He said I don't care that he's dead, but violence is not the answer. Violence is never the answer. And my response to that is horseshit. That is horseshit.
Speaker 1:The people who believe that violence is never the answer have lived a privileged life. But let me repeat myself, I'll say it now and I'll say it till I die People who say violence is never the answer have had a privileged fucking life, and good for you. I'm glad. I'm glad that you've had that life and I'm glad you think that violence is never the answer, because violence is rarely the answer. It is rarely the answer, and this is the point I want to get across to people. Whatever you believe, most of us believe that murder is wrong, that violence is never the answer, and these are things that have been implanted in us since we were children. They're rote statements that we just blurt out all of the time and because of that they become core beliefs, and I talk about core beliefs a lot in Rethinking Broken. I've talked about them a little bit on here. Core beliefs are very fundamental to the way that we interact with the world and to our senses of self, and here's part of what I think is happening. I say good on him because I'm going to leave most of the details out because you can hear them from anybody and everybody, but the guys.
Speaker 1:The shooter is 26 years old, or the alleged shooter is 26 years old. He was an Ivy League student. He had, he got a bachelor's and a master's degree with a minor in mathematics a master's degree with a minor in mathematics. He ran a bunch of business clubs where it was like business startups, tech startup clubs. He started his own tech startup company. He was a very promising person who then wound up getting spinal surgery and I tried to find more information about what happened with the spinal surgery. But he was super social, got spinal surgery and then the the um. I. I wanted to listen to a fuck that guy, he's a piece of shit, um thing right before this. And that's exactly what I did.
Speaker 1:I listened to them being like Luigi's a piece of shit and they were going hard on him, but they would not talk at all about the back surgery or what happened. They just talk about him being a wonderful, like wonderful, positive person. And then something happened. Something happened and he went antisocial and he went rogue the piece of evidence that they used to say that he quote became an ideological extremist was that on his ex he posted a quote that you probably know that says being well adapted to a sick society is no measure of health. Or flip that it's no measure of health to be adapted to a sick society, whichever one. I forget what it is now health to be adapted to a sick society, whichever one. I forget what it is now that that was their reasoning as to why he was an ideologue. He was an extremist, an ideal extremist. That's mad. That shows you how fucked our system is. That when somebody says being like because that's a statement of fact, that's not an extremist ideal, that's a statement of fact. If you are well adjusted to a sick society, then you are sick, period. That's there's. No, there's no way around that.
Speaker 1:The problem is, the people who maintain the narratives in the media all rely on that system fully and completely for every single thing that they do. Because if you're doing well in America, if you were doing even kind of well in America, you were relying on that system deeply, deeply. All of us, including me. I rely on that system, not nearly as much as the overwhelming majority of Americans, but even I rely somewhat on that system. I have friends in my life who rely almost none at all outside of using roads. They don't really. They're like fuck it, and I love that. But the reality is all of us live in this intersectionalist reality where legal murder they can legally just withhold stuff from you. It's part of their business plan as an insurance company to constantly try to deny you coverage for the things that you've paid into for years of your life. That is part of the actual structure of their business plan. If you don't think that that's fucked, you're fucked, period.
Speaker 1:I like this is going to be an intense, an intense episode, because I really, really think people need to be able to think about this. If you're the regular person, then you probably think violence is not the answer. Let me point out to you what I believe based largely on Dr Sapolsky, robert Sapolsky's book Behave the biology of humans at our best and worst, and everything I've learned about behavioral biology. What I want to point out to you is that in truth and what I mean by that is, in observable reality, no-transcript Turns out. There's no such thing as a universal morality, none, and you Christians might have an issue with this, and probably if. If you're a, if you're like a, if you're a, take it, the take the bible, literally christian you're gonna have an issue with this and that's fine. That's your problem.
Speaker 1:The thing that I see observable reality, even even even jesus did it. They're like anger. Anger is something that's not good unless it's justified. It's righteous anger. Jesus flipping over the tables of the people who were gambling and exchange and the money changers in the temple that was righteous anger. He flipped the tables and got violent and said he didn't punch anybody, supposedly, but he had righteous anger and said to get out. That's the closest thing that we have in the Bible. For everybody else who doesn't give a shit about the Bible, we see human behavior over and over and over again and we watch it in real time and you probably don't pay close enough attention.
