The Blindboy Podcast - Analysing Class structure with Darren McGarvey

Episode Date: September 20, 2022

Darren McGarvey is an award-winning writer and rapper from Scotland whose work addresses social class, politics, and emotional resilience. His most recent book ¨The Social Distance Between Us" is out now.   Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Bola bus you freshly shorn Haurigans. Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. You might notice the sound is quite different this week. I'm trying to record this podcast in transit. I'm trying to record this in a hotel room right now. I've got multiple pillows and quilts over my head because the hotel room has got disgraceful acoustics. I thought that I was going to be back in Limerick this week, back in my studio, where I could deliver you all a properly recorded podcast with the fidelity and sound that you're used to. But alas, this is not the case. Now, you know I have a rule, and that role is I will never not put out a podcast. No matter what happens or where I am, I sound like I'm going to cry. I just, I had something in my throat. I wasn't going to cry because I couldn't record a perfect Fidelity podcast. But you know I have a rule and that rule is

no matter what the circumstances a podcast will go out. So what I'm doing this week is I have a magnificent conversation that I had with a guest on this podcast a few months back and I'm going to put that out for you this week. I usually don't do two interview

podcasts in a row. That's something I've never done before. Last week we had the magnificent Sharon Lambert, Dr. Sharon Lambert, speaking about trauma. There was wonderful feedback for that, by the way. I'm glad you all enjoyed that. Thank you to Sharon for coming on the podcast, and it was a pleasure to give a platform to the shit that she was talking about not just give a platform but to give her the space and time that was necessary to speak about the important issues that she was speaking about that's kind of what I want what I want to do this week also I don't want to do a monologue podcast for you this week. Because like I said, I'm hunched over in a hotel room with a quilt over my head.

And I don't think I could deliver a good quality full-scale monologue podcast in this situation. So I'm going to give you a live podcast that I recorded in Glasgow a few months back. And the reason I'm choosing this as well is because of the news cycle this week with the death of the English Queen. If you live outside of fucking England, that funeral is insanity. On the one hand, you have an old lady called Elizabeth

who died and her family are very upset. But then on the other hand, what you have is a profoundly irrational and massive spectacle, which is not a funeral for an elderly woman, but a huge display of power for the British state and everything that represents. So I think it's appropriate for this week's podcast that the guest who I have on, who I'm going to speak to is a fella called

Darren McGarvey and Darren McGarvey who's also known as Loki who's a rapper from Scotland but Darren McGarvey is a social commentator a very astute, deeply intelligent person who communicates with a terrifying level of concise clarity. He can speak like people write. So I had a chat with Darren McGarvey a few months back. It was a live podcast in Glasgow. There was like 3,000 people in the audience. It was an amazing night and it had everything that I want to achieve from a live podcast and what I want from a live podcast is intimacy. My goal for a live podcast is even though there's a few thousand people in the audience, can myself and my guest create conversational intimacy that feels like it's just us in the room and we did that there was electricity in the room you could have heard a fucking pin drop we had a wonderful conversation about class structure, about art, about masculinity. At times it felt like a fucking

therapy session. As well as being a rapper Darren McGarvey he's written two books. One of them's called Poverty Safari. He has a book out right now called The Social Distance Between Us. His writing has been compared to George Orwell. He just did a really successful Edinburgh tour at the Edinburgh Fringe of The Social Distance Between Us and in the coming weeks he's going to be announcing a tour which I think is all around the UK of A Social Distance Between Us which is his live show spoken word show about the book you can find him on twitter on an instagram i'll tag him on instagram but without further ado here is the fantastic chat that i had with the brilliant darren mcgarvey are you all right there i don't have to worry

about you with the mic you know how to use mics yeah i'm good man i'm good yeah that's that's always a fear with guests is do they know how to use a mic or do they not? But you have MCing experience and that's the best mic use possible. Yeah the worst thing that you can do with me is pull out one of those headsets. I mean that is just, I really lose all respect the minute that I get hit with a headset. Just give me an SM58 and let's fucking go, do you know what I mean? Now here's an interesting, I get hit with headsets as well now I have a beautiful excuse

I have a plastic bag on my head you can't put a headset on my fucking face or I won't sound like I'm talking I will just literally sound like someone opening a packet of crisps do you know what I mean? but I'm guessing now when you're doing like book events or you're moving away from the space of rap

and into public speaking, they come out with these shitty little fucking headsets. Do you know who ruined them as well? H from Steps. One of many things you could argue he ruined. I have a lot of sympathy for H from Steps because his real name is Ian Watkins. Because in fairness, poor old H from Steps, right, that's terrible to have that name.

Second of all, I remember growing up, I don't know if you had this in Scotland, but there used to be these kind uh kind of like manholes on the ground but they were for fire hydrants and they just had a giant h on them did you have them here so we just walked past them going h from steps is grave and I just kept imagining these little miniature h's just him consistently dying, like multitudes of him. Quantum death and just burying him all around Ireland. So there was that.

That didn't help. I was never a huge fan of Steps' music and then he ruined those things for me. It's like, why aren't you using a mic, H? It's the banality of Evo, isn't it? And immediately you feel like you're in a musical so when I announced that you were going to be my guest and people were thrilled people

were very happy I got wonderful questions but so many loads of the questions are about class right how do you define if someone is middle class, we'll say here? What does that mean in the geographical island of Britain? Well, there are different ways of looking at it. The basic way is what is your relationship to the labour market or as a Marxist would say, the means of production. So do you offer your labour in exchange for a wage that you live on but have no real autonomy over the conditions of your job, what the price of your job is

unless you're part of a trade union? Shout out to Mac Lynch and the RMT. And so yeah, I mean obviously unless working class people are highly organised and determined, then they won't come off well in that exchange. Middle class people or the middle classes, I mean, it's interesting because in the UK, there is this kind of denial of class as a metric by which you can measure things but also there is this deep commitment in terms of how we structure our economy that we maintain certain entrenched privileges for specific social classes so when you talk about property one of the advantages conferred on property owners is that they don't have to be politically active for politicians to look after their interests so we see that in Lancaster West Estate, where the Grenfell fire happened.

The people who lived in that tower were campaigning for years for better fire safety, whereas the people who lived in Notting Hill and the surrounding areas, they didn't have to campaign for anything, but they were having the exterior of this building changed just so it was more pleasant for them to look at. And so that in itself is a kind of microcosm of the wider problem which you can replicate that basic dynamic and education criminal justice culture um and on and

on and that's that's that's what a lot of my my work has been concerned with so your definition of of class there was very much the marxist. It's about where your money's coming from, your sense of autonomy. However, you would get people who come from middle-class parents, university-educated, and they now find themselves working in a coffee shop, so effectively working a working-class job. But then these people,

if they refer to themselves as working-class, you could have people who would say grew up in a council estate who might say no. So where does that come into it? Good question. And this is a very contentious issue because it's important not to have a kind of reductive view of what a working class or a middle class person is like. And most people resist that kind of categorisation. Even working class people who you're often arguing in defence of will say no I vote Tory because, because, because and you know they can make quite compelling arguments

sometimes, but when it comes to a situation like that where you have an economy that's no longer even as valuable as it was for middle class people and the cost of living crisis is beginning to place a strain on their incomes, the difference between a barista who is from a middle class family

and a barista who is from a working class family is that the barista from the middle class family will have a certain margin of error, which means if they lose their job quickly or they are involved in some kind of dispute in the workplace or, you know, they develop an addiction, maybe they become a cokehead for a wee while, whatever it might be, their family can get around them.

