Let's Find Out - (Pt. 3a) The Philosophy of Bob Ross: Ancient History and Modern Leisure (A Bob Ross Deep Dive) ASMR

Episode Date: July 15, 2022

The book "Happy Clouds, Happy Trees: The Bob Ross Phenomenon" opened my eyes to just how many things are connected in culture, society, history, psychology, art, and life. Let's find out where Bob fits into all this. Bob Ross Deep Dive series: Part 1: His Legacy https://youtu.be/xrqTnUO5Mfc Part 2: His Biography https://youtu.be/q7pTA4CIoHQ Part 3A: The Philosophy of Bob Ross: Ancient History and Modern Leisure (this video) Part 3B: The Philosophy of Bob Ross: Industrial to Digital Revolution https://youtu.be/4kcb_7RvMcw Please consider buying this book if you enjoyed this video. I relied on many parts of it to illuminate Bob's impact on and continued connection to the world. Thanks so much for watching, commenting, and continually showing support for these little passion projects of mine, everyone. It means a lot and encourages me to try harder to discover more and explain more about life and what I wish I had known at a younger age. Music: Cover of Rhubarb by Aphex Twin Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 10:50 Bob Ross Inc.: Disclaimer and Discrimination 19:23 How to think about Bob in 2022 40:44 The Most Engaging Teachers are the most Effective 53:40 Permeated Traditional Class Boundaries 57:05 Lowered the Barrier to Entry 1:03:44 The "Bravery Test": Bob's Sense of Play, Danger, Challenging Himself 1:10:32 The Psychological Tools He Used 1:27:15 LEISURE: What Does Leisure Even Mean? 1:33:10 Integrated Absence of Leisure in Prehistory, Integrated 2:02:29 Creation of Free-time 2:05:55 Areté: Leisure in Greece 2:20:30 Otium and Negotium: Leisure and Business in Ancient Rome 2:25:16 Leisure After Rome and Under Christianity 2:32:40 Rediscovery of Areté: The Renaissance 2:37:30 Leisure and Discontent in the Modern Age 2:46:30 Segway to Part 3b: Thomas Cole and the Hudson River School 2:47:30 Black screen for sleep 3:19:43 The End #BobRoss #History #Philosophy #ASMR ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ ► If you'd like to show support for the channel: ▸Patreon (monthly donations) ........ https://www.patreon.com/LetsFindOutASMR ▸PayPal (one-time donation)......... https://www.paypal.me/LetsFindOutASMR ......... [e-mail] ▸Or if you shop on Amazon, using this link will support the channel at no extra cost to you: https://amzn.to/2LnNXd6 ▸Or see my Amazon Wishlist if you'd like to purchase a gift for the channel: http://a.co/9vUJ8eF ▸📪 If you'd like to mail me something: Let's Find Out ASMR (Rich) P.O. Box 1582 Palm City, FL 34991 ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ ► My Contact Information: ▸📧 Instagram............ https://www.instagram.com/lets_find_out_ig/ ▸📧 Discord.................https://discord.com/invite/PyUfaN7 (* I'm not very active here yet) ▸📧 Email................... I'd love to hear from you through email or instagram. (see the "About" section on my channel for my email (this helps me avoid scam and spam))

Where I live, a lot of the young people come over just to see the animals, see what kind of creatures Bob's got that day. And I think we need to learn to respect nature and all of God's little creatures. Yeah. Because it need cute. Well, that's a close-up and a half there, isn't it? A little devil. You ready?

Let's do it. In the classic 6th century BCE, Chinese philosophical text, the Tao Te Ching, Loutsee describes the Tao, translated often as the way being in the world, as a spiritual force that animates all things. Loutsee describes the experience of nature for a person who is in touch with that spirit. In harmony with the Tao, the sky is clear and spacious, the earth is solid and full. all creatures flourish together content with the way they are endlessly repeating themselves endlessly renewed once again returning to this book by conden blandy and cooemen happy clouds happy trees the bob ross phenomenon

this book is riddled with examples and comparisons and relations of Bob to cultural figures and cultural movements in society, in history, in spiritual engagements, in spiritual engagements, whether it's philosophy or religion. It was in this book, and we're primarily going to be looking at this book, and we're going to be unpacking much of what this book has to say about Bob, and how he fits into history. And we're going to find that there's so much more to Bob than just being a painter, even a teacher,

especially even a TV show host. After finishing this book, I walked away with a deeper appreciation for what Bob was doing, but also a deeper appreciation for all the most. movements and changes and shifts, evolutions and revolutions in history and society. And it's clear that what Bob was doing in the joy of painting, in each episode, he was sharing an experience with us.

He was going beyond being an artist in the simple sense of just being a painter, and even a painter, a paint instructor. As we watch it, as he's talking directly into the camera, to us and only us, one person, not just a crowd of people. Bob effortlessly converses, demonstrates, masterfully paints, effectively communicates, what he's doing,

but also where he's coming from. We just want to show you as many ways as possible to create effects, and then you do it however you want. As I've mentioned over and over on this show, art is an expression of self. Express yourself, enjoy it. Each of us, each and every one of us, will see nature through different eyes,

and that's what you are to paint, is what you see, and the way you see it. Especially after reading through this book and many comparisons with other figures and history and both past and present and the movements within and throughout and currently happening in history itself We could see that Bob was doing so much more than A gloss might

He was cultivating an intimately sacred space in the joy of painting, like we talked about with just the simple name of joy. The only rule that I adhere to in painting is that it should make you happy and you should enjoy it. If you comply with that rule, then how can you go wrong? When you take a second and peel back the thin veneer as Bob the TV show host, we can see him intentionally playing around. with the power that he recognizes. Not all people do. Lying within the, at the time, medium of TV and movies. But now with everybody having a portable television station in their own pocket, the Internet.

You know, there is a, whether we realize it or not, a very almost magical power. lying behind that glowing screen that we're always attached to. It's especially evident in his commentary. He knows most of his viewers aren't lining his pockets in the business since going to his workshops or even buying his paint products and doing it at home. He knows most of us aren't even painting with him. The service, and it's explicit, he's been very clear about it, that he finds most rewarding is giving us all a genuine interaction with another human being.

This is paintings that have come from people all over the country who are just watching the show and they've picked up the brush and they've tried it. Aren't they fantastic? They really and truly are. And a lot of these people have never, absolutely never touched a brush before in their life. I'm just, I'm so, I'm like an old mother hen here. I get so proud when I see what people are doing. And with Bob, it's always a consistently positive one.

He cultivated that. We feel at ease and we feel relaxed because at least partly we know exactly what to expect from Bob. I can trust him to be the same genuine, authentic, nature-loving, individual appreciating man and painter, human being that he always was and it was a half hour of joy that he was giving us in part one we got a little teaser a taste if you were one of the people who were able to make it past the first 10 minutes joke I was pulling on you a couple people didn't get it you got a taste for

the layers that these authors were able to peel back from Bob Ross and not just his paintings but him the man and what he was doing by demonstrating his paintings to a mass audience and demonstrating it in the style that he chose specifically to demonstrate it in part two was a look at his life and the common thread of his passion for not only painting but the nature that he so often the love of nature and the love of animals that he so often was able to incorporate into his shows and throughout his narratives and narrations on those shows and then part three tonight is interpreting an animal

really putting Bob in the proper context of history, culture, society, and the movements that have defined all these things. And this book is, it's, it is a lot of what I will be basing off tonight. We'll see. There's so much more, so many different angles and so many different angles and so many different layers to Bob. That I hope you guys will come away with a whole other appreciation of not only Bob, but, and what he was doing, but great artists of all sorts in senses, not just painters, but great individuals, people who really made something of themselves and did something with their lives

and we're able to communicate that and change the world for good. It's going to be another long deep dive in our last final part three of our Bob Ross deep dive tonight. So I want you guys to settle in, get a snack, get comfortable, and join me as we break down what Bob was really doing with the joy of painting. And because we're going to be using this book so much tonight, I wanted to make a point to discriminate that this book has nothing to do with the company, Bob Ross, Inc. that has been running and publishing books and his show, The Joy of Painting, and it was responsible for putting it on the internet and Twitch and YouTube. this book was written in 2011 before Bob made it to the internet in that one before all his videos were freely available the way they are now and this book is actually peppered pretty thoroughly throughout with just mentions and examples and caveats making a point to say that they are not

the official Bob Ross owners of his image and you know if you guys were able to watch the last part two the last half of that being a chronicle chronology of Bob's life was a little bit tragic with the way his image has been used and manipulated and and very closely guarded by the company. And so anyways, I just briefly wanted to just make a point that this was not, this isn't any propagandistic marketing gimmick and look better. This was just a passion project by three authors, two of which are professors, and all of which are very knowledgeable.

and very immersed in the art world and outsider art on the fringes of the art world and the history of art and history more broadly speaking as well as well so all that's to say that there's a there is an intrinsic uh appreciation for bob to be able to undertake such to to have the motivation to undertake such a project as writing an entire book. And the fact that this was a, um, not, not an official Bob Ross publication. Also means that they didn't want to infringe on the legal copyrights, the intellectual property, and, uh, including his name and likeness, um, which may be why they had to write it the way they did phrase it as the Bob Ross phenomenon rather than just his name.