Speaker 1:But murder is wrong, right, violence is never the answer and you can probably say that, you probably have said that and even in response to this Luigi Mangione stuff. Violence is never the answer. But what happens when your child gets raped? Is violence the answer? Then? What happens when your grandma's coverage that she's paid into for 40, 50 years says no, you don't get covered for this life-saving thing. How does that make you feel? Does that make you feel violent? Watching your daughter get murdered? How about that? How about watching a cop shoot your dog? How about that? How about death row? You don't seem to have a problem with death row.
Speaker 1:You live in a society in which we put people to death all of the time, people who we know have severe brain injuries from poverty, from sports, from abuse, and we know that they can't even regulate their own responses when they've been triggered because of those head injuries and so they were. They were primed, they were conditioned and then triggered and their neurology took over. And we can prove this. And in fact, robert sapolsky does this, goes to courts and this is what he does his entire life like, for his whole career. Now, he shut down all of his teachings at Stanford, he shut down his primatology lab, he shut down his hippocampal lab at Stanford, and all he does is go to death row and, well, go to court cases and try to get people's sentences reduced or removed off of death row, because we can prove that people weren't in control of their actions.
Speaker 1:This CEO perfectly in control of his actions, every single action that he made, every single choice to run the business the way that it was run every single time. That was an active choice that he made knowing that it would kill tens of thousands of people. And you know what he thought? Because this is the way business is done. This is not evil just in him. This is the way business is in America. This is the way the system is. He's like well, that's just the way business is done. That's how they handle it. That's just the way business is done. That's how they handle it. That's just the way business is done. Guess what? This is how your business is handled now.
Speaker 1:Congratulations. You got yourself shot in the back of the fucking head and good, I'm fucking glad. I'm sorry that that dude is now dead and that his family is going to suffer. I've actually you know what. Take that back. I'm sad that his family is going to now suffer. Fuck him. I give no shits that he's dead. And that's where. That's where, like, all agree but they keep going back to.
Speaker 1:Violence is not the answer and the the issue with that is that is a demonstrably false statement. It is a statement that we want to believe because we've been told it since we were children, and that's what makes us good little boys and good little girls, and those of us who are still worried about being good little boys and good little girls are still repeating those same bullshit little exercises to make us all obedient. We're still repeating that same crap in our heads going violence is never the answer. Well, sorry, I got my ass beat by bullies in school and you know what made them stop. I fought back. I beat the shit out of my biggest bully after he whooped my ass like five fucking times in a row and I finally figured out how I was going to actually be able to fight back and maybe win. I finally did, and guess what? I was left the fuck alone. Left the fuck alone.
Speaker 1:Finally, I was experiencing violence on a regular basis. I told the people I was supposed to tell. Nothing happened. It didn't matter. I did the things, I followed the right steps and I still got my ass kicked all the time Until I stood up for myself and I got violent. This is why I will never be a non-violent person. If you have made it this far in your life and you can still say and believe with all of your heart violence is never the answer. Good for you. At least you're not going to make the world a worse place actively, but you will make the world a worse place passively. You will be the people that the Gulag Archipelago was written about, to warn us about us.
Speaker 1:If you don't know, the Gulag Archipelago it is the most important literary piece of work written in this century. It is a compilation of hundreds of stories of people who escaped the gulags. All of the horror, horror stories of what they went through and, specifically, what's so fucked up about it. And the reason that it was written was it's not just, it's not meant to be a horror story, it's meant to be a a horror story. It's meant to be a fucking warning. It's meant to be a warning because it's not just oh, this person did all these awful things and this person did awful this, these awful things, and this place was like this and they did these awful things. No, these are very specific stories with details of people's lives from before. They were arrested for absolutely nothing and drug away, but the the thing is they were stealing students and then they were stealing teachers, they were stealing artists. They were taking these people and they were disappearing and no one was ever seeing them again and everybody was so afraid that it might happen to them, that no one said anything, no one stood up, and that's what allowed it to continue over and over and over and over again.
Speaker 1:It is the tolerance of intolerance that drives this crap. There is one thing I will always be intolerant of, and that's intolerance. I will not allow that, in the same way that I will not allow violence and I will use violence to stop violence Because that, in the same way that I will not allow violence and I will use violence to stop violence because that is the only way. We are fucking chimpanzees. People need to get that through our little heads. We're animals. We are crude, cruel, fucking monkeys and you got to get that through your head. I did an episode not very long ago on the chimpanzee war where I proved like chimps, went into straight up war for a couple of years to murder an entire faction of chimpanzees that separated off a couple of years before and went down south and created their own little confederacy and every single member that went down there all murdered murdered one by one, by one, by the original crew. We are murderous, hairless chimpanzees.
