The Blindboy Podcast - Butchers French

Episode Date: May 30, 2018

Happiness, Purpose, Meaning, Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Oh good day you gammy panhandlers. Welcome to episode 33 of the Blind Boy podcast. I know my British listeners have been waiting fervently for this episode because you get to hear an Irish person say 33 and you like to laugh at us when we say that don't you 33 well there you have it it's episode 33 you colonial pricks so

last week's podcast there was a fucking phenomenal response to it there was people really really loved it you fucking send me a lot of messages and tweets and last week's

podcast was about performance art and about democratising performance art and explaining why performance art is

has value and why it's not just arty farty up it's own up it's own art's bullshit and a lot of people were

really grateful to be honest because it made me realize how how little people know about art about high art we'll say and how much they'd like to know about it and ultimately as well how fucking difficult and inaccessible it is to find any source that attempts to democratize and explain and make simple uh highfalutin arty farty art which a is a good thing that people were like wow i enjoyed that but b A is a good thing that people were like wow I enjoyed that but B it's kind of damning and annoying that there's a hunger out there to learn about art and that the information isn't available and this is shit because art's very important for society and if vast swathes of the population think that contemporary art is valueless and pretentious then it means it won't have value in society it won't get funding there'll be no interest to fight for art when it loses funding and that would be a terrible terrible thing

um if i may quote winston churchill or at least paraphrase him this is the only time you'll hear me paraphrasing this prick but during world war ii when london was being bombed to shit one of winston churchill's advisors came to him and said we need to close down the museums and the galleries keep them safe shut them down and also divert those funds to the war effort and Churchill snapped at him and said then what the fuck are we fighting for which is

the one thing out of Winston Churchill's mouth that I agree with ok I also agree with the cigars that come out of his mouth. Cigars can be nice. Occasionally. Did you watch that fucking Churchill film did you?

Pile of shite. Fucking nationalistic nonsense. I think I did a podcast on it did I? I think I mentioned it in a podcast. Christ. So there's fairly big positive news in Ireland this week. As you know from previous podcasts, I was mentioning the repealing of the Eighth Amendment in Ireland,

essentially to legalise abortion. Abortion was, I love saying saying that abortion was illegal in ireland and as a result it was not a very compassionate or sensible place for people who can get pregnant people were having to travel over to england to access abortion and it was very unsafe very inhumane and it was criminalised which is not that is not the condition of a modern country in a western

democracy but the people of Ireland got out and voted overwhelmingly to repeal the 8th amendment so fair fucking play to you if you got out and voted yes okay

you were on the right side and um yeah just fucking fair play to everybody who