I don't know about that, but what I do know is that throughout the entire book I marked numerous countless examples. I won't beat a dead horse here, but of the litigiousness of the company and the trepidation of the authors to write any. anything that might be critical of the company and they outright just say that they don't want to be sued at a certain point they'll leave it to people more versed in legal copyright matters to make any judgments or criticisms of the company itself so this is completely distinct this is about bob the man and the work he did that is now owned by bomb Ross Inc. But it is no reflection, judgment, well, there's a little judgment there, as we'll shortly see.

But it is no, it is not centered on the company or the people who currently run the company. Just right off the bat, the cover, as we can see here, Let's make sure I got the whole thing in. Yeah, the cover. So for instance, well, the fro, Bob's most, you know, recognizable quality trait, physical appearance, is a manufactured fro. It hardly even looks real.

But I would, I'm almost, positive that this is not an actual cut out of Bob and if it is it's only his fro because they were very likely would have been sued if they used a picture of Bob because the company owns again Bob's likeness but further the background right on the cover page the background you would have thought that they would have at least got permission they would have been granted permission by the company to use one of his paintings, but they didn't. They had to use a copy of another person painting in the Bob Ross style.

On page 5, right in the beginning, they say, you know, the purpose of this book is to address the, it's to address the Bob Ross phenomenon in an extended manner beyond the happy marketing of the books and the carefully controlled image of Bob Ross by Bob Ross Incorporated. Bob Ross has, he's come to mean more than what's communicated through the many publications of Bob Ross Inc. VR, like many celebrities is a brand. They quote copyrighted and trademarked. And they say it's difficult to reconcile for those who feel this personal relationship to Bob Ross. It's difficult to reconcile the restraints imposed on the expression of that personal relationship

with the legal protections freely exercised by the corporation with an economic and personal stake in Bob Ross. in the promulgation of his image. There's tons of examples like that throughout the book. So I won't get into any... Unless we directly, you know, stumble upon it, I won't go any further into it at all.

A whole, like, sheet document of just all the examples. Which is really sad about, especially about someone like Bob who... This shit, The communication of his life and art and any other information that isn't exactly publicly available would do nothing but be an asset to the company and the world. So they're, as they put, Bob Ross Inc., mind you, the owners of Bob Ross Inc.

is very protective. Their intellectual property, although we originally intended to reproduce paintings by Bob in this book, Why wouldn't you, of course? It's a book about a painter. Several contacts offered images, even, of ones they owned. So consequently, the third author of this book, Danny Cooheman, he's the one who painted the background image here. His book that I purchased,

these are, for me, the most beautiful pictures I found, and I thought it would be nice to look and have a nice backdrop. This one's called High Tide, and we see his signatures down here. Beautiful Florida idealized, as we'll touch upon in the future. Idealized Florida Beach with coconut palms reaching out over the waves, and only a slight hint of some rocks, and maybe not even then, because Florida is not known to be rocky. This one, almost with the cloudiness and the mass of soaring towering peaks, it reminds me of some illustration that would go with a fantasy world like Lord of the Rings.

We're going to begin this analyzing and interpreting Bob Ross and how history shaped him and how he in turn shaped history. and where and exactly how his shape fits in to all that. We're going to begin it with gloss of how we should interpret Bob. Some of the angles I'm going to be covering on page 69 in the book. Chapter 7 called Assessing Bob's, Bob Ross's paintings, and his approach to art. Then the paragraph saying, how should we think about the Bob Ross phenomenon? They use the word phenomenon because it's not him or his paintings or even his show. It's the constellation of all those.

That's really where we find the depth of Bob. And he was beyond a... They posed questions. Was he a professional? Was he an amateur? His paintings were famously not very respected in the tight... knit the elite art world but they were absorbed and very much embraced by the masses which in itself doesn't mean anything good or bad because lots of good and bad art is embraced

by both communities and the status of his position as a painter a teacher a tv show host of course can discredit him in some circles as well can make his art seem bad you know but one of the core ideas was the not his art his relationship in the we're going to see the parasocial relationship that he cultivated with the viewer and not only in a one-sided, a one-directional way, which is the, I think that's the definition of parisocial in a lot of ways. That word is being used widely because Twitch in particular, but live streaming on YouTube and Twitch and elsewhere, is an interactive, a very participatory. medium nowadays and to the extent that people engage and feel that they know the personality

and then they can also on the live stream in particular communicate and be responded to the person they're watching by the person they're watching is it's not a direct two-way relationship because the person on the person on the internet will say doesn't know nearly as much information about the person in the chat for instance that then the other way around but Bob Ross was a an early example of someone who encouraged participation and we'll see that though even though parisocial is a new concept it's been a around for over half a century. Scientists have been thinking about it and its effect on culture in psychology, the psyches of individuals who engage in it. What he was doing was clearly something

deeper as the, as this book flushes out. It was sharing joy like we've talked about, communicating his own source of joy where he he found the most depth and purpose in life and in nature in nature and creatures and rehabilitation and reaching people who previously hadn't been told that they had any you know artistic bone in their body couldn't draw a straight line as he often said He said that's baloney We've talked about this He wanted people to recognize the Power that you get

It like Bill Alexander His mentor Encouraged as well Through painting and expressing yourself Whether it's building something Out of wood Carving stone Shaping metal painting

Writing a book Writing anything Or just nowadays Talking on camera expressing yourself however you do it you are you're bringing you're bringing forth something creative in the act that you otherwise wouldn't have brought forth or at least not nearly as been in touch with as quickly or as or maybe as deeply and with painting in particular you can understand something about yourself through what you're attracted to and what

what you choose to paint, what you like, what you dislike, and what you consume as well. And with experience comes confidence. With confidence, you know you can do anything that you believe you can do. From all of us here until next time, I'd like to wish you happy painting. God bless my friend. On page 68 here, Bob, Bob's focus is on the whole person, rather than any narrowly defined skill-based purpose, often associated with art education.

Bob's greatest success as an educator is not that he taught an approach to painting, but he taught an approach to learning and living. Discard and leap over the common obstacle of self-criticism that so many of us are crippled by the arguments in this book to show you that Bob's true art was his style. And it was this quadruple, this compound, creative act of being a painter, a teacher, a performer, a healer.

He demonstrated, as an example, of the layers to his performance, for instance. Let's say, let's break that down. He demonstrated painting. He painted in front of the camera as a means of showing you how he painted. As he painted, in itself, that's a way of communicating and teaching, but he also walked you through it.

He narrated it. He explained it. So as he was doing that, he was explaining why he did certain things, he used certain brushes, how he mixed colors on the palette, how he applied them with what pressure. with what motivation for starting

the order arrangement in the order he applied the paint and the layers onto the canvas deeper still he encouraged you and I to paint along with them

he wasn't just giving you instructions saying here's how I do it continue watching he said no why don't you get out your easel and canvas and paints and join me always always encouraged us to join them it's going to be a key one of the areas of parisocial uh the phenomenon that is accelerating in our culture today with streaming participation and it's also might have been predated as well and or at least overlaps widely with the art world and changes in movements that participatory versus

consumptive and also participatory art versus just merely consumptive. Maybe that's the wrong word, but the purely passive consumption. And then deeper still, Bob beyond articulated his, motivation for wanting us to participate in his art. Bob wanted us to understand how therapeutic art could be. He taught philosophy at its core. Baum's encouragement for us to create art communicated the importance and significance of painting, especially landscape paintings for him. He was a master of He was unified as a person as a whole.

I think the most emblematic, the most respected, the most revered people are those that can be unified across all their domains of action in the world. Family, business, art, how they relate to other people in society. how they relate to people behind closed doors. It's always a bummer when we hear someone who we thought was great are really a jerk, you know, really selfish or even worse, you know, have worse vices. Or even if they were just not as courageous as we thought they were. And it's not easy to be courageous, which is why we respect people when we feel that they are. The layers we respect about Bob, that he worked hard to become a master.

But he also had an aptitude from a young age. So we found he not only artistically but personality, psychologically, he had an open personality that I think in this book showed, allowed him to navigate between a disciplined military man during the day and in a position of authority and deep great responsibility and then at night become put on that painter's hat hang up the soldier hat as he always said and become that free-spirited artist create his own world and be able to rejuvenate himself from the troubles of the day and it's really cool reading this book because in light of all that's come out and all the

biographical information about him because they were spot on about so much of him and learning more about his personal interactions and his just you know childhood and other aspects of his life that these authors didn't have access to just it really just reinforces everything that they speculate about who Bob was as a person and what his motivations were. He was friendly, but he was stoic. He was deep with a light touch. I love that. He wasn't an intellectual, no, but he was perceptive and had wisdom to share, all the while remaining down to earth, which are all traits we all respect. He was a leader, a teacher, a mentor, a sage.