Speaker 1:You need to understand that. If you want to actually make positive change in the world, you need to understand that humans are vile, disgusting creatures as much as we are wonderful, inspiring, creative, beautiful, marvelous creatures. There is no separating one from the other. It is the horror of the human animal that gives rise to the artistry and the genius of the human being. You cannot separate the two.
Speaker 1:So if you want to live over here in la-la land of violence is never the answer, just understand that you are not actually helping anything. You're making your life easier by just glomming on to one little phrase that then allows you to not have to put thought into situations like this. And that's what those little phrases are for, that's what these core beliefs are for. There are too many variables and too many situations in which we need to consider too many variables for us to put the same amount of effort into every single one of those choices. So, because of our experiences, like mine getting beat up and my affinity toward I will stop violence with violence. That's because of my experience, right, and the people who say violence is not never the answer, that's because that's been their experience. They've been able to solve the problems that they've experienced in life without violence.
Speaker 1:I have not. Most of them, yes, Some of them absolutely not. Some of them absolutely not. And that's the thing. There is no way out from under this kind of system without a violent revolution. People always go back and they're like what about Gandhi? What about Martin Luther King? Fuck Martin Luther King. Martin Luther King wouldn't have fucking mattered without Malcolm X Sorry, wouldn't have fucking mattered. Wouldn't have fucking mattered without the Black Panthers. Like he's the guy that white people glom onto to say why don't you black people be more like Martin Luther King? You know why? Because he wasn't fucking useful by himself. He wasn't. He was useful because he was a marvelous speaker and a figurehead and a good man and a good-looking man and he did the nonviolence thing and that was the tipping point. But he was the crest of the wave. He was the white water on the top of the wave that, once the tide had rushed in of all of the years of oppression and all of the anger and all of this crap that built up and all of this violence and black people going, we're going to have to do what we're going to have to do. We need to provide for ourselves. We need to give ourselves guns and give ourselves food and run our own education programs. That's what the Black Panthers were.
Speaker 1:People now are terrified of them. They think they're some kind of terror organization. Same thing with Antifa. Are you fucking kidding me? Do you know what Black Panthers did? Black Panthers fed their community, they educated their community, they protected their own communities. Antifa same thing. And they're both both legally registered in the United States as terrorist organizations, an anti-fascist organization. In America, anybody who says they are anti-fascist is automatically a terrorist legally in the United States, which means we're a fascist, fucking country. We're a fascist fucking country. We're a fascist fucking country. People. We are a fascist country. And here's the proof.
Speaker 1:And you were telling me that violence is not the answer. Violence is never the answer. Violence is not the way out. You're fucking wrong. Good for you for being so privileged.
Speaker 1:I'm glad when it comes to situations of where violence is being perpetrated. If you have never had violence perpetrated on you, shut your fucking mouth. That's how I feel about it. If you've never been oppressed and had actual violence, actual violence perpetrated on you by somebody that was the same size as you, not like my daddy hit me. There ain't nothing you can do about that because your daddy's big and you're tiny. Same thing with mom. That's not the same kind of violence I'm talking about. I'm talking about a person who is not a member of your direct family, who is your equal as far as one human versus another, you're about the same size and they're perpetrating violence against you.
Speaker 1:If you have never had that happen, then when it comes to other people responding to violence happening to them, shut your fucking mouth. You don't have a single leg to stand on. You have no right to try to manipulate anybody else's opinions on this. None, because you have no point at which you can stand and say hmm, I've gone through that, I understand to some degree. You have none.
Speaker 1:So, when it comes down to how do we get ourselves out of situations of systemic violence if you continue to utter the words violence is never the answer. Know that you're wrong and you're part of the problem. Violence is never the answer. Know that you're wrong and you're part of the problem. You are part of the problem now because that belief is what holds back the tide of change, that tide of black people taking their own power back and doing it through the Black Panthers and through Malcolm X and eventually winding up with the head and the face of Martin Luther King. Those beliefs are what hold back the tide and prevent a person like Martin Luther King from coming on top and being the figurehead that pulls everything over from the top of the wave.