They can liquidate some assets and they can provide the material and emotional resources required to support a person like that. Whereas a working-class kid who maybe comes from a single-parent family with a dad in prison, they've probably already got the criminal justice system on their back, they've probably

already had to show their criminal record to an employer and go through that whole humiliating rigmarole and then because their surplus labour is so available in the surrounding community then it means that someone can sack them knowing that someone

else can replace them straight away so there's that inherent insecurity in every area of their life and I would say that that's the big difference and also too the role of trauma within certain communities someone who comes from a neighbourhood The role of trauma, we'll say, within certain communities,

someone who comes from a neighbourhood with high ownership or whatever is not going to witness or be a part of community trauma, community violence, and then the impacts that that has on their self-esteem, their mental health, and how they see themselves going forward. Absolutely, and then it's also important, I quite enjoy inverting sometimes the discussions around things like this

because I'm as interested in looking at the trauma of the people who are going to the highest fee paying schools as well and how this is expressed through the psychopathic disregard for human life that we see all across our society. And so you have trauma at every level of society, and then it's a case of how vulnerable are you to the material conditions around you. So what we see at the bottom of the food chain is

if someone grows up in a particularly troubled environment, what you would call a dysfunctional environment, maybe an alcoholic parent, they're already disadvantaged by their class position and that of their parents in terms of their access to health services because of the inverse care law, which, cut short, basically means that there's a disproportionate relationship between where most health care is needed and where it actually is.

So just like education and property middle class people get better quality healthcare and they get even more time with their doctor they're often presenting with less complicated problems so basically a kid that's grown up in a poorer environment they're dealing with health inequality educational inequality they're dealing with criminal justice inequality, they're dealing with cultural inequality, as in when they look at TV or they go out into the city centre, very rarely are they going to see someone who looks and sounds like them unless it's the Jeremy

Kyle show or some other idiotic depiction of a stereotype and so really there are just so many different forces bearing down upon them that actually they they may actually find some kind of solace in defining themselves by their trauma they might think well this is my identity you know and so without the proper support to help somebody work through that um then then a person can get caught up in addiction which is

often the solution that a lot of people reach out for because they're dealing with uh they're dealing with a an acute and constant sense of dis-ease um about other people's intentions towards them uh constant exclusion constant um punitive action from institutions around them i mean people who are in the prison their social exclusion begins in a classroom and an educational environment that is not equipped to accommodate their diverse learning needs and emotional needs. And so really what this society does is, unfortunately, it makes life hard for those kids in the beginning

and then continues to make it harder as they struggle. So if someone descends, it becomes harder and harder and it's a bit like being caught in a pool of quicksand. The best thing you can do to survive is stay completely still and then when you can stay completely still and don't do anything the traumatized etonians will point at you from the side of the pool and they'll say you lack aspiration because look at you you're not moving you lack the aspiration to get up and go like me a psychopath with lots of money yeah do you read are you familiar with

Dr. Gabor Mate I am I did an event with him a couple of years back yeah because Gabor Mate who'd be quite left leaning in his views quite yeah he takes Gabor Mate, who'd be quite left-leaning in his views... Quite? Yeah.

He takes a trauma-informed view of society, and Gabor Mate, too, if you ask Gabor Mate about... If you'd say to him, Boris Johnson, Donald Trump, he will refer to these men as highly traumatised individuals. Yeah. And he's speaking about their, the trauma of their privilege is expressed

as normalized psychopathy, as you described. Has that helped you to arrive at that type of mindset? Yes, and also the fact that I have a recovery from alcohol and substance misuse that I need to manage on a daily basis. And one of the things that I need a recovery from alcohol and substance misuse that I need to manage on a daily basis and one of the things that I need to watch out for is resentment and anger because as justified as these emotions can be sometimes when I when I'm not in a in that elevated state of consciousness I can just become those emotions and I can only sit in that discomfort for a few

days before I start thinking do you know what I could get a box of soap with Dean Maxx a box of Nurofen plus take five out of each and watch the boys you know and then two weeks later I'll be in rehab so I need to kind of watch that now obviously being on the left maybe not as far out in the left as some of my comrades but certainly on the left sometimes that's seen as a kind of weakness you know, you're not emphasising the dehumanising language, the scum and all of that sort of stuff and I recognise where that

anger comes from and I also commend anybody who is in an emotionally regulated place where they can live with that anger every day and express that anger every day but I can't so I have to take a more magnanimous approach but in turn through doing that so that's compassion you have to like radical compassion radical compassion for you to speak about the trauma of an Etonian yeah that's a lot that takes a lot yeah that's quite an unpopular thing to say. But I appreciate where you're coming from.

You're coming from the point of view of, I must. It's quite Buddhist. It's sending the love outwards as a way to understand. Because, like, the reason I say it's Buddhist, there's this Buddhist parable I always fucking speak about, right, when it comes to the emotion of anger in particular, because anger is a cunt. Anger will really, really make you not want to it anger will can anger can confuse you into thinking

that you're doing something purposeful and it misdirects your purpose yeah and there was these two buddhist monks and they were walking along the road and the thing with these Buddhist monks is they were full-on fucking monks so they had to live by rules one of these rules is that they could not touch a woman they could not physically touch a woman in any way that was the fucking rules so the two Buddhists are walking along and there's a flood and they see a woman and she can't get over a flood river that's just developed. And she's there, and she has all her groceries with her and everything. So the Buddhist monks walk up, and they say, what's the problem? She's like, I can't get across the river. So one of the Buddhist

monks says, hop up onto my back, and I'll take you across the river. So he does. She gets over to the other side. Everyone's happy. The two Buddhist monks continue walking on. The other one is silent, fucking furious. He says nothing for the rest of the journey. Really tense. So the fellow who carried the woman says to him, what's the problem? And the other fellow says, you fucking put her up onto your back. You know the fucking rules. We can't touch women and you carried her. And he turns around and he says, I carried her for two seconds across that river.