He was a friend. He was an entrepreneur, and he was a radical as we. I think at its core, I know, he remains influential to the world because he was authentic and promoted a universally understandable and inspiring ethic. It was cross-cultural. It broke language barriers.

It broke historical trends. It was timeless and it was universal. Universally revered. He believed in the divine spark of every individual. He didn't think just a couple people were great artists. He saw the, and he paid attention to the individual. And not just people. was a famous conservationist.

He brought squirrels into his home and on his show. Raccoons, possums, snakes, alligators, hawks, owls, everything. He deeply believed his authenticity, this is where his authenticity is so captivating because he was the same person on screen as he was off screen. that nature and animals can actually teach us if we just pay attention. Painting landscapes for him also served a deeper purpose. It was therapeutic and it was meaningful. They weren't just pretty scenes on a postcard.

He always said, this is your world, your world. You paint it how you want. And that's why for him, there were landscapes, pristine, no smog, very seldom were any traces of human civilization or human activity of any sort other than, you know, the trails, maybe, not weathered trails. Only that which persevered and was most timeless found its way into Bob's paintings. He wanted to teach us that trying something new through as just a single instance can lead to self-development and then lastly I want to say that he with the message of community he always encouraged his viewers to not only uh call in and in their paintings

he wanted them to paint and give them to you know practice and get good and be able to send a real gift. He said, you know, painting is something that most people are always going to cherish as a gift. You know, it's so much more meaningful than something you can just go down to the corner store and buy. He said those are the gifts that friends and family cherish most and will for their whole lives. He always encouraged us to find our local animal shelter because he always encouraged us to find our local animal shelter. because he knew most of those people were paying out of their own pocket to care for animals and they did it out of the good of their heart as he often said so he was respected because he respected nature other people potential in the individuals he was teaching the rest of this video

I have structured as a kind of a tour through if part two was a chronology of Bob's life this video is a more of a chronology of human history in relation to Bob it's quite a important place for for Bob to hold but I think his impact is going to reach far wider and deeper in time than most people are currently giving him credit for. And if this is a chronology of human history in relation to Bob and art and, well, everything that relates to art, which is quite a bit, it turns out, there's really nothing much deeper into our, human history than learning. What marks us as humans is our ability to absorb information and our social nature. Many other animals are social, but we're very adept absorbing the culture,

the ways of being that other members of our social, groups and species are have lived out in in learning what to do and what not to do we do that we do we do that through stories but in order to be able to come up with a story and and communicate it you have to be an effective teacher you have to you have to be someone worth watching to begin with and Bob had many the qualities of an effective teacher to begin with and that's why he was able to reach so many people towards the end of this video we're going to be touching upon the revolutionary aspects of the internet and how that's changing the number and quality of the number of people and the quality of information that education in general is able to reach.

I'd say that Bob, and I make a case that Bob was a pretty key figure in the evolution of talking and teaching to a large number of people in the last, in the 20th century in particular. I call this education. We're not going to call it. It is called Education 2.0. It is a transformation in the way people receive information. And I think it's going to be a transformative effect on our society, liberating people previous constraints. And what we'll talk about what that means and what that is and what it means for the future.

First and foremost, Bob was an effective, teacher. He was able to attract more interest in art and any other teacher in history before him, using TV. On page 64, Congdon makes a case. Says, uh, well, she mentions Bob being an effective teacher. And I hadn't realized this was actually a, um, well, like most of what's on Wikipedia, it's a whole field of inquiry and research and learning. She says there's an extensive body of scholarly literature and education related fields that examines the relationship between of a teacher's personality to the success and effectiveness in teaching.

And this opened up a whole Wikipedia page. Enthusiastic teachers are particularly good at creating beneficial environments and relations with their students. There's a whole area of active research, of course, because it's important to not be ineffectively teaching. You know, you want to be efficient in the information you get across. And it's a waste of time and resources and human potential in life to, uh, just be teaching in a way that's not easily absorbable. The other outlines of what an effective, you know, these fundamental attributes of effective teachers is that they must guide their students by aligning their personal goals

with their academic goals. And this was going back to Bob teaching the whole individual. not just a narrow set of painting skills. Students who receive this positive influence show stronger self-confidence and greater personal and academic success. Teachers don't teach by rote but ones that invite participation use humor create a sense of play with what their teaching, all of which Bob was an exemplary an exemplary an exemplary figure of those are the teachers that engage their students most and encourage and are able to get curiosity about a subject matter out of them much more effectively correlation there's a

broad correlation between teacher enthusiasm and students intrinsic motivations to learn and a sense of vitality in the classroom. And then there's the concept. This is all, I'm just casting a broad net here. I mean, that's really what this whole video is actually. I like the word constellation. It's just like a web of tightly and loosely related ideas.

Some are central. Some are on the periphery, but in a lot of ways they all connect with each other. And we're trying to understand Bob and what made him effective, what made him such a popular figure, what still makes him relevant and popular and popular and so likable and endearing to so many people. How he's able to reach not only so many people, not only so many people lacking sleep. but people lacking creativity and lacking companionship as well and these are all aspects of effective teaching that don't don't need to be confined to the

classroom they in a lot of ways every interaction with anybody is a form of teaching or learning it's an exchange you don't talk and you don't talk about things that aren't worth mentioning you mention things because they're worth knowing and that all of these are very useful ideas in general for effective communication the emotional contagion that i you know briefly mentioned there was um pretty important because people are also influenced by, just like we were saying, their environment and the enthusiasm of the teacher,

that, those tacit, those subtle body language-related, things that are picked up, that don't even register on our consciousness, at a conscious level, those things are communicated, that you really can't, get over a Zoom call and even a video. But I think that having clear audio, very good audio and secondarily good video are increasingly

better substitutes for in-person communication, but they aren't ever going to be as effective. Because these things like body language and tone of voice and subtle shifts and Yeah, just the expression, the way you express yourself are so important to rounding out and adding depth and we're still learning about them. And this emotional contagion can be something that you don't even again consciously pick up, but you are nonetheless, as the word contagion implies, you're infected with the motivation. You're infected, you're interested, you might not even understand why, but you're somehow more engaged and interested and motivated to learn more about what is being taught. And Bob was a genius at this. He made you feel like you two were a conservationist, an environmentalist.

Like you were out there, you're in his mind. He painted a picture of his own worldview that went along so tightly and perfectly harmoniously with the picture he was painting in front of us, literally. On page 64 and 5, again, they mentioned Bob's universal relatability like I touched upon. His viewership is translated across countries. Now it's on YouTube. It crossed, they argued that it permeated traditional class boundaries of art. Bob resisted the conventional dichotomies of high and low, fine and folk, professional, amateur, and popular and classic art. Pop and classic classical music.

you know um he was speaking to people not to segments of society that people were um he was able to reach those who are most underserved due to their geographic location or economic status on geographic art director said that he actually got into his career because of bob ross He said to people like me Who grew up in poor Rural areas and went to small schools and no museums preschools after-school education programs No money to travel couldn't pay tutors to Instill in me a sense of wonder and expose me to

Social cultural you know Refined my cultural palette And Ideas and art Bob Ross brought an immense value to he refined my

cultural sensibilities and not only that but he refined him through teaching art and then technical and more philosophical ideas behind art

and in a relatable manner and he he was able to communicate that in a layman's terms essentially and he spent he yeah

went on to be have such a successful and and a successful art related career in part because he spent endless hours watching Bob and then you scroll the YouTube comments I got one here for instance

every single one One of his 400 episodes on there are just littered with comments like this. Guy says, I wish I forgot I had what video this was from. He says, that bit there at the end, damn, he makes me feel like I'm the most important person in the world. Thank you. This series is one of the best ever offered on public television. I really would have loved to see Bob do a guest spot on Mr. Rogers. neighborhood and then of course this is a gift to the world another aspect of um he was accessible

he lowered the barrier to entry so these are kind of these are you know he was effective because he allowed the teaching to begin in the first place he like we said in part one he drew you in with his looks his wild appearance his soft voice his unique style and sort of gimmicky like Bill Alexander ability to paint a very competent landscape painting in such a short period of time anyone doing anything of even a smallest measure of competence quickly and efficiently especially in that small of a time is you know going to draw a attention and then once we got in the door that's where he continued to lower the barrier to entry and encourage us so we could do it you're look look at me and hey by the way you could do this too

no mistakes happy accidents stress about any smudges or smears i mean the nature of the wet-on-wet technique he was using in it in and of itself didn't um was perfectly apt for this message because you could it wasn't like a permanent marker you could easily smudge it out and transform it and then pop another layer of a tree or uh water or something onto it he gave on 64 again they say he gave permission permission to begin without fear of failing. And this avoids premature self-discouragement of learning by in and of itself. He always says there's no right way of doing this. And that allows exploration and it doesn't paralyze us with a sense of seeking perfectionism right away.