Speaker 1:You need to understand that you saying violence is never the answer, is condemning a person for doing to someone else what was done to them, and I'm sorry. When it comes to life and death, that's not something to fucking play with. This is not an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth leaves the whole world snaggletoothed and blind. That is a thing it is. But when you're playing with people's fucking lives eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth absolutely. If you are okay with wiping away tens of thousands of people because oh well, they're old, oh well they're sick, oh, and this is my job, I'm the CEO and you're making millions of dollars off of that, that level of violence, goodbye Period, sorry, not sorry. Actually I get it to some degree because that's the world.
Speaker 1:If you want to do well and you want to be comfortable in this world, then you need to play the system. But this is why I constantly and I sign and I constantly seek out and I even sign off with, stay curious and stay uncomfortable, because it is that seeking of comfort it's the seeking of comfort, even in that statement of violence is never the answer. We seek comfort in that statement because we don't know what to believe, we don't know how to believe, we don't know how to feel about this, where I think everybody is running up against this juxtaposition in their head. We're all dealing with this cognitive dissonance, and that's what I want to get out the cognitive dissonance. I want you to not ignore it. I don't want you to wipe away that cognitive dissonance with any one, any one phrase, whether it's mine and like I will never tolerate intolerance or whether it's somebody else's, and saying violence is never the answer. Whatever little quip you come up with to not have to put more thought into this, I encourage you to stop, I encourage you to not use any of those quips and I encourage you to think logically of okay, how? What form of recourse is there? Is there a form of recourse? Should there be a form of recourse for a person who has been paying into their healthcare system? They're constantly denied. We like, we all know this story, we all know the story.
Speaker 1:And this guy, he had spinal surgery. This is another thing I wanted to talk about and I got distracted. He had spinal surgery and then went all antisocial. Imagine, just imagine he had spinal surgery and goes all antisocial and gets all weird and read the Unabomber's book and was like, wow, he's kind of onto some shit. And the fucked up thing is the Unabomber's book and was like, wow, he's kind of onto some shit. And the fucked up thing is the Unabomber was onto some shit. He just maybe shouldn't have bombed a whole fucking building. But like, when that happens to you, you go and you get surgery. Hey, then he turned all antisocial and he stopped hanging out with his friends and he stopped doing this and he stopped doing that.
Speaker 1:Why, we don't know, but my guess not having any idea and this is just my conditioning of who I spend my time with and who I've spent my time with in my life I know a lot of people who went in, got surgeries and then wound up addicted to narcotics. There's a very real chance that he wound up going in getting a bunch of lortab and like needing that, taking it for pain, getting addicted to it, and now he's an addict with nothing left to lose. He can't do the things that he used to do. He was a young, hot fit, like everything everybody want. You see them eyebrows, girl, like he. He had everything and then he has this surgery and who knows, who knows what happened with all of that. But I do know those lumbar surgeries. They do a number on you and your health and he did report excruciating pain. He reported a lot of pain past his surgery. My guess is he had all that pain and also coming from a well-to-do family and going straight into college and a master's degree and all of that with that kind of money.
Speaker 1:It's very common for wealthy families to not be all that attuned to their children and not and look up attunement if you don't know attunement. But it's very easy for them to not be as attuned to their children because they're trying to provide the physical needs for their children. So they're working all the time and they don't get as much of that like oxytocin bonding attunement thing happening. And if any of you have ever done heroin or even narcotics really strong opioids feel a lot like a hug and if you never had that from your parents and I have no idea if he did or did not it makes sense that that's like extra, like extra lovely and that's one of the reasons so many people get addicted after surgeries and who knows, who knows if he was addicted or whatnot. But it certainly does fit the narrative of outgoing wonderful person who then had surgery and then got all antisocial, started reading stuff about the structure of America being all fucked up and then went and did something about it. That's what I see as far as the story of this.
Speaker 1:But what I really want to get through to people is I really want to get through to your head. Stop wiping away your cognitive dissonance on situations like this. Stop wiping it away. Actually, think about what could he have done If. What is the answer? What is the answer to hundreds of thousands of people being denied, literally life-saving coverage so other people can make more money? Like, literally, we're trading people's lives for people's livelihoods. Literally, we're trading lives for livelihoods. And that is the business that that CEO was in. He was in the business of trading people's lives for someone else's livelihoods. But hey, they're old and they're poor, so it doesn't really matter, I'm going to make more money and we'll be great. These pharmaceutical companies they spend 19 times more on average on advertising than they do on research 19 times more. That's mad, like it is such a ridiculous system and we need a new one.