You've been carrying her for the past two hours. Yeah, yeah, that's a wonderful story. Isn't it? Because that's anger. Yeah, and that's a really, that's a very deep way of looking at it and even i think some people will be operating at a certain frequency emotionally where they might not even understand the deeper meaning of that because they're not receptive to it in that moment

but i i've i've found a success in my personal life and i think that it's part of my nature actually to to always be looking for the possibility of a reconciliation or the possibility of a deeper understanding and I think it's partly because of the environment I grew up in you know I don't talk about this a lot because it's Glasgow and I don't want to scandalize myself but I was raised in a Catholic family we were all Celtic daft my granny was the kind of Celtic fan who not only believed that every kick of the ball

up the pitch was a sporting advance but also an ethical victory, do you know what I mean? You have what we would call a big Irish head Yes, yes he noted that to me in the dressing room and I did concur immediately. It's something that we use if we're in a foreign country and we need directions.

We can look into a crowd and you see that big Irish head. It's Dylan Moran once described it as a person who's just received two very important conflicting pieces of information. Yeah. very important conflicting pieces of information. Yeah. Well, that kind of links into what I'm saying because as much as I was raised in that environment, I also went to a non-denominational school where religion wasn't a big thing.

And all my best friends were Rangers fans and all their families were brilliant, working class people who often kind of sought refuge in their homes when we were having tough times, and mine. And so I never quite chimed with that analysis that you often get where a lot of of us on the the green side of this situation that stereotype of the Rangers fan yeah it didn't it did not ring true with my experience

so I always resisted it but I think in those early days what that taught me was you can't really know a person's intentions or character or motives until you have had a face-to-face and got a sense of them you can speculate and you might be right some of the time but when you're making big conclusions and thinking about society in terms of social classes and and these big concepts you always have to temper that with the humility that you're really having a guess at it and that you have to sometimes change the lens and look at it in a different way and I find that that actually adds a kind of richness to a class analysis which is more emotionally intelligent perhaps than than than what many of us might have experienced before and in speaking there about uh addiction struggles you know um we know addiction in ireland uh

i would say even in ireland addiction has become completely normalized i didn't realize that this until like i go to spain to write and I go to this city, it's like 300,000 people, and I slowly realized that I'm the only drunk person in the whole city. And I'm like, I'm not drunk, I'm just having seven pints. And then the Spanish people are going, why are you having seven pints? I've been drinking one pint for the past hour.

And what I'm doing there is I'm abusing alcohol. And I don't see that as abusing because my culture says that is not abusing. That's how you use alcohol. The alcohol industry says that is how you use alcohol and that becomes the culture. Obviously in Ireland, maybe you could make some exceptions,

particularly as well in Scotland. But I always say that when we talk about our culture. Our culture is shaped. And you've talked about this a lot with your mental health stuff and being susceptible to advertising messages and things like that. Even this, man, and this is the fucked up thing about Guinness, because Guinness is the national drink of Ireland. Have you ever heard of the penal laws in Ireland?

No. So around the 1600s it would have been post Oliver Cromwell when we became fully colonized so the penal laws were brought in which were deeply sectarian racist laws that meant an Irish Catholic could not get an education could not own property could not have a weapon could not vote property, could not have a weapon, could not vote, couldn't own a horse. A systematic disenfranchisement of a population based on,

they said religion, but what it really meant was native people of the land. And was this regardless of social position or class? It was just, if you were Irish, that's what happened. If you were Irish Catholic, this is the fucking law. Right. So that's one of the things that, that was 200 years before the famine.

That's what laid the foundations for the famine. When people go, Jesus, would you not have eaten a carrot instead? It's like, no, no, no. 200 years of people not having land education, anything meant that we relied upon one staple crop while everything was being exported. But while you had this systemic racism disenfranchising the whole population, that's the same

time that Guinness started as a company. And Guinness was, they were Protestant supremacists. These were very wealthy Protestants who a Catholic could not work in Guinness up until the 1960s. That's the truth. Like Mr. Guinness, I can't think of his name, Arthur, hated Catholics. And I just find it ironic. What I often compare it to is, if you look at the crack epidemic in America,

crack cocaine was introduced to African-American communities at the exact same time that resources were being pulled from African-American communities. So the system created a perfect environment for addiction while the substance was coming in. That happened in Ireland with Guinness, and I do think it's kind of fucked up that... A pint of Guinness is like a little Catholic priest

you know it has that collar that's when you know you've had drank a lot of Guinness yeah but it is we're here drinking priests with this company that hated fucking Catholics that came from the fucking

the penal laws and where I'm getting that really is one of the reasons we have a very toxic drink culture in Ireland and how alcoholism is normalized it's intergenerational trauma now you can say epigenetic trauma which is you literally inherit trauma to your true your genes and there's evidence for that and they've looked at that, especially with Holocaust survivors. But for me, like, I've got terrible anxiety, and I'm only, like, three generations removed

from people who lived in the famine. So do you find, like, as someone who's from Irish heritage, do you look at not only the trauma that you witnessed and grew up with firsthand, but also trauma possibly passed down to you intergenerationally? Yes, absolutely. Both my parents, my mother, God rest her, her father was Irish.

My paternal grandfather was Irish and they both came over for work in the in the 1950s early 50s as did fucking most of Ireland and

so I was a kind of fruit of that labour further down the line in 1984 and I remember my grandfather he worked all his life

he was a plasterer and he liked to drink he was the kind of Irish guy that says I'm going for a pint and you know there's no'm going for a pint. And you know, there's no such thing as a pint. No, no, no, no. And basically, you know, the older I got,

the more I began to recognise that he was disturbed. He was disturbed in some way by something. And I never got to the bottom of it, but it was always when he fell asleep in a drunken sleep, the things he would say in his drunken sleep were upsetting. He would apologise. He would ask God for forgiveness all the time in his sleep. And physically, he would be almost convulsing as he'd done it. And we all got kind of used to it,

to the point where we were just like, OK, that's just old Tommy. But I remember very close to the end of his life my grandmother passed away suddenly she contracted a flesh-eating disease in hospital when she was being treated for something else and really he he it was that point you know we were talking backstage about when someone's getting palliative care and you know they're getting doped up with heroin. It was a bit like that with us, when his drinking really just went off the deep end. It got to the point that we stopped saying,

we're not going to the shop for you to get another bottle. We understood where things were going. This was his medicine. This was his medicine, and, you know, that was it. And I think he had a lot of regret and things as well. You know, I don't think a positive, romantic way of being a man was modelled to him. And so he might have had those impulses, but didn't know how to act on them a lot with my granny. And neither did she, to be honest.

I mean, pretty tough life for them both, you know, in many ways. And tough for people generally back then. But I remember very close to the end of his life he confided in us about an incident that occurred in his childhood and I won't go too much into it because I don't know how he would feel about it but I remember

when he went back to his hometown with a family friend he got up in the pub the local pub and he gave the whole pub it straight about who it was that and his words ruined his life yeah um and so trauma is absolutely passed on not just necessarily epigenetically as you describe but also we learn how to manage our emotions and how we confront certain situations from what is modelled to us.