You know, I actually tried to relate this to my channel and what I'm doing because my first video that got any form of mild success is the one that has the Mass Effect thumbnail, Cardasheff scale. I did at least 100 videos before that and I never would have had the, I never would have been able to withstand the criticism of friends, you know, people I knew. If I didn't have the ability, the low cost of putting up just getting a simple microphone, a laptop, and in my phone, putting the audio and video together, and putting it out there, talking about things that I'm interested in, and seeing if people are also willing to watch it and maybe engage. But I never would have maybe taken the steps, the first steps, to begin, and made those terrible first videos.

There's, I still left a, I took most of them down just because I, I'm honestly not very proud of them. Or the work I put into making them. A lot of them I just was trying to see what worked and what people related to and what I was able to do. And what I, what I wasn't trying to define my own boundaries. And, uh, technology allows us to take it lowers the barrier like bob did it encouraged us to begin and try something new and make mistakes that's okay next time you'll do better and like he always said don't don't expect this current creation this current project to be a masterpiece your next one will be a masterpiece

there's still plenty to learn because if you think you've made a masterpiece there's no sense in learning more and then of course you always risk losing that grounding humility if you think you've mastered anything and that is a huge obstacle to learning and becoming a better person in general. On page 62, we could look at my YouTube poll a couple a month or two ago I put up. I wanted to know whether you guys were more interested, most interested in my personality, the subjects, or, you know, the sound of my voice, like any specific aspect of what I convey. it was undoubtedly the subject matter but some of it was interestingly and there was overlap my personality and a lot of comments a lot of the people who did comment made a point to say i would have chosen all of them and with bob i have a general i get a strong sense of he brought a lot a lot to the table

He wasn't good. He was a master of multiple areas. His communication, his painting, his style of communicating. His TV presence. His personality. Page 71, we see talking about qualities of Bob's effective teaching in particular. His style. Page 60, no, 71.

The remark about Bob's sense of risk, sense of play. That is an example. engaging instructor is one that doesn't stick to their notes and just read a PowerPoint presentation. I mean, who, you know, who, unless they, I guess unless they have a really good voice, you don't want to just sit there and why show up to class? And they say the sense of risk is at play in Bob's videos. Many people have noted that they hate it when Bob ruins a painting by putting a giant tree in the foreground, in the foreground, the front, you know, covering up the mountains and everything he just

beautifully created. So part of a viewer's engagement is not only seeing a, not only marvelling about how Bob does it and how he makes it become much more than just a streak, disrupting the beautiful painting he's already done. But it's to wonder if and when, maybe. He'll mess up. Famously called Bob's Bravery Test. Two bands, in particular artists, musicians and vocalists I really like, is Britney Howard and Jim James. Brittany Howard is the singer of Alabama Shakes, Jim James of My Morning Jacket. Both these singers have different voices, but they both, especially James.

James' early recordings. They both just belt it out, and they have such a, they're very far away from auto tune and being digitally perfected. And I love hearing the nuances. And just like Edda James and Ella Fitzgerald and Aretha Franklin, Sam Cook, Otis Redding, you hear in these raw recordings. You hear the talent, but you also hear the deviate. from the melody, the slight tones that they only subtly miss, but the sheer, there's a sense of play

and a sense of freedom and raw energy that is, in my opinion, sorely lacking in music that is overly manicured and curated. and autotuned. You just don't have that sense of energy, really, of energy. It's missing a sense of energy. It feels like it's very, much more restrained, much, it's just less interesting when it is.

So, I just respect vocalists who really put themselves on the line, especially if it's in a live performance. And this is what, Bob did. It was, and he was very proud of it like we talked about. Now, I think it's time for your bravery test. Maybe in our world, let's use the old filbert brush. Maybe there's an old tree that lives out here. I say this is going to be your bravery test. Just drop it in. Drop it in. I know that's scary after you

worked so hard. It was a live performance he was doing. It was taped and aired after the fact, but he always made a point to be to tell people that it was when they when he was asked of course that it was live and they didn't edit any mistakes out and he really did that painting in 26 minutes and 47 seconds whatever it was and it's pretty impressive to be and he didn't do it and it wasn't just on accident he did it by honing that Steve, like I said in my last video, said that his dad painted at least seven or eight paintings for every one painting. He did it so that he would get the brush strokes, the layers, the individual pieces of the painting down, the trees and the streams and the reflection, the mountain, the clouds. He was able to streamline and get that time down.

So he knew exactly how long every section would take. Every, pretty much every brush stroke. And then a Nett Kowalski later said that he also would practice what he would say, which is why he didn't deviate too much when he did. But he went on occasional tangents. and that's when we get real glimpses into his personal philosophy but he did often very very often employ and reuse sayings and phrases that he'd said before because he was doing many things at once

there we have to remember I think another important part was that Bob was always open to having different learning styles and I think this going back to his biography was clear it was very apparent in him at an early age we saw that he he didn't do well in school and he talked about his teacher always marking up his papers with X's like he paints the clouds and he he always said how frustrated he get with painter paint teachers trying to be too abstract and esoteric and theoretical about how to paint but not actually showing him and demonstrating how to actually literally paint a tree or or something else and this all again this all constellated into who he chose to

present himself as which wasn't didn't diverge much from who he was as a person how he was so authentic and so compelling we said he made our relevant to us because a component of being an effective teacher is to focus on the whole person you can't acknowledge that someone's tired and expect them to put forth a hundred and five 50% energy, you have to meet them at their level. And that's what Bob did. He constantly related learning specific skills with learning more generally. And he acknowledged that people learn differently and at different rates. And he didn't focus and compel you to fixate on anyone in particular area if you didn't want to. It's your world.

You painted how you want to. In 62, there was a behaviorist component to his teaching style. They noticed that he had a overlap with psychology and psychological movements. Bob demystified the process. He broke every task into a high-resolution sub-skill. This is a famous behaviorist approach. The Pavlov Dog Experiment, he was a famous behaviorist. B.F. Skinner. Also, 62. They mentioned the schools and it's ineffective general teaching.

The ineffectiveness of general education, lower level, elementary through high school education, because they have a one-size-fits-all approach. And Bob recognized that. That's not the best means of reaching people. and really getting people motivated in what you're doing. They make a point to say that one important question to ask a teacher and an art teacher in particular is, and about Bob Ross's teaching style, is does the teacher want you to do what they're doing or what you want to do,

what you have an intrinsic motivation to paint? And they say, Bob makes it clear that he, wants his students to do what they want to do and that working alongside him is in a seemingly wrote manner it might assist you in getting there it's going to teach you the basic skills to be able to eventually go off on your own he provides a structure only one that is also accepting and imaginative. This is your world, Bob, continuously reminds us.

Continuously wanted students to shape their own worlds. The behaviorist component is he would say how to mix the paint at dinner, how to apply it to the brush. What pressure, you know, we mentioned this earlier. It's a light in angel's wings. Or just lightly, two hairs in an angel's,

in some air, that's all, as you're lifting up on the clouds. So this inhibits doubt with constant genuine affirmations. He was in tune with the audience's needs. Give constant verbal praise. This is another re-positive conditioning. Constant affirmation. Constant reaffirmation. Page 40.