Speaker 1:And the thing is, if you think that we need a new one the way that I think we need a new one you have to understand that all efforts to reform undermine any effort for revolution, and what we need is a revolution that people sit in that determine how they feel about whether or not shooting a CEO is okay or not even okay. I don't even know how to describe that, but I think the thing that's going to separate people into this is do you think the United States can be reformed or do you think it needs a revolution? And if you believe that it can be reformed, I think you're wrong. And if you think it needs revolution, we're on the same page. If you think the United States can become a power for good by just tweaking the system which is what a reform is by reformatting, by reforming the system in some way, by tweaking it here and there do you think that the United States as a whole can be a power for good for its people and for the people around the world by just tweaking a few things? If that is the case, then you are on the side of reform. If that is not the case and you think that basically, the entire thing needs to be like torn down and rebuilt, then you're on the side of revolution, and I think these are the two houses that people are going to sit in.
Speaker 1:People are going to be on the side of reform. They're going to say that violence is never the answer, and people on the side of revolution are going to say, occasionally, it's the only answer. And that's the thing. These types of moments divide people greatly, people who have 98% of everything in common. We might agree on 98% of everything, but if one of the fundamental things that we disagree on is whether we believe in reform or revolution for the United States, that's going to fundamentally shift how we view the alleged CEO shooter. I think that's a major part of it.
Speaker 1:Like I said, I think it's cognitive dissonance that we are seeking to resolve as quickly as possible, and most of us want to resolve it. Every time we see dissonance, we want to resolve it, with us ending up on the side of I'm a good person and good little boys and girls aren't violent. That's the whole concept. And I want to say in a sick society, a truly good, truly strong person understands the necessity for the capacity of violence. That's what I believe. If you want to be a good, solid, strong person who makes differences like big differences that actually matter in the world and matter to other people, then for me what that means is being a whole person, and being a whole person means leaving behind being a good person. That's what it means to me. If we want to be better each of us, in whatever society or culture that we're in if we want to be better, we need to focus on being a whole person.
Speaker 1:For a long time, I really stressed myself out years and years ago 10 years ago about being a good boyfriend, about being a good student, about being a good airman, about being a good staff sergeant, about being a good NCO, about being a good family practice clinic person, about being a good medic, about being a good NCO, about being a good family practice clinic person, about being a good medic, about being a good nurse, about all the things about being a good acupuncturist, about being a good osteopath, and what I realized is there are skills involved in there. Sure, that I have to get down, no matter what, but for the most part, outside of those skills, I don't need to worry about being a good acupuncturist or a good boyfriend or a good this or a good that. If I just focus on being a good person, that would take care of most of it for me. And that got me really really far. It really did. I was able to drop having to be a good this and a good that and a good this and a good that, because each of those identities have aspects, they have roles built into those identities that bump up against the other identities in ways that are not congruous and that creates dissonance, that creates friction.
Speaker 1:And now, at this point in my life, I no longer am concerned about being a good person, I'm concerned about being a whole person. I don't want to be good, I want to be whole. I don't want the happy feelings, I just I want the happy feelings and the sad feelings. I want positive and negative emotions, the sad feelings. I want positive and negative emotions and I want to be able to move through them easily without getting hung up on one or the other. Maybe I'll squeeze a little extra few drops out of the positive ones if I can, but inevitably that means I'm going to squeeze a few out of the negative too, most likely.
Speaker 1:But I really believe, if we focus on being a whole person, we can leave behind being the good person part, because being a whole person involves being a good person, and to me, in a corrupt society, you're not a good person unless you stand up to corruption, and that takes balls, that takes backbone. You have to stand up to corruption in order to be better than corruption period. If you are not standing up to corruption, you are not any better than it. This is a really intense, like in your face kind of podcast and mine usually are, but this is an extra in your face one, and I just, I really want people to stop wiping away their cognitive dissonance and start looking at why they believe what they believe and allow the scenarios to play out. Play each scene in your head one by one, by one, by one, from one to the next, to the next to the next to the next, and actually play these scenes out of like okay, if this, then this.