And so if we adopt an emotional posture towards life, which is actually making it more complicated, you know, by being defensive, by adopting a certain attitude of distrust, then we might think instinctively that this is to protect us, but it cuts us off from what we really need, which is the best medicine of all,

which is full full authentic social connection with other people and an honesty that brings a certain self-awareness and a sense of connectedness which is a panacea for all of the health problems associated with poverty and just trauma but unfortunately as you've noted many times we medicalise that very quickly and we don't

look at the next part post medicalization so we've got a lot of people walking around who don't even realize that their whole mental outlook on life is a trauma response and they self-medicate uh because the society is plentiful in that regard in terms of you could just walk out of here or not even out of here and you can get something to kill the pain right now um these guys are lovely they'll clap at anything i told you they'd be fucking sound um yeah it's interesting what you speak about there because one thing i remember growing up and one thing i definitely i would have seen in my pals, right, and very much a male thing, was the expectation of being hard, being a hard cunt. And having to be a hard cunt as a way to, within a male group, this is how you get value within that group.

But if you're a hard cunt all the time, like I knew lads who, they might have been selling drugs, they might have been getting involved in gang stuff, they couldn't show laughter. They couldn't be seen to laugh at a

joke. They couldn't dance. They couldn't do anything that would be seen as silly play. Playfulness is an essential part of being human. To be authentic and to play in the moment. They fucking couldn't because they had to be hard. And if they looked like they were laughing or dancing, they're going, someone's going to look at me and I look soft and I'll get my head kicked in.

And how they were disconnected completely from that part of themselves and the lads I know who used to have to do this a lot of them aren't here anymore and the ones that are here are now in their 30s deeply deeply struggling with addiction yeah and I I remember them before puberty having crack having a bit of a laugh. And then as soon as you hit a teenager and you have to be hard, that just disconnected. Yeah, I identify strongly with this. And I'm afflicted by this to a certain extent. I've got as far as getting into music.

But being creative is also weak. Yeah, no, that was where I had to stand my ground as a kid in Pollock because anything that did not conform to the pre-established parameters of behaviour was mocked. It was mocked out of fear. It was mocked out of fear. But for me, I stood my ground.

I got into hip-hop. I found a way to channel that energy but still I'm afflicted by it you know there's been occasions where I've got myself into conflicts of some description or another because I understand the

game theory of those male dynamics and I understand that 90% of fighting is sounding like you'll go ahead with it and sometimes that backfires on you, sometimes it doesn't but I always feel regret after it, I always feel, even in a fight that you win I always go away just feeling like I've beat myself up anyway but even now there are still aspects where I'm afflicted by that toxic masculinity and I think that's the correct term and there's context to use because I deny myself an awful lot of joy in life yeah I can't even sing in the shower

and that sounds funny right that sounds funny but I can't I can't even sing in the shower because there's something about it that is so embarrassing to me. And it's because it's gentle and it's because it's being free. And there's something about me that's still not let go of that wee boy then who had to behave in a certain kind of way. And this was policed usually with homophobic language.

Yeah. And this is what I want to... Yeah, reading in academic, that was always seen as gay. Gay, yeah. And inverted commas for anyone listening around the world. Absolutely. Just going to pause the interview right there so I can do a quick ocarina pause.

Again, apologies to everybody for the chaotic nature of these little recordings between the interview. I am recording this in a hotel room underneath a quilt. I don't have anything to do in Ocarina Pause with this. I've got to vape. I'm going to vape a little bit and when I vape you're going to hear an advert for something, right?

I can vape in stereo with this particular mic I have. Actually, it's a stereo mic. Rock City, you're the best fans in the league, bar none. Tickets are on sale now for Fan Appreciation Night on Saturday, April 13th, when the Toronto Rock hosts the Rochester Nighthawks at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton at 7.30pm.

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Bit of ASMR. There you go, left to right ASMR, you greedy cunts. He's vaping into the microphone while you listen to advertisements. he's vaping into the microphone while you listen to advertisements all right support for this podcast comes from you the listener via the patreon page i'm also whispering because it's two in the fucking morning all right support for this podcast comes from you the listener via the patreon page patreon.com forward slash the blind boy podcast this podcast is my full-time job. This is how I earn a living.

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Just some live podcasts coming up. I'm going to be in Vicar Street on November 1st. That's almost sold out. We're down to the last few tickets. I'm unsure whether I'll add another date. I might do if the demand is there. Also, on the 31st, Halloween night, I'm doing a live podcast at the Polka Festival up in fucking County Meath.

Go to polkafestival.com. I probably have another gig that I'm supposed to promote. But alas, I'm underneath the Continental Quilt in a fucking hotel room with no phone or laptop. And I don't, I can't remember any other gigs. All right. So lay off, promoters. Nothing else to talk about let's go back to the wonderful interview with the fantastic

Darren McGarvey because that's the other thing too with notoriety having approval from people can be very very dangerous that can be a very dangerous thing and it can keep you it can remove you from your fucking art.

Because the thing is, to make a piece of good writing or a piece of good art, it's a dialogue with yourself. You have to make it for yourself, and if you do that properly, it will communicate with other people. But as soon as you start thinking about an audience, what will they like? And as soon as you start... For me, I can't allow myself to get a buzz from positive praise because if i allow myself to get a buzz from positive praise i will focus very much on any

negativity and the struggle for me all the time is how do i just keep it about myself if i do a podcast if i write a book it's only successful because I'm doing this for me and then if I do that it will communicate effectively what's your relationship with praise wow because you get a lot of it man yeah I'm trying to learn

I'm trying to learn that it's okay for me to think of myself as a generally good person who generally has decent motives most of the time but there is also

that shadow self, do you know what I mean? that I've over identified with over the years that everyone has and so part of my recovery has been about learning to separate the two and embrace the two. And for me, here's an example, right?

Second book comes out, right? And I'm not saying this I hope people understand I mean this genuinely. It doesn't if you don't understand how genuinely I mean it, that that's fine i can't change how you think right but this is the second time my work has been compared to george orwell's work yeah right and that is intensely surreal because that praise is not dished out often but it's also

serial to be that person right so you, what have I to make of this? I didn't go to Eton. I didn't have that kind of privileged heritage. I mean, he took the name George Orwell to purge that guilt he had from that background. And then you can start looking into it and going, is this a comparison? How does that, what does that mean about me? And then you realise, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, of writing on social inequality in Britain, that you have to go back to a guy who had his heyday in the 30s to find a comparison with somebody who was born in the 80s. I'm happy that people say those nice things,

but it's better that other people say them and I don't start saying them about myself. And so it's getting that relationship, really, with understanding, look, I'm delivering the goods. What do the readers think? What do the readers feel and you know what if I go with that barometer that's much more grounded in reality so I get people coming up they tell me I went to university off the back of reading your book I became a nurse

off the back of reading your book do you know what man that's a buzz for me yeah that's a big buzz for me because like I'm all about class politics and I'm all about radical reform of society but I'm all about fucking grab the bull by the horns in this society if you want and fucking make the most of what is around you don't just wait for the revolution you know like just get out there and do your thing and forget anybody

who's trying to bring you down because of the way you speak or the way you sound, you've got millions of people in Britain who don't realise that they are bending over backwards to speak properly, to accommodate the inferior communication skills of privately educated millionaires. There you fucking go. There's kind of parallels between our two careers in the sense that we both started off with hip-hop and then we developed more into kind of social commentary. For me it was the difficulty of Horse Outside to then speaking with sincerity about mental health and doing it from a perspective of like i know i'm silly but i can speak about this thing in a

serious way even though i'm still being silly and i'm assuming with yourself even though your lyrical content was quite serious and your message was present in your lyrics. When you're a rapper, they don't take you seriously. Yeah. You know? How did you find that transition to going, I'm not rapping now, I'm speaking and what I'm saying is worth listening to? See, I just

refused to accept those terms in the beginning. So I don't accept, it begins with me saying I don't accept that I don't accept... It begins with me saying, I don't accept that you don't accept this. And so let's see who budgies first. Yeah. And, you know, I'm kind of stubborn that way.