They compare him to Rogerian, Carl Rogers' method of positive regard in empathy. He responded with a kind of Rogerian empathy. His ability to transport himself and others into his world of joy may not seem like a sophisticated form of therapy, but it certainly echoes the language of healing that was developing in parallel with his show in the 80s. as the 70s and 80s when he was honing his skill as a teacher. Bob Ross understood and appreciated the anxieties and emotions of his viewers at home. You know, I think his early finger trauma and all his other traumas,

his cancer, which we said was not just late in life, that was a second bout that reoccurred in the 90s. He had in his mid-30s, he had a fight with cancer, and he won it, and he was able to, he was able to overcome it, and it had gone away for a time. But even between then and his eventual death, he had constant headaches, migraines even, that people are only a few people around he was, knew about, because he hit it so well. he had a in the 80s early 40s he had a heart attack he smoked cigarettes apparently drank whiskey so you know these things of course didn't help on top of a genetic predisposition perhaps because his father had died at 61 years old his mother died at 63 in his early 60s his mother had died at 71 and then he had his wife die his split from his first wife estrangement is split from bill alexander his

mentor and friend who i'm sure he was pretty you know upset um to have left like that all of these, I think all of these add up to allow to make Bob a very empathetic and a compassionate understanding person. He understood tragedy as I pointed to in part one. Rogerian client-centered psychology emerged in Ross's lifetime and caused a, quote, landmark shift in how psychologists, heal their patients that are crucial to healing to the healing and growth of both therapists and patient you got to be genuine you got to practice under understanding and actual empathy you know not just superficial but deep true putting your

place self in the place of the client and responding with unconditional positive regard and this very effective Bob understood and appreciated the anxieties of his students oh you'd be an agony city by now people might look at you a bit funny but that's okay artists are allowed to be a little bit different a little bit later in the book they talk about Bob as therapist page 85 through page talking about sentimentality they explain how Bob made a sandbox which is a concept of just being able to play giving a a consequence free environment which of course facilitates learning because you as long as you're actively exploring and absorbing the information from mistakes you don't have to deal with the harsh the penalties and the

you know the inhibitions of further creative exploration that come with those you know therapy in this same sense fostered healing growth individuation you know learning learning to create takes courage because you risk failure you expose your limits and insufficiencies to ridicule it's it's taxing it's draining it's draining to be able to put yourself out there like that. And for, you know, Bob learning to paint, like I said, was analogous to learning per se. Learning in and of itself, the act of learning had,

the act of learning was cultivated through learning specific skills, and a lot of those skills can translate over into learning other things. Bob provided escapism. He was, they say his role was as a psychological ally. They say sentimentality was his employment of being overly sentimental and wholesome, you know, as we might say nowadays, is a deliberate sanitation of life. He wasn't doing it on accident. He was doing it deliberately because in his world, it's where he escaped and he made it how he wanted. what felt most comfortable and relaxing to him.

And that was within those boundaries of that picture plane. Bob Ross admitted no complexity. You had complete tranquility, complete freedom to explore. In his shows, his presence, he implicitly omitted complexity by painting untouched, idealized nature, he explicitly omitted it by not talking about anything that's usually too stressful. He often said, if you want bad news,

you know, go, or if you want, you know, go listen to the news if you want to hear bad stuff. He wasn't talking about health and bills and status, loneliness, conflict, politics. He was talking about he was staying positive. He understood that gratitude and empathy

can be cultivated also by painting. He understood that learning of itself could be a process that could be healing and cathartic and empowering. One lady in particular,

Arlen MacDonald, wrote an article called My Love Affair with Bob Ross. I thought it was perfectly emblematic of how Bob connected to people. She said, It happened suddenly one Saturday morning I stumbled into my living room, a cup of coffee in my hands trying to wake up. I turned on the television,

and he helped me to help me ease into the day, and there he was, standing before a blank canvas, with a pallet knife in one hand and a two-inch brush, in the other. And he said, you'll never believe what you can do until you get in there and try it. I was mesmerized, she said.

Before my eyes in one short half hour, beautiful mountain scene took shape. I thought to myself, I could do this. I could. The way he easily explained, easily explained how to paint,

made me want to go out and get some oil paints myself. The next Saturday, I stood in front of my television, ready to start painting on my own blank canvas, and as a few weeks and months went by, it felt like Bob was talking directly to me, exercise the imagination, experimenting with talents, being creative. This is Bob. Bob speaking here. These things to me are truly the windows to your soul. Truly the windows to your soul. eventually I gained enough confidence to try a seascape. I suffered over that painting. I didn't know how difficult it was to paint ocean waves

and really capture the glint of sunlight in the curl. But he assured me the very fact that you're aware of suffering is enough reason to be overjoyed that you're alive and can experience it. In time, I missed our Saturday mornings together. I moved and I moved into my wise years. I tried my hand at other art forms,

but what I learned from my love affair with Bob never went away. Bob, it's no doubt Bob was an effective teacher, but to be receptive to teaching to begin with, you have to have the time. This got me on a whole other one of our, tangents that I didn't realize there was an entire field about learning and researching. And that was leisure. And I never really thought about how important leisure is in relation to meaning and being able

to do what you want to do. You know, it's just you work and then you don't work. And you do all the, ideally you can have the two be somewhat compatible and in the sense that they bring meaning to your life. But oftentimes that's not the case. And Bob wanted us to cultivate meaningful. He wanted us to pursue meaningful things in our leisure time. And I thought it was interesting.

you know, I got my feet wet and I took a little bit of a relative deep dive into the history of leisure and what other societies throughout history and currently think about leisure and how they perceive it and its importance to the individual and the psychology and mental health and a health of society in general. It turns out Bob and what he was doing was greatly influenced by this general concept and the general evolution of our how we perceive leisure and what it is and how it's changed and who has changed it throughout history

right in the beginning Richard Florida very interesting name they say that he writes about social and economic theory and he claims that there's a way of people are beginning to think about themselves and their identity differently nowadays and this relates to leisure it relates to what we most deeply identify with is it with our work is it leisure are the two related are they different how have that how is that relationship changed throughout

history and how is it currently transforming right now with the access a huge part of it is new access to education and you know i um i recently renovated my house and used youtube almost exclusively to learn plumbing, electrical maneuvering, maneuvering, you know, how to fix things, how to work on things, all sorts of working on my car,

changing my brakes, like simple, seemingly stuff like that, drywalling, painting, I mean, everything, you name it. They, there is someone who's an expert, who's somewhat good at communicating their knowledge. And that is so valuable. And it's changing.

It's transforming people. And it's allowing them to pursue new interests that they, because they never otherwise would have been exposed to it before the internet, that they are now realizing they had an inclination towards. Probably won't be able to find this. Well, he said, uh, babe of identity one in which, individuals define themselves both by the creative content of their lifestyle interests as opposed to um and as opposed to what they do for work for work they branching out and this is changing the way

they view themselves in viewing what they can do in their free time and ultimately who they can become maybe they can transition careers entirely with enough dedicated pursuit of these part-time passions I was reading this article or this this book I found in the library when I was working a few months ago and I had never realized how modern of a concept the distinction between the separation between leisure and work really was because back in the day in ancient times there wasn't one when it makes sense when you consider the small increasingly smaller and smaller groups that we were a part of our ancestors were a part of the further back we go in history there's a concept that in this textbook on leisure and modern society I think I have it here yeah recreation and leisure Krauses Kraus's recreation and leisure in

modern society chapter 3 the early it's called the early history of recreation and leisure and I had no idea that this was an area of study so interesting the stand-up paddleboard chosen image I think this one I got a obviously I didn't want to pay full price for these price gouging textbook publishers So I got an older edition 10th edition from 2015 a main concept is the integrity I want to browse this chapter. I'm gonna do a gloss of in this whole chapter really is a gloss but I'm gonna do a gloss of a gloss but I'm gonna do a gloss of a gloss so hopefully it will something that's glossy has a lot of shine to it i was going to say i will say hopefully it will shine some light understand the importance of leisure in relation to us and you know the individual and society

and how how it affects and how different societies in the past have looked upon leisure and how how they have what's happened to them i think the lesson i got for the tldr um was in the integrity of society relies upon the individual self developing themselves and this is optimized by the spiritual by a spiritual connection with nature spirituality is important i'm learning from people I've been recently learning about Jordan Peterson being one of them. Murchia Iliad, Carl Jung. Spirituality isn't just a choice. I think call it religion, spirituality,

or a personal, you know, magic, a personal communion with God. Having belief in something that lies beneath the facade, of the of the observable the immediately observable immediately observable um the near of of experience is what our ancestors through hundreds of thousands of years have have have um have based entire structures of society on and it appears the more we learn about the anatomy of the brain and neurology and neuroscience that our brain itself is built on structures that organize the way we perceive the world through a hierarchy of a hierarchy of archetypes and archetypal virtues

ways of developing yourself and very general roles that individuals can play in the process of history and how societies and civilizations are shaped in the mythologies that they're based on that they share and that they choose to prune off get rid of discard and continue and the other things that they continue to share throughout the generations and communion with nature a closeness a respect and reverence for animals and nature and a yeah proximity to nature and exposure to nature not cutting yourself off from the values like sacrificing your time now so that you harvest your harvest are more bountiful in the future rather than just playing and you know while it's all rain while it's all sunshine and in warm weather and failing to prepare and sacrifice for the winter and cold nights and you know civilizations that prosper over time are those that were able to properly revere the seasons the practices that allowed them to stay unified and not disintegrate from within the structures of familial life

the strength that helped them develop the strength of the children and the men and women within society so that everybody acts as a cohesive unit and cooperates and can rely and trust one another it's not just an anarchic everyone out for themselves philosophy or religion i mean there's so many interesting correlations between how individuals perceive

the world the stories we tell among individuals and how society how societies rise and fall and some endure and some collapse for good some reemerge and uh it's very important i think for us to recognize how this relates to our current society, how what we can glean from understanding the proper and improper ways, the mistakes and the successes of previous civilizations. So we don't have to repeat the mistakes. And so we can implement and properly respect what led to the successes of previous civilizations and always without fail a reverence and a

value of nature and what nature has to offer and what it has to continually show us in a dependence a relationship respectful not parasitical but symbiotic relationship with nature in society is primary to what I've seen throughout this chapter here since the Industrial Revolution they point out before going back in time since the Industrial Revolution technology has given us about 1500 more hours per week Oh, sorry, that's a time travel right there. Per year, per year. In the long run industrialization, and this is about since around 1750, we can say.