Speaker 1:If I believe that violence is never the answer, then you have to come up with a situation in which you think violence is the only answer or the easiest answer, and sit and try to find ways out of that that are not violent. But when you go to do that, then you go okay, well, violence is never the answer. But what about? We'll use pedophilia? What happens if we then come? Violence is never the answer. But then we come home and see somebody raping our five-year-old child. Violence is never the answer. What now? What now? You can physically separate them. You can physically separate them and say don't ever do that again and never come back. That's not physically violent. Maybe that counts, though, for you.
Speaker 1:Are you talking about physical violence? Are you talking about emotional violence? Are you talking about spiritual violence? Are you talking about manipulation types of violence, because all of those are forms of violence. Are you just talking about physical violence? Is physical violence the only type of violence that's never okay? And in this situation, is physical violence still not okay? If you see somebody raping your child, physical violence not okay? Okay, is physical violence okay, but murder is not.
Speaker 1:What happens if, then, you freak out and you hit the person in the head or whatever? Something happens and the person that you stopped from raping your child is now dead, how do you feel about that? How do you feel about going to our court rooms? How would you feel about you stopping a person from raping your child and all you did was physically separate. You just pushed them apart, peeled the two apart and he fell backwards and hit his head and died. And now you are, you're going to court. How do you feel about that? How do you both? How do you feel about that if you are black and the person in there was white and now it's just hearsay, it's just your word against his? Now you have a baby who can't do or say much of anything and you have your word as a black man or a black woman against a well-to-do white man who came in and was raping your baby. Something like these scenarios can happen. If we want to have these core beliefs and live our life by them, then these core beliefs pop up because of like, they pop up as a thing that matters in specific scenarios. So create a scenario in which it matters and then play out those details.
Speaker 1:Do you still believe that violence is wrong? Do you believe physical violence is wrong or emotional violence is wrong? You have to think about these things If you want to be a whole person, which part of me, like I, still have the desire to be a good person. I still have desire to be a good boy Otherwise I wouldn't want to whisper it in my ear during sex and that sort of thing. It's in us. It's in us all. I'm not ashamed of it. I'm not ashamed that I want to be a good boy. I'm not ashamed that I want to be a good girl. I'm not ashamed that for me to be a whole person, because being a good person ties me up. It ties me up into only behaving a certain way and I don't know what that way is. Because a good boy and a good girl. The reason that you're good is because you obey these certain rules, no matter what.
Speaker 1:If you watch human beings as a whole and you say, in this scenario, this is okay and this is not okay, like rape or the death row, when you have all of these different variables, you have to consider them, and that's what I want you to do. I want you to really stop wiping away your cognitive dissonance with these simple little things like violence is never the answer. At least run yourself through those scenarios. Think of a situation in which you would want to be violent and then take it to its extreme, because things like this happen. Take it to the extreme and go okay. Would I actually feel like that in this scenario Because, like I said, if you have not had a person being physically violent against you, like physically beating you up and pushing you, putting you into this, then you have no dog in the fight.
Speaker 1:You have no idea what it's like. You have no idea what it's like and so for you to just say violence is never the answer is a cop out. It's a cop out and it's one that you earned. Most likely. Cop out because you're like well, I've never had to deal with this single revolution to be people who are the most traumatized. Do you understand that? Do you understand, by you believing that and you saying violence is never the answer, that the only people who are actually going to make the change, to make your life better, like your life within this system better, are going to be the people who have been radicalized because of the oppression and the violence that they have experienced?
Speaker 1:Because you have lived a cush little life in this way, in this violence type of way, because you've lived a cush, privileged little life, when you say violence is never the answer, you are removing yourself and your whole class of people, and it is a class. It is a class, you and your whole class of people are all probably in that reform category and not in the revolution category, because it's not that bad. It's not that bad for you. Yeah, it's bad. Of course it's bad, it's terrible, it's all terrible, but it's not that bad. It's not bad enough to like murder somebody. Well, fuck you. Yes, it is. Maybe it isn't that bad for you, maybe it's never been that bad for you, but it is that bad. It is that bad. And every time you remove yourself from action because of things like this, especially if you are loudly condemning people, if you're loudly condemning this shooter, you are the problem.