And really what it came down to was the consistency across all of the work that I've done, because I'm a qualified community practitioner. And you studied journalism as well. I'm a qualified journalist, broadcaster, writer and hip-hop artist or rapper. And the

consistency between all of that is that I always have the same message to carry. It's about making people who haven't experienced the stuff that I and many people around me have experienced understand something of that experience and through all these different

mediums you can speak to different audiences and different demographics so with my hip hop audience I have possibly the most intimate relationship with them so that's why, and you'll understand this as well, that's why and you you you understand this as well that's why like if you were back and listen to my early work i'm very unguarded in how i spoke

and we lived in a different time where there were different it was a different lexicon different subject matter was in there so if i go back and i was to listen to some of that stuff then i would think well i wouldn't talk about that subject in that way now. Or I wouldn't talk about it in that way in this kind of context. But the hip-hop audience, they've got a lot of, and you'll probably know this as well from your own experience, they really kind of, they're watching me and they feel like I'm still representing them. And that's good because I know like

if the cultural gestapo just bust through the door right now and just went like that, McGarvey it's over the Orwell thing was a fucking joke your writing is pish you're the Richard Madeley of social commentary right

if they came in and done that do you know what, the-hop community would be there and they would be like right like what's happening let's make some music and so there's a certain kind of comfort that comes going through exploring all these other avenues and a confidence that comes where you can look the culture and the angle i don't care if you think this is ridiculous i'm gonna turn it up until you start to listen to what I'm actually saying and and part of that confidence comes from knowing that in a Scottish wider hip-hop landscape then um you know I'm I'm I regard it with a lot of affection and and I think I'm regarded with a lot of affection

as well fair fucking play to you man um I need to you're being kind of ungenerous about your own work as well I know what you mean I've difficulty saying the word qualified like I like for me what it comes from is I recently found out I was artistic so I spent my entire

life being told that I was a stupid cunt in school I had a terrible time in school I failed that I was a stupid cunt in school. I had a terrible time in school. I failed school. I was really branded as bad from a young age. And it's hard. Like, this is what it feels like for me. Like, my thing now is writing and short stories, which means I'm trying to be accepted by the literature community.

And a lot of these people who gatekeep the literature or even podcasts or any type of serious discourse, when I was a kid, I was smart. However, I was bad and I was put into these classes and I was misbehaving. I really, really wanted to speak to the smart kids I wanted to go up to those classes in school that I wasn't allowed to and I wanted to speak to them about the things they were interested in and they had a certain way of bullying me it wasn't physical it was a look or a sneering comment and it hurt me deeply yeah and now as an adult the

same people that are gatekeeping literature gatekeeping discourse they use that same language so when I get a shitty comment from them like I get right-wingers attacking me the whole time right-wingers just going you're a stupid prick with a bag in his head I don't give a fuck water off a duck's back but if it's someone who's very well educated very well read and they give a shitty comment to me I'm right back to being a child and it hurts yeah and I have to learn to try and take ownership of that and be able to say like you're saying I'm'm qualified, I've done things, I've earned my position to be here, to write, to do what I want, but I have a lot of trauma to get over.

Yeah, well, I mean, I'm feeling it for you as you're sharing that. You know what I mean? I'm feeling that. And I don't identify with the additional learning needs aspect of it it was ADD I got diagnosed with it's similar stuff I got diagnosed by Gabor Matty that's my claim to fame

Gabor Matty 10 minutes in a dressing room with me and he just took me outside and he says I hope you don't mind but I'm diagnosing you with attention deficit disorder but that's better than that that's that's like uh in our language that's like a knighthood except not from a prick yeah yeah yeah gabber matty fucking diagnosing you with ADD I know it was he's also been quite open about his own experiences But to kind of go back to what you're saying,

because I think it's an important point, and I think it's good to hear someone being that kind of vulnerable and talking about that openly and seeing that you are damaged by that sort of stuff, and that's not your fault. The thing that I developed was a contempt for people who treated me like that. So it did affect me. I want their approval.

Yeah, see, it did affect me, but it also made me focused. So the weird thing about me is I don't know if it's the ADD or if it's growing up in a kind of occasionally hostile kind of terrain. But I experienced what I can only describe as perfect concentration when I'm in a conflict with someone. It's why I'm effective as a battle rapper, it's why I'm effective as an MC, it's why I'm effective in the heat of the moment, a heated exchange. It's why I'm quite handy in a debate on TV. You don't get emotional.

I get emotional, but it's like a blackout. It's like a blackout. See when you get a blackout from drinking? I get a blackout and a conflict where I sort of, I just kind of go, no. This is not going to happen the way you want it to happen. And then something else takes

over. I kind of am just sort of there, sitting, watching it. And then I come back in once it's over. And it's weird because it's a sort of trauma response almost. There's a disassociation. There's another part of me or my ego that handles the conflict and then returns me back to sort of deal with the aftermath of it. But a lot of people, when they find themselves in a conflict situation,

will freeze and then they lose their cognitive brain and then they can't argue. And then afterwards, they're driving home in the car, furiously angry about what they should have said. Yeah, but the thing is, people always regret what they didn't say, but it's far better than regretting what you did say because I'm not proud of some of the dressing downs that I've dished out over the years, to be honest.

One of my worst defects as a person, it's less now because I understand the damage, but I could be very, very cruel with my words, you know, and really feel justified. Seeing it as a retaliatory strike almost but realizing that I've cut someone down so harshly so there is an element of emotional hijack because so in that moment you're not fully using your compassion you're not thinking about how do my words affect this other person yeah and and and I have more control over that now. I still black out,

but I black out in a way that I can reach for facts and phrases and ways of distilling a complex idea simply for an audience in a debate scenario or something like that. But also, I mean, I've shared this before in my book, but when I was a kid,

my mum and dad had two totally different natures. My dad was a diplomat. If it was a problem, he would be the person that would be trying to negotiate with other parents and talk to them and all that. My mother had a completely different view and one which is born of those social conditions she grew up in, which is

don't let anyone see that you're frightened. Don't let anyone see that they can get one up on you because the minute that you do that, then they're just going to take advantage of that. And so I remember, you know, there were times I was coming home, and this is just maternal love and expressed in a way that some people might find shocking.