We went from having to work year round, a lot of festivals and holidays, of course. But the day to day, we worked a lot more before the Industrial Revolution, and it's been up until about the last few decades, it has been an increasingly downward trend of hours worked per week and per year. So we've had more and more leisure time. Went from about 3,000 to ultimately about 18,000, you know, 2,000 hours on average from 1840. Sorry, so I thought it was 1750. It was 1840 to the present.

So almost 200 years, we've reduced it by 1,500 hours per year. In this redistribution of time, this excess of time, has been accompanied by a drastic repackaging of leisure hours, making possible new forms of leisure time, including the typically modern notions of free evenings and the weekend, paid summer vacations, holidays. And this includes, a lengthy childhood and at the other end of life retirement those are too very fascinatingly it

uh i didn't realize how new these concepts were children you know retirement is a very new concept most people just worked because they had to until they died there was no retirement and we have to as a society evolve our concept of what retirement is because it's a it's a self-defeating ideal to think of retirement as gluttony and just hedonism you retire and you just you know drink margaritas on the beach all day well what if retirement was socially accepted as more of a freedom of constraints from having to work and do a job you don't truly want to do and into a more self-realizing a more meaningful sector and then lengthy childhood of course is because when you have to work as a family on a farm or even early on you know the general level of

wealth was not nearly as high throughout all of history as it is now and children had to go to work their parents simply couldn't afford to allow them to you know get education and not not work and have a lot of free time to pursue interests like they like they have in the last 50 years or so by becoming familiar with the evolution and definition of what records creation and leisure is, we're better able to, this tells us more about what we value as humans, not just Americans or, you know, 21st century Americans, but humans in general. Just like Bob and his acceptance, his widespread love, tells us something about ourselves psychologically and why we like it and why he was an effective teacher.

what we choose to do for leisure activities and recreation and what the accepted activities to do in society are tell us a lot about what we value as civilizations and cultures and humans going back into tribal times and then we have some modern day examples of course in the amazon and whatnot that we can look at and observe scientists have done this. Tribal work, quote unquote, work is blurred between recreation and leisure time. It was somehow always usually creative and always personally and socially purposive. It was rarely trivial work or leisure, neither. It always was edifying.

It was always with a purpose and meaningful and generally helpful for others in your group. Archaeologists of both ancient and modern tribal peoples have found that tribal people don't make the same sharp distinction that we do. And that was interesting for me. because of course in the west in particular but in modern industrial societies we set aside our work in recreation times um for different parts of the day there is a sharp distinction there but in these societies these tribal societies the work of one any one individual tends to be varied and creative they don't do the same monotonous thing you know the typical example of just the generic example of putting you know buttons the same buttons and the same place of a shirt in a factory 12 hours a day there's the exact opposite of that instead of a narrow special specifically you know defined specialized task they their work was intimately connected to group success and important

importantly here, this is a, it's going to be a very brief, but important connection to work and leisure and active, just general activities and spirituality and rituals. Work for them was often accompanied by some sort of ritual, whether it was prayer, sacrifice, dance, feasting. These rituals were regarded as crucial to their success of whatever endeavor they were doing whether it was you know planting a harvest building dwellings venturing on a hunting expedition all of which couldn't end up in death or destruction in some way so this allows the the very ritual the very enacting of the ritual it's not just saying words it's often doing and acting out things and that allows an incorporation of the individual who's acting it out of their own creative capacity to be called forth so this this made it more fun more exciting this isn't just in church you know for those christians or who grew up as christians reciting very monotonously hymns or very overly formulaic

Um, this is, this requires, um, although it's bounded within tradition, and there's rules and there is clear, um, guidelines of structure to all these rituals. An important part of that is that it requires movement and awareness and a deep spiritual connection and a, the activity to be meaningful to you. Popular games. For instance, we're often vestiges of warfare, practiced as a form of sport. So you can imagine honing your skills during times of peace was very important. And games were a great way to use competition as a way to maintain a competitive athleticism and advanced skills.

So whether it's shooting or running, you know, endurance. musical instruments were likely created for use in religious rituals to begin with. So they added a musical element to the ritual, giving it more depth and meaning and resonance. And then this, of course, as skills and songs were developed and players and practitioners increased a number, it expanded out further into other areas of society. And in other forms of art in the more narrow defined sense, like pottery, painting, drawings. These provided initially,

these most likely evolved out of something much more basic to our human needs and interests, our daily life and the mythology, that accompanies are, constant um activities in the planning of activities and how we relate to one another

always acting out the ritual of the successful hunter the god or the goddess that was the most keen hunter and keen-sided and the you know the most intellectual uh the

wisest god to help tribes decide how and where to plants the next harvest and build their village and maybe what if they're nomadic what bridge to go over what direction to go which uh what to pursue as a culture it's so interesting to know that you know everything daily life was was infused with a sense of meaning and everything you did was purposive. It meant something and the lack of doing something also meant something too. You weren't carrying your own weight and if you were doing it from a point of view of selfishness. That quickly probably got you ostracized and therefore was probably not

too prevalent but it doesn't you don't need much more meaning in a close-knit society a close and as all elaborate on later then the relationship between your brothers and sisters and family and cousins and neighbors and those in-group members of your tribe the well-being of them in the success and then in times of war the survival that is enough motivation for anybody to feel like every day you wake up with purpose and deep deep meaning and connection to not only your immediate family members but your ancestors and the mythological landscape out of which you and them arose and of course that's intimately connected with the environment and the landscape, the actual landscape, in nature more broadly,

in the way we look at it today. All this is just, it's so interesting to me that this is a, it's just a, it's just taken for granted. It's just a part, if you would have pulled, even if you could get them to speak English, pulled someone out from 10,000 years ago, out of a tribal setting they wouldn't even think anything of viewing

their life as their life purpose and goal is obvious whereas we question it at every turn in modern society and a lot of that has to do as I'll make the connection

connection yeah as I'll make the point is our lack of connection to each other nowadays. And therefore we don't have a story. We don't have a mythology. We don't have an orientation toward a future that we're all striving together towards. We, a lot of us don't.

And a lot of people don't. Some do. And those that did in the past thrived and survived. as Murcia Iliad, as he very impressively illuminates through his study of history and religion, those that didn't in the past have purpose and cooperation in a sense of cohesiveness within their society, they perished more frequently, more often. they threw a sense of, I would say, overwhelmed by the suffering and tragedy that is innate in existence. Those that on the other side, on the other hand, were connected and whose destiny and whose destiny and fates were intimately intertwined with those of those of,

their own group and who had these archetypal qualities of reverence towards things that endure and and irrespect for wisdom those were the groups who I heard one they endured I heard one interesting I follow dr. Michael Subaru on YouTube and he's been posting one of his fellow colleagues lectures Darren Stahlhoff, I think anyways he was lecturing about Murcia Iliad and said that a great example

was the, like a rain dance suit that we obviously recognize today and we know scientifically will not affect the rainfall but the very pragmatic, the very understandable purpose what it did for the people who enacted it in the past

was a sense of belief and a sense of control over their environment and maybe if only pragmatically and only internally they felt less vulnerable to the whims and chaos of nature that whose of course physical chemical underpinnings they didn't understand back then that could be very daunting and therefore discouraging and therefore perhaps cause you to give up sooner than is required in order to survive so those people who enacted the that could have devastating consequences for entire societies

as we you could imagine so those who not only worked together but also had the same belief, the same gods, the same spiritual orientation, the same rituals that they all believed in, that they all acted together, acted out together. This emotional contagion we talked about, it's important. This allowed people to remain optimistic and endure and put forward. forth more effort than the other neighbors next door the less cohesive spiritually and physically socially cohesive people next door unified you're inspired you're encouraged to run that extra mile chase that antelope when you feel that the gods and the winds at your back and you are

a reincarnation of a past ancestor who was the expert at hunting when you feel connected to your group and the history of your group and the ancestors and the environment in which your group emerged you are much more psychologically at least than otherwise you might be so interesting so next they talk about how this is subtly shifted throughout pre-modern almost you know if we're as we transition through the ancient world and into medieval renaissance and then eventually into more modern industrial and contemporary times wealth the leisure and work slowly started to diverge generally with the increase in wealth there is an increase in free time increase in the origins of leisure are essentially the free time from which to which

the groups survival was not linked so the more free time you have the more time you have to do activities that aren't that aren't a part of rituals and um group necessary group dynamics the more you're going to have a skill specialization

class division and ultimately you're going to have um you're going to have maybe more technology advancing and minor arts sophistications of uh art artistic

and physical pursuit of and religious and more nuanced religious ideations, but you're also going to have sharp divisions between people and the jobs and those people who fall into those increasingly subdivided categories of society. As prehistoric societies advance from nomadic hunting and gathering and into permanent villages and cities eventually. They developed these specialized functions. Ultimately, we had a class distinction developed

between ruling and the lower classes, those that rule and own land and the increasingly less free classes from soldiers to craftsmen to peasants and slaves. Developed. In the aristocracy of the, the first civilizations that developed in the Middle East, Mesopotamia, during the first 5,000 years before Christian era, we find ourselves in the first time with a leisure class for the first time.