Speaker 1:It is that privileged life that has allowed you to just sit back and let things play. You happen to be born into a family that happened to make enough money to happen to not live in the ghetto where all the crack and all the heroin is and all the meth is. You've been privileged enough to not have drug addicts for parents. You were privileged enough to live in a neighborhood that was not violent. You are privileged enough to live in a neighborhood that was largely the same color skin as you, and so you never had to deal with that. You never had to deal with it because it happens in every single walk of life. I've got a buddy.
Speaker 1:Matt grew up in Virginia, got his ass beat constantly for being white just for being white, because he was in an all-black area that had been historically had not been very kind to black people, and kids are cruel Like it's. This is not a one race versus another thing. This is a human thing, which is why I constantly am focusing. Even though I know I do want to be a good boy, I am much more concerned with being a good human, and that means being able to do all the things that a human is capable of. I am capable of the greatest good and I am capable of the greatest evil, and you better fucking believe it. That is what gives me power, that is what gives every single one of us power.
Speaker 1:When you drop all that crap and you start actually living your life according to your own morality and your own systems and this is how you do it you stop wiping away your cognitive dissonance with these easy quips like violence is never the answer, and you start actually looking at the details of the situation and you go what do I actually believe? Like, yeah, I can throw that out there, but I'm not 19 anymore. I can throw out there a thing like that. But is that actually what I believe? Challenge those things and live according to your own morality, live according to your own value system. And whether you're on the side of reform or revolution, I think we can all agree that things are fucked and something needs to be done. I think we can all agree that things are fucked and something needs to be done.
Speaker 1:Maybe you don't think that shooting a CEO is one of the things that needs to be done, but it does seem like it's a lot more effective than whatever you have come up with, because chances are you don't have anything. Chances are you're like that's not the answer. Well, one of those other things I learned as a child is if you don't have a better suggestion, keep your mouth shut. Do you have a more effective suggestion? Because that's what I mean by better. What I mean by better is do you have something that is more effective with less fallout A lot of fallout here? This guy may. If he did it because it's all a legend he'll probably lose most of his life to jail or whatever, even though he's wealthy and privileged.
Speaker 1:It's just too high profile and it's a CEO of a major company and these companies now are pulling the faces. They're pulling their CEO faces off of all of their websites. So people don't know who they are, so they don't know what they look like, so they can't shoot them. They're afraid. And you know what they fucking should be. You know who else does that. You know who's always done that China, china and the people that own Tencent, the people who own, like, the single largest social media, messaging, multimedia platform in the world. They're all the same thing. They're all doing the same thing. They've removed themselves. They're invisible. They are the triad. They're like they are. They're gangsters of the highest level and now they're going into hiding. And they're going into hiding because somebody finally did something about it. Somebody finally did something to scare them into maybe, maybe, having slightly different behaviors. But the thing is, the system demands that they rape people because the system is run off of their stockholders and their stockholders and their stockholders.
Speaker 1:Congress passed laws many, many, many, many, many moons ago about how the CEOs and CFOs of companies are legally obligated to maximize profit every single quarter at any cost, as their dues to their stakeholders. I don't know if you knew that, but it is the stakeholders that are driving all of that. So also, if you have money in stocks and that money is invested in those companies, you are part of what is driving those companies to behave the way that they do. If you have stocks in these companies, you, as a stock holding person, are a shareholder and that is perpetuating the violence. And it sucks, because I know many people, especially out where I live, who are surviving on the dividends from their stocks while they're also constantly battling the insurance companies to pay for their treatments, which is honestly why a lot of them wind up coming to me because they get sick of that. But they get sick of that battle and they can get better care from me than they can from them and they don't have to argue about it and I'll actually explain shit.
Speaker 1:But I don't want to beat a dead horse. I just really want people to understand that for me, the whole violence is not the answer. Violence is never the answer. That's a cop out. Never should like, never say, never Right, and violence is never the answer. Never say, never See. See how there's. Those are automatically contradictory. We both say, we say them both as a as a kids. We say them all the time, but they're so core beliefs in you that create cognitive dissonance when you wonder was it appropriate? Maybe it wasn't the best, but is it like even kind of functional? Is that a cost that I'm willing to pay? I mean, it seems like it was a cost that Luigi was willing to pay, and that's why it's always a person in their young 20s, because only a person in their young 20s is like you know what? Everything is fucked for everybody and I need to do something about it. The rest of us old folks are just like I just want to make it better for me at this point. Luckily, I'm still somewhere in the middle, I think, but I'm definitely slowing down in my old age.