But if I came in the door and I'd had a run-in with somebody and came off worse for it, I was marched back out that door, you know what I mean? And there's times I had to fight in the street and all that um because she she would not accept uh me returning home and bringing any kind of shame uh on on the name of the family obviously quite ironic because she was quite a chaotic drinker at times you know what I mean but she it was her that was her expressing her love in its purest form it was just a kind of it was a slightly uh it was slightly deformed kind of love but it was love nonetheless

and so I think that I still carry that I carry that kind of nah you're not gonna get the last word not with me I don't care what your qualifications are and I don't care how badly you want to win because there's just for me it's like a spider sense and I know one day if I overstep a line I'll receive retribution and my ego will be whittled back down to a more manageable size and I'm comfortable with that as well but this is an aspect of my nature that sometimes I don't have any control over so I can't even really take any credit for it it just seems to be part of who I am. It's interesting, man, because... So I had the exact opposite in that... When I was a kid,

I'd frequently find myself getting in trouble with adults. I would speak to adults in a way that you're not supposed to speak to adults, and I frequently found myself getting physically beaten by adults. And I would return home, and an adult has just kicked the shit out of me. Like I remember, I went up to this woman and her child in a playground and I said that one day the sun was going to expand and consume the entire universe. I was six. This was one of the things

that got me my autism diagnosis, but I just thought it was a lovely fact but it the kid started crying the mother didn't like that the kid was crying and the mother beat me the way you'd beat an adult and I was six and when I went home and this would happen frequently my parents kind of went you did something bad and you probably deserved it yeah so I didn't get told go back out there or I didn't get told we need to find this adult and have him fucking arrested or whatever because they beat a child consistently I found that my childhood the message was because like my parents had their own shit going on and they tended to believe teachers and believe positions of authority so if they say that your child is bad

then your child must be bad so I didn't get that support at home it was you deserve that beaten and you now need to hide yeah and that hasn't stuck to me as a fighting spirit so that's why when I get taken down by people who I want the approval of I internalize it as so I can't say I'm professional I deserve to be here. I need to work on that. What is it that you hope that they would say, like, in an ideal scenario? And that's bullshit.

Why do I want their fucking approval? Yeah, but even, imagine someone's, because what I'm trying to get to is, could you even internalise the approval if it was given freely? So there's the thing. So then you see the futility in looking for it because it's just a cycle of self

hatred absolutely so fuck them, you know not even in a bad way, it's just it's like repeatedly punching yourself in the face in a certain kind of way, but it's weird because if we did punch ourselves in the face, which I have

done a few times we would kind of quickly go, oh is too painful but we seem to give us a certain kind of continuity about revisiting the same pain and living in the same shame. The thing with shame is you cannot, if you live in a shamed state for too long it becomes so corrosive that it just self-replicates so then there's all the things that you do to numb the shame it's okay i think a certain level of shame is appropriate in certain scenarios and in our culture it's an important force to regiment behavior and social norms and all of these things so you know if i if i have lost a rag on my son

which i have never i've never physically struck him, but I've felt like it sometimes. And if I ever physically did strike him, I would experience a certain level of shame the minute the mist of anger dissipated. And I would experience that shame at an appropriate level because that would create a disincentive to behave that way again. But if I drank on that shame, then I'm not getting any insight

and it's true meaning I'm numbing it so it's not getting processed properly because basically our body is partly just this kind of big biochemical emotional processor so when we numb stuff it doesn't get that relief that release that we're supposed to get so it's just we we make it worse but I I I think um it's mad because you're very successful and you're successful in a way that models to people like me what is possible so like in Glasgow in Scotland I'm seen as successful but you're you're like you're you're a big successful name and every single area that you've applied yourself and it's weird because even when you're talking about your music you're kind of you're you're being ungenerous and a self-deprecating funny way but at the same time we understood your music and the music that you made we understood

that to be knowing very knowing and its quality and had a satirical quality and and a knowing quality that that something similar and aesthetic could be done by somebody else and possess no such intrinsic value. So even the stuff that you're kind of fucking about, you know what I mean? That's all part of your integrity as an artist. That's all part of your intelligence.

And unfortunately, you could record this and play that, what I've just said, back to you over and over again. And until you just stop fighting that negative voice, then this won't matter. No, you're dead right. I mean, what I say, what I do,

I just try and have the self-compassion to go, look, I'm not fucking perfect and I'm on a journey. And what I can't do is beat myself up over it. But understand, this is an issue I have and this is something I need to consistently try and work on. And compassion is the only key. Compassion. I know too, for me,

I know that I have to have compassion for the people whose approval I want. As opposed to thinking, this person is above me. Because I know, any time I feel that way, I'm just six years of age again, or I'm 15, and I'm back in school. And what I'm experiencing are the desires of a child that are no longer relevant to me as an autonomous adult. And that's the thing with a child that are no longer relevant to me as an autonomous adult. Yeah. And that's the thing with a lot of trauma. You're going back to, like... I think that child needed that approval

because children do actually need external approval, legitimately, because your brain isn't developed. Adults don't need external approval. We need internal approval from ourselves and then a very small amount of people that we love. But it's weird because the approval's there. It's just that you're looking... Oh, I can't see it.

The approval's everywhere. I put the lights down dark because I don't want to see. Like at the start of the gig, remember I took a photograph of all of you. Like that was for me. That was for me tonight to go a lot of people have turned up in Glasgow to come to my gig, I wouldn't have believed that ten years ago and I kind of don't believe it now and it was for me to go

it's okay to do this you know. Yeah and the thing, absolutely, the thing now, the thing I was hoping to get the chance to kind of convey to you also was that there's a lot of people operating just now in our culture figures public figures entertainment figures who you know they rely on um and sometimes I have myself you know they rely on a network of of of highly networked publicists and mainstream media contacts to put a light on what they're doing but I think that you've created something that's very much self-generating yeah and that's that is the that is the goal like what you've achieved that's the kind of holy grail for for a lot of creators uh generally you know so never underestimate that because what what you've done and your team are all great you know I mean all of you what you've what you've achieved

is real freedom within a highly commodified culture that's trying to get you to be one thing and you're sitting here with a polythene bag over your head talking about looking for the approval of this and the next thing which is just something that you couldn't pitch to a BBC producer you know what I mean like well I've got this idea. Actually, they'd fucking love that, wouldn't they? On the subject of conflict and managing conflict well, something beautiful has happened on the geographical island of Britain the past week and also in Ireland, and this is the figure of Mick Lynch.