Now, as we move forward a couple thousand years into ancient Greece and then eventually Rome, we'll get to Rome in a second, but Greece was its precursor. They based a lot of their values in society, social structures, and beliefs even off of Greece and ancient Greece. In Greece, leisure was far from what we look at it today as just being able to veg out on the couch. Or even, you know, do something more productive like go hike. It sort of overlaps with that more. But it was far, far from... any sort of vice, any sort of gluttony, idle, hedonism.

The word arete in ancient Greece is what defined leisure activities. Now, to be sure, you know, this was only confined to the aristocracy. There was still slavery, still lower-class peasants, essentially, very, very, you know, even lower-class businesses that, didn't have the leisure time of the aristocracy, but it was almost as a rule, an integral part of the social fabric. It was what was expected of you,

just like most, you know, of the aristocracy of today is expected to at least go to college. Back then, they were, the energies were directed at higher, higher, more abstract pursuits. They had a retail was the ideal of the balanced man.

And of course this was applied to women a little bit, but mostly men. This balanced man was a combined soldier, an athlete. He was an artist, though. And he was also a statesman, an artist of social and psychology. And on the deepest level, he was a philosopher. This was where we got Plato, his mentor, Socrates,

and Plato's student, Aristotle, out of this class of individuals. So you had to be not only a thinker of abstract ideas, you had to be a pragmatic, you had to be a, you had to be effective. Athenian leisure wasn't loafing. Anything but that. See, in deep Homeric history, even further back, maybe if we think about

Paracly and Athens is 600 BC, a thousand years before, maybe 500 years before, something like that, around 1,000 BC or within a couple hundred years. We had the more Homeric less intact historical evidence remains from this period

so it's more mythic, more surrounded in the haze of mythology but this from this era is the first little inklings of where we get actual words and meanings of

words from for the ancient Greeks in this history where we had the Iliad and the Odyssey where they come from. The person of a Rite is of the highest effectiveness. No matter what they do, if it isn't effective in the real world and able to act out, it's useless.

You can make it as abstract as you want as long as it can be enacted in a harmonious way with action in reality. They use all their faculties. They don't have an imbalanced self-development. They have strength. They have bravery.

They have wit. Odysseus is an emblematic of Arete. The moral and religious duty to Arete predates the philosophical reflection of even the earliest pre-Socratic philosophers. The literary source of these values is, of course, in the Iliad and the Odyssey, most primarily. And in these, the people who are most excellent, Achilles, Odysseus, Hector, they were emblematic of Arete, which meant they were emblematic of excellence, of,

any kind. They had moral virtue, which means excellence in knowing and doing what is good. The fulfillment of a purpose or function, the act of living up to one's full potential, not leaving anything on the table. The aristocratic class was presumed essentially by definition to be exemplary of arete. The root of the word, interestingly, is the same. is aristos the word which shows superlative ability and superiority so they have the same root word aristocracy ery the objective of a successful life to them in ancient greece was attaining attaining Teme or honor and Hebris, Hebris, Hebrus, Hebris, Hebris, Hebris, Heiardus,

trying to go beyond one's possibilities. So there's a sense of becoming greater than you were, constantly at work at play here. From earliest childhood, interestingly, in ancient Greece, this wasn't just an adjudic. adulthood thing you got that was expected of you this was cultivated this was again like the earlier societies it was integral to existence it was in the fabric of of being of being a member in the aristocratic aristocratic class though in those societies

earliest childhood, Athenian citizens engaged and buried in intense athletic activities like wrestling or dance, and even music and drama. Athenian philosophers, Plato foremost among them, felt that play activity was essential to healthy physical and social growth of children. So they believe strongly in the unity of mind and body and how you moved and how you acted and how you thought and viewed the world and related to all forms of human activities qualities excellence morals values characteristics and so as an adult this again isn't a an isolated set lifestyle this was a very integral social event and that meant you

participated in social activities and events such as in which you employed all these skills so you wrestled you orated you debated you you sang you danced you wrote plays you played instruments you philosophized the olympic games you participated the intigreates developed the art of town planning customarily made extensive provisions for parks and gardens open-air theaters and gymnasiums and baths and exercise grounds and stadiums and during the time of plato in the 350s bc the parks were closely connected importantly here this was the most revered this is the golden age of athens of greece the parks were closely connected with beautiful natural settings now a gradual transition occurred after this

from Greek to post golden age Greek Greece and then eventual eventually to Rome as Greek Greece waned Rome came out of its birth and adolescence and matured and matured and the power over the Mediterranean was subsumed by Rome. Greece became just a satellite nation to the core, to the powerful, centered, and guided. The gradual transition that occurred was that these initially public, mostly public,

baths, and even some parks, gradually gave way to privately owned estates of land, large chunks of land. And then the religious and cultural functions of the Olympic Games and other festivals were weakened by athletic specialization, corruption, and commercialization following that. as the essentially the arete was corrupted it got imbalanced people decided to maybe focus more on weightlifting and endurance than philosophizing in statesmanship and they weren't able to have the that harmony that harmony of skills and excellence in all domains of life and this the authors of this book here, argue, was crucial to disintegration of, of a strength, essentially, of unity, of the ability to endure as a civilization. Rome took them over, but Rome, even in its heyday, in its golden age, was the Caesar Christ, year zero around there, primarily more, less artistic,

less arita less harmonious and more less philosophically beautiful and more pragmatically grand and magnificent they focused more on war and building magnificent structures large grand coliseums temples um the what the citizen could become to serve the state how good of a soldier or statesman they were not necessarily how good of an artist musician playwright philosopher they were that's why ancient Greece has many more beautiful plays and works of philosophy than Rome ancient Rome did they say at first all citizens were expected to participate in ancient Greece in the Olympic Games

But then the Olympic Games were restricted More and more and more First to freeborn Greeks only And then You know in time It got specialized And all the Drama, the arts

Those two were Restricted And performed only by highly skilled Specialists Usually drawn from the lower class or even the slaves sometimes but they were trained and perfected and they were more more it became a more commercial enterprise to be hired and put on shows for private events rather than be a public spectacle that all could enjoy and participate in interestingly

i'm going to circle that back around to bob and now he wasn't just trying to be a spectacle to be passively consumed. Bob wanted us to participate as well. He wanted us to enter into the games, not just be using him as a spectacle, but using him as a vessel to inspire us and give us a vision of what we too could become. This state excellence over Arete that I was alluding to

didn't end good for the Romans their empire too collapsed and leisure and business were two words in Latin that sounded similar but the distinction and the meaning of them was it was it was helps us understand it was illuminating so leisure was OTIM and business was negotium like as a negotiation negotiating suggesting that if free time was OTIM

leisure Oteum free time then the opposite or negation of OTIM was business and work so this tells you something about Romans in their society.

Roman leisure connooted a more utilitarian sense of duty to the state than a again a abstract spiritual self-development. To Romans games and play meant physical fitness for the purpose of being a good soldier.

They didn't emphasize the aesthetic or spiritual artistic play. of dance or theater or philosophy. And as the empire grew more powerful, the necessity for military service, of course, and other physical efforts, it declined for the Roman citizen because they got more and more,

as they took over vaster areas of lands and tribes on the fringes, that's where they drew their conscripts from. And so the actual citizens or the low-level plebeians, plebians. They didn't have to be fighting anymore. They didn't have to maintain any sort of arete. They had more otium, less negotium.

Most of the work, even, was done by the coloni or the slaves. The class right above the slaves brought to Rome. And there's a huge urban population eventually of plebs, plebs, that plebeians lived essentially in semi-idleness because leisure increased as entertainment became the central life activity as the sense of self-development declined

and the sense of hedonism increased so there was bored masses of plebs the emperors and eventually the senate eventually wanted to to just quell any dissent and any not dissent well dissent but just uh any sense of any dissatisfaction any discontent i guess the word by just putting on all these games giving them stupid entertainment that wouldn't help develop them pure passive consumption and there was evil entertainment from a modern Christian point of view, it would be evil.