Speaker 1:I really wanted to share this with you guys. I don't normally talk about current events, but this really matters. How to reform or revolutionize the society that we live in is a necessary conversation, and it is not a conversation that we can have while people are throwing out nevers Like. Well, at least throwing out violence is never the answer, because never say never. We need to find the edge of our belief systems. If we want to live peacefully in our own minds, then we need to know what we believe, and we do that by finding the edges, by finding the places where core beliefs like never say never and violence is never the answer, where they bump up against each other. Well, why not never say never? Oh well, because there's always a situation that proves the rule. The exception proves the rule. Right, violence is never the answer. Here's the exception that proves the rule. Anyway, this is infinitely interesting to me and I wanted to get this out.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening. I hope that you will actually think about this. I hope you'll have conversations with people about how to revolutionize not did he do it or why did he do it, or blah, blah, blah. But how? How else are we supposed to enact change in a system that has so like nearly infinite power over us? How are we supposed to enact change like systemic change, systemic change that is good and lasting and helps many people? How are we supposed to do that when everything in the system is set up to not let us do that so they can make more money exchanging our life for income?
Speaker 1:Think about those things. Don't just let yourself comp out. Don't let other people around you comp out. We know that things are fucked. We've all known that things are fucked. Trump's going to be fucking president again and he was just attempted assassinated or whatever. Like everything's fucked.
Speaker 1:So how are you going to unfuck it? What are you going to do about it? What is okay? I mean, even before you think about what you're going to unfuck it, what are you going to do about it? What is okay? I mean, even before you think about what you're going to do, you got to think about what is okay for you to do and Luigi started a conversation here. He started a conversation with what is okay and, like I said, I think it's going to boil down to are you in the wheelhouse of reform or are you in the wheelhouse of revolution? And this makes me want to do a follow-up podcast on reform versus revolution and just show the history of all the ways that we've tried to reform this, that and the other, and all of the ways that the federal government and the systems and the corporations have all worked together to manipulate the system in ways that shut down every single bit of reform that would actually be impactful.
Speaker 1:The problem I have with Democrats is exactly this. This is the problem I have with Democrats it's violence is never the answer. Shut the fuck up. You're useless. Democrats are fucking useless, I'm sorry, they're fucking useless. No-transcript a room with, if you have a hundred good people, a hundred meditators, you have a hundred Buddhist meditators in a room with one violent psychopath. Guess what's going to happen? Even though they're outnumbered, even though the psychopath is outnumbered, they're all nonviolent. They're like no, I've taken an oath of nonviolence and now there's a room of 15 meditators dead and the psychopath is still loose.
Speaker 1:Did you win? Is that a win? Is that a win for society? Oh well, it's a win for me because I don't have to live with the guilt of killing him. Then you're fucking weak, like sorry, that's part of it. We are fucking animals, we are human animals and to me that is just weakness. And it's not the. It's not weakness of your like in some terrible, like deeply flawed way, it's. You've had a privileged enough life to not have to exercise those muscles and those muscles are weak. Privileged enough life to not have to exercise those muscles and those muscles are weak, the muscles of. I have done a thing that's really hard and now I have to carry that for the rest of my life.
Speaker 1:Talk to combat veterans. They know what I'm talking about. Anyway, I'm going to get off of this high horse. Thank you for listening, thank you for hanging out with me. I hope that you got something out of this. I hope that I pissed you off enough to have a conversation and talk to somebody about it and see are you in the team of reform? Are you in the team of revolution?
Speaker 1:Is violence an answer? Is violence never the answer? Is violence an answer most of the time? Part of the time? Almost never. When do you say never? Think about these things Like take this opportunity to go. How, if I don't like that the CEO was murdered? Okay? Can I live with something I don't like? Is that okay? Can I support something I don't like?
Speaker 1:I do have, like, empathy for, for people in the government and people in power. They're making decisions in an imperfect world, which means they're all like they're going to have imperfect decisions. Their solutions will all be imperfect and they have to make decisions that they know aren't as good as what they would like to make, and then they have to carry that, knowing that they disappointed everybody. I have empathy for that and this is the same exact role. I have empathy for Luigi and for his family and for all of it and for the family of the dead guy. I have empathy for them in that, but this is an opportunity to have a very, very important conversation and figure out what you actually believe and how you want to align yourself. Thank you for listening and remember stay curious and stay uncomfortable. Thank you, bye.