Yeah. I'd never heard of Mick Lynch. I'd never heard of Mick Lynch. I love the fact that he said that his hero is James Connolly, that's fucking fantastic. But Mick Lynch, he's kind of doing what you expect, we'll say, traditionally the Labour Party to do. Mick Lynch could be talking about a pot of do. I don't give a, Mick Lynch could be talking about a pot of tea. I don't give a fuck. The way that he speaks, the way that he, it's emotional congruence.

What Mick Lynch believes and what comes out of his mouth are one and I can connect with that. And it's so fucking inspiring. What do you think of Mick Lynch? And he gives me a bit of hope. Yep. He feels like hope. Yeah, I mean, obviously,

he's been elected by the members of that union to do the job that he is doing and now they're engaging in an industrial dispute and he's really rising to the occasion. And it's interesting because a lot of people on the left we don't really like the idea that

our kind of figures are in any way kind of media savvy or polished in any way but the truth is there's a lot to learn from someone like Mick Lynch and the reason you're absolutely correct in your analysis of the emotional congruence, there's this perfect harmony between his experience,

his depth of knowledge, his being across his brief, his understanding of democracy, the corporate sector, and industrial relations generally. He really deeply understands the imbalance that's inherent to the British economic structure. And so he doesn't have to think when he's answering questions

because he's not lying and so then that creates an authenticity yes that creates an authenticity which in a very sterile performative media environment is just transfixing now this is

but it also does and this is what I love about him the media pundits lie to us all the time but it becomes so normalised that you can switch off and not see it as lies when Richard Medley was talking to Mick Lynch you just knew

Richard Medley was lying and anyone Mick Lynch talks you just knew Richard Medley was lying. Yeah. You just knew. And anyone Mick Lynch talks to, you can see their fucking... It's like their mouth moves at a different speed to their face. Oh, no, no. You're lying, and I can tell because this man isn't. Yeah. Amazing.

This is also why, and I argue this in my book, hopefully persuasively, this is also... Actually, what's the name of your new book that you have out right now? The new book is called The Social Distance Between Us. And actually, you guys if you go to any Waterstones in Glasgow before the end of June, you'll get a discount by presenting tonight's ticket stub

at the counter. So, do do that before the end of June. But I argue in the book when trying to understand populism and Brexit and all of that, the end of June but I argue in the book when trying to understand populism and Brexit and all of that, the reason that people like Nigel Farage and Tommy Robinson became so transfixing for many people

is because they're kind of authentic to themselves as well except they're cunts Yeah! Like I believe them Yeah, so it's like you really are that racist or you really do believe that. And the thing is, what they do is,

the thing with Mick is he's just laying it on the line because that's his job, whereas the other characters, they're a wee bit craftier on how they go about it. What they do is they begin from a place of understanding what is annoying everyone and what is upsetting everyone, the strain of class inequality and all of these different things. And so they say things that basically everyone accepts is true,

which society is run by elites who are running it in their interest and they don't give a fuck about you. class inequality and all of these different things. And so they say things that basically everyone accepts is true, which society is run by elites who are running it in their interest and they don't give a fuck about you. And because someone actually says that on a national TV show, millions of working class people just go, huh, that's how I feel. And then they go, I'll watch him again. And over time, they end up in this far right pipeline where it begins with very innocuous observations

that anybody in the political spectrum would acknowledge is true and then you start getting into the immigration stuff and then you start getting into the Islamophobic stuff and then you start getting into the other stuff and then you start realising a person has been kind of graduated along that process where somebody would

have shocked them if Tommy Robinson had said that in the first instance they've been gradually acclimated to that level and so suddenly they're so endeared to that person that they actually protect them for all the cunty things that they say and with Mick Lynch I think what we're seeing is

the exact perfect kind of specimen of the kind of working class figure that you need in a culture who really understands what they're doing, is very intelligent, but is not a prick, and is really, understands what he's all about, and is very, very sincere in how he speaks,

and that, I think, even the spectator was commending him, that's how affecting that this guy is, now whether they come after him, for this, that and the third, or the James Connolly stuff, I don't know, but I think a lot of them will think twice before they do, is, now whether they come after him for this, that and the third or the James Connolly stuff I don't know but I think a lot of them will think twice before they do because he has such a strength of public opinion behind him that newspaper editors will be weighing up us or readers going to support us going after this guy because this guy actually is pretty

fucking popular and the example you gave there, too, when you spoke about, we'll say, Tommy Robinson or Farage, right? They were effective because I'm a cunt and I'm telling you this about myself and they're actually being congruent with their badness. Do you know who else does that? Jordan Peterson.

Yeah. Seriously. Because with Jordan Peterson Peterson what you get is we have a society in the US, in the island of Britain in Ireland where mental health services are in shit people are looking for someone

who can describe to them human emotions to speak about human emotions Jordan Peterson does that well. He's a qualified psychologist. About 30% of what Jordan Peterson speaks about is very sound psychotherapy. So people latch onto that and they go, wow, he's after describing to me this feeling called shame, this feeling called anger, this feeling called anxiety. Nobody has done this for me. Then you go down the rabbit hole and it's all women's fault. Or it's trans people and it's the same shit. He is congruent up until a

point but you listen to Gabor Maté speak about, like here's the thing with Jordan Peterson, he speaks very well about mental health but it's never, he never uses the term love, compassion or taking ownership. He has removed compassion and love from the conversation about mental health. You fucking can't. You have to have love

for yourself and you have to have other people and if that's not present you're not going to heal. Otherwise you're blaming people and it's temporary. I'm grateful to hear that kind of nuanced analysis of it because that's pretty much how I feel about Peterson as well. And he's an interesting case because there's this video footage of him that you'll find

no doubt, no matter what it is you put your YouTube on to fall asleep to, you wake up to a Jordan Peterson video the algorithm is pretty insistent on it but you know what that is because you're a man of a certain age that's all it is and so basically he

he has this way of talking about working class men, right? And in the context of it, what he's doing is he's pushing back against this idea of toxic masculinity, which I agree when it's applied clumsily creates the wrong message sometimes. You get guys who don't really, they're not even thinking in those terms. They just think they're being called toxic. So there may be sometimes in some instances, not that we should always be framing discussions

about men to suit men but in the discussions in the context where it is appropriate we should be more careful and sensitive right but anyway that's the context of his very rousing speech basically what he's talking about saying the men are this and the men are that

nothing in this society happens without working class men. Nothing happens, not a light bulb, not a... They're down the pits, they're climbing up, they do the jobs, they go and they fight the wars, they do all the things and all that. And it's very rousing, almost kind of working class hero rhetoric.