It was watching people get mutilated in the Coliseum and the gladiatorial games and combats and sometimes just outright murdered and tortured. This was mass debauchery. It was corruption behind every corner. And a perversion that profoundly weakened the Roman state. eventually Rome the empire lasted about a thousand years from 500 bc to 500 CE or AD and then 580 it fully collapsed 476 is the famous date that it collapsed was it alaric one of the German early German kings and rulers that was already a part of the Roman he broke off and turned against Rome

from being a Roman soldier and a commander of the Roman armies and took over Rome and the empire in the West there was a it was broke off in the Eastern Empire Istanbul Constantinople and your Turkey that empire stayed relatively

unified and intact although not still just a shadow of its former grandeur until about 1500 AD the Renaissance but 500 in the west anything west of

Greece really fell into the dark ages for about a thousand years where social structure that Rome had given Europe collapsed into these small local fiefdoms where local kings

just had owned all the land and controlled local populations of essentially slaves, peasants and that became the Middle Ages where there was just small little battles and there were no massive

large-scale empires no not even really countries there are people who vaguely spoke the same language but there was no along with this large-scale social structure and unified cultural and religious practices that rome gave there was no unifying law among these little feftoms and there was a lot of continued corruption continued lack of safety there was therefore there was not very much travel on the roads there wasn't very much commerce commerce in between kingdoms um and as a reaction to what had they felt had led to the collapse of the roman empire the catholic church the christian catholic church emerged out of this collapse, the collapse of empire through the collapse of values, what they thought

and what appears to have been the truth. In the Catholic Church, having suffered historically under the brutal persecutions of Christians by the Romans, the early Christians condemned all that these pagan oppressors, the Romans, had stood for, especially their hedonism. way of life the center of the European the budding adolescent European culture out of which modern Europe would arise this is when at this point Christian values really take root and begin defining and being interwoven with society and culture and as nations Spain and France and German sort of the German nations

what would much later become the German nation in England and Italy slowly began unifying and arising in wealth as more and more as the unification as the church the Catholic Church unified the values and therefore the actions and behaviors of societies in early Europe. They, um, like idleness is the great enemy of the soul. You know, therefore monks should always be occupied either in manual labor or reading. They even, um, believed in fanatical asceticism. A lot of the early saints and fathers of the church were known to have been, um, ascetics, which means self, basically means self-disciplined a lot of times through self-deprivation, fasting, or even masochism, self-ladulation, beating and hurting yourself to keep your emotions and urges at bay in check, your animal instincts subdued. And you can imagine, as happened, the general individual was much less inclined

to be corrupt they were more honest they had church Christian values and this was an improvement overall on the less morally intact

Roman citizen less selfless less devoted to a higher plane of existence than the Christian early Christian early Christian

I guess the average European although there were still peasants a lot of debauchery you know a lot of less than moral behavior among the peasantry the aristocracy was overall in Europe marked by chivalry the emergence of knighthood and the medieval culture of of royal courts in which all those values took root as those emerged those in general were more elevated morally than the typical Roman aristocracy senator or politician the medieval nobility ultimately led around 1300 1400 to a renaissance a rediscovery of a Rite this is when a lot of the texts a lot of the what do

always pronounce texts like that the you know the the Islamic Arabic scholars during this thousand-year period after the collapse of the Roman Empire had actually their culture had been thriving and they had taken and translated a lot of the texts of the old Greece, Greeks and Roman thinkers and writers and Europe had lost a lot of deleteracy the average person

was not literate for a long time because they had no institutions they had no stability and commerce all these little fiefdoms were always warring with each other we come to see that if you lack

a if you lack spiritual cohesiveness and unity your society takes the brunt of that and it disintegrates the average person is selfish therefore you can't trust them therefore there's a lot of corruption therefore the flow of money accumulates in the hands of the few greedy corrupt people infrastructure declines standard of living lowers the general prosperity of the average person goes down and it's a downward spiral

you're much more susceptible to attack from more unified cohesive spiritually unified and cooperative and oriented nations and peoples and you crumble within and without.

The Renaissance reintroduce the noble values of the Greeks to European culture. European nations eventually, Italy, France, Spain, England, etc., they eventually stabilized. And this led from a power shift from the Catholic Church, which had a monopoly on see the kings were beholden to the pope throughout all these years the pope has existed since the first few hundred years after christ died and the

general belief and the general belief in Christianity of all the European kings and their noble courts gave a unity to Europe. It gave a unified set of values in a way to interact. And as the general nation in the

peasantry were lifted out of absolute poverty by the time, you know, a thousand years had passed at 1400-ish had come about, the average person was more educated and more literate. Lutheranism broke off from Catholic saying that now that a lot of people can read we don't want to listen to you tell us what the bible means we want to read it for ourselves um we can find our own faith in the text not through your interpretation of it but generally so the power left the church came increasingly

for the last 500 years the trend has continued to become more more secular. We think that despite the stabilizing effect, that the unity of values from Christianity and at its core, Catholicism, had given Europe, we think we no longer need it, even though that's how we got as initially unified as we are and were. But nonetheless, less war more commerce more travel between the European states led to a greater exchange of information technical progress early science in 1300 through 1500 and this lead to led to more more wealth more wealth we with all this new exchange of information we became increasingly more infatuated with this sense of

of a rite and what leisure meant for the average person. The famous French essayist and philosopher Michael Montaigne, Michel de Montaigne, discussed the education of children, saying that our very exercises in recreations, running, wrestling, music, dance, hunting, riding, fencing will prove to be a good part of our study. It's not a soul. It's not a body that we are training. It is a man. It is the individual, the whole person. We ought not to divide him into two parts. John Locke, famous English philosopher,

said recreation for older youth and adults is not being idle, but easing the wearied part by change of business. As we got this general trend over the next couple hundred years in Europe, there was a famous guy Horace Greeley, a leading American journalist in 1876, observed that although there were teachers for every art,

science, in Elegie, there was no professor of play, of activities to do with our free time. And the general zeit guys started becoming a concern. Concerned with this.

In 1880, not too long after U.S. President James Garfield declared in a speech at Lake Chautauqua, we may divide, though, he said we may divide the whole struggle of the human race into two chapters. The first is the fight to get leisure, and the second is what to do with it once we have it. I thought it was an interesting little historical trivia that New York's Central Park initially it took a reform to come about because it never existed for a long time there was maybe there was some vague plans and the 843 acre park that exists today only came about through a serious social effort of people making their voices heard and it was only in like scattered bits of land and plots that total

to about 400 acres and then by the 1850s the entire amount of public space of Manhattan had only open public space had only made up about 100 less than 120 acres and so there was a pressure that built up in these movements communicating that there was a need for the citizen citizenry especially with the rapidly accelerating construction and in you know removal of of trees and landscaping from the new york environment for a relief from all this stone and concrete. The poet William Bryant said that commerce is devouring inch by inch the coast of the island of New York and if we would rescue any part of it for the health and recreation it must be done now. And finally in 1856 not too long after the 840 acre 43 acre site that we know of today finally began

and apparently every single foot of the park's surface was man-made every tree bush every arch every roadway it was made it designed with a purpose and it was importantly the philosophy behind it was a refreshment of the mind and nerves for city dwellers through the provision of greenery and scenic vistas. This is going to be an important part to Bob Ross's landscapes. The park was to be heavily wooded and have the appearance of untouched rural scenery with roadways or only lightly touched. With roadways, the traffic, the buildings screened from the eyes of the park users wherever possible

wherever possible this is just a useful of the again general zeitgeist as the Industrial Revolution really got full steam ahead so to speak in the 1850s

that's right when the park the demand for nature essentially was heard and felt and heard.

Seventy years later in the Depression, the Depression helped to stimulate national concern about problems of leisure and recreational opportunity. There is a number of studies that revealed a serious lack of structured recreation programs for young people, especially minority people. There's a report around that same time

that said the leisure of the American people constitutes a central and crucial problem problem of society. Now we're going to see we've had more within the last 150 years since then, or the last 100 years since this Depression era realization and continued focus on leisure. We've had more leisure to ourselves. we've had more free time we've had more a rise in wealth we've had a growing distance among members of communities as populations increase we've had less religious unification people are becoming more more secular they're losing connection with their local cities and towns and and villages

and neighborhoods. We have things that are increasingly making us dis-deunified, you know? There's a disunification. We are becoming more isolated, less, with a less, a diminished sense of community, really. And we're going to see that Bob relates

all these historical movements, and there's a whole, there's one in particular, the Hudson River School of Landscape Painters, led by, arguably founded by Thomas Cole, who was himself very, very aware of the potential vulnerability of America in the 1800s to the same fate that the Roman Empire had. If we didn't appreciate, well, appreciate higher values of arete, appreciate a connection with nature, cultivate a spirituality,

even if it wasn't Christianity per se. If we didn't pay attention to the self-development of the individuals within a society, society might be at risk of collapsing. And he was a famous landscape painter.