But you always stop short of, so let's fucking pay them well. That's the problem. He wants them to be held up and celebrated as a beacon of masculinity, but when you start getting into capitalism, he fucking goes completely silent. And so he doesn't care about them enough

to guarantee, you know, to argue that maybe their employers should pay them more and treat them more fairly, which I think is really the actual key to a good life, as well as all the taking personal responsibility. He collects all the taking personal responsibility he collects Soviet art to laugh at it

seriously so he collects Soviet art which was all about unifying workers Soviet art was based on Marxist principles he views Marxism as the most dangerous thing possible as if you let any amount of Marxism into thought what dangerous thing possible as if you let any amount of

Marxism into thought what it leads to is violent revolution so which I like I like the revolution this but he hates that yeah so he will always stop short short of anything that critiques capitalism every time yeah and also he he believes capitalism to be perfect Darwinism. Oh, yeah. He's... And actually, you know, sometimes I'll find myself... I mean, I don't... I don't necessarily like talking about class or being

engaged in all these debates. I wish, actually, I could look out into society and find evidence you know there's not as much to worry about as I thought. Sometimes I go looking for that. I think, well, maybe I've got this wrong. Let me read a bit of Steven Pinker. He says this is the best time to be alive. But my friend just committed suicide a few days ago and my other friend is thinking about committing suicide and I've got friends and family all around me and all sorts of chaos. But let

me just read some Steven Pinker. You know what I mean? And so the thing is, they're always... And Steven Pinker makes us complacent. They're always making the critique from a specific vantage point where they're not actually exposed to the harsher conditions, so they can take that objective scientific approach. But there is also something that occurs when you are immersed in the front line

where the inequality is really sharp, and that also informs your whole outlook and this is the problem that I'll also argue in the book about proximity. There's a distance between the people who frame what society is about and the people who are actually struggling the most. But Peterson, he is,

I can't deny it, I've seen people who off the back of reading his books have sorted their lives out and so in a sense there is some value to some of the things that he says but then that's a difficult line to broach in a society where because of some of the other things he said everything else he said is automatically discounted and so I guess I'm in a place where if you can find something of value in that for yourself then fine who am I to judge but for what I would prefer though is if instead of it being someone like Jordan Peterson that they're listening to that it's someone like

Gabor Mate yeah who has a an almost identical message but with compassion and love yeah and Gabor's analysis of Peterson as a fellow Canadian is, I don't know if you guys have seen Gabor talk about it, but he talks, first of all, he focuses on Peterson's voice box. He says his register is very high. He's always up here somewhere. And he says that that's because of the stress

placed in his voice box. He says that that is a manifestation of Peterson who contains so much rage. And he actually, he's driven by a lot of rage that he's very skillfully able to conceal because he understands psychology and how other people interpret things. But underneath that, there's an unresolved trauma

within him, whatever it might be. And it's fascinating to hear Gabor talking about that. And interestingly, Peterson has tried to performatively use rage recently. In the past two years or so, he'll find himself getting angry. But when Jordan Peterson gets angry, it's met with laughter. Well, he's the guy that claps when the plane lands, isn't he? Yeah.

But his anger, he's performing anger now. He doesn't have congruent anger. When he's angry, he's trying to be an angry person. But it's not a genuine thing. You don't believe it. Because, and two, Gabber would say that Peterson is a traumatized individual. And Jordan Peterson had desperate addiction struggles

the past two years. He got hugely addicted to prescription medicine. Ended up having to do this crazy therapy in Russia. We don't know what happened, but he disappeared for two years. But you know yourself, people don't struggle with severe addiction unless they have unowned trauma, unless there's something there.

They're self-medicating for something that they're not taking ownership of. And Peterson is not taking ownership of a shitload of stuff. And his anger is the thing that's keeping him from it. Yeah. One of the reasons I've adopted a certain way of talking about Peterson

that sort of reflects a wee bit of the nuance that you sort of began with, is just because when we have a public-facing role in this society, and we kind of think that maybe some people might be better experiencing less of a certain ideology and maybe should come over to where we are thinking I think part of the way of doing that is to acknowledge some of the things that people find useful about a certain idea or thing that they're interested in and I carry that into my analysis of capitalism I carry that into my analysis of capitalism

I carry that into my analysis of of even things like Brexit and all of that you know where my position is clear but also I try to understand and pace the terrain of someone who views things differently and and actually I think sometimes taking that emotionally sensitive approach where it's appropriate is a pretty good way of getting somebody to go actually you know there might be something in that because if you're not fighting them

some people have to some people have to and I think it's that diversity of approach that matters but sometimes what you're trying to do is you're trying to to persuade someone you try to get someone to listen to you you try to get someone to change their ideas no one does those things under the duress of criticism or stress so even just the emotional reality of how do you make a person neurologically susceptible to changing an idea you have to create an

emotional environment which makes that possible so it can't begin with you're a fucking arsehole because he's an arsehole now fucking get over here and listen to me but one of the issues here then is quite a lot of these conversations are

happening on the internet and in particular Twitter is an example. And in my podcast this week, I had a cyber psychologist on and they were speaking about the impact of social media on the human brain and how we behave in social media. And when you're trying to have a difficult conversation like that online,

where you're trying to get someone to empathise with you, the online social media space doesn't provide the forum for that to exist because having a conversation with someone online is a bit like being in a traffic jam and screaming in a pair of cars do you know what i mean no one's ever going to have a nuanced conversation if they just had a fender bender yeah but people the example i use often is do you know when you almost bump into someone on the street when you're walking it you never have a fight yes you laugh and you go yeah and that's a beautiful thing but then in a car then people are screaming and shouting yeah because the car

provides us with the disinhibition effect it's called we feel that we're guarded and protected and we say whatever the fuck we want yes there's no consequences so it's also it's also part of how we have evolved to communicate so if this is the length of time that humans have been evolving this is the length of time that we've been using language to communicate oh right and so there's a there's a problem inherent to our communication software when we go on social media because we're inferring meaning from text a lot of the time yeah text that's arbitrarily limited constrained in some way according to whatever the social media gimmick of that platform is and so in order to kind of feel safe and secure in that environment we jump to conclusions to

derive a sense of meaning and a sense of righteousness that gives us that feeling of being part of our tribe and I guess there might be some kind of quality to that in some instances for solidarity reasons but in terms of just understanding the world social media is a tremendous mirage

because actually what it's good for is arranging to meet up in the real world to discuss what's going on and information digest. That's really good. But it actually leaves us feeling less connected, less understood and more confused, even though we use it for the opposite of all of those reasons. Absolutely. Okay, thank you there to Darren McGarvey for that fantastic insightful interview check out his book the social distance between us keep your ears and eyes peeled for his upcoming UK tour this is the

final installment from underneath my continental quilt in this hotel room I'm going to be back next week and I'll be back in my studio or my office with a properly recorded hot take for all of ye I have some stuff planned alright I'm going to bid you farewell

rubber dog make eye contact with a swan brush the hair on a weasel's tail and I'll catch you next week I have to go for the extended ASMR

kisses there because I have the stereo microphone dog bless go fuckers. rock city you're the best fans in the league bar none tickets are on sale now for fan appreciation night on saturday april 13th when the Toronto Rock hosts the Rochester Nighthawks at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton at 7.30pm. You can also lock in your playoff pack right now

to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game and you'll only pay as we play. Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to Rock City at torontorock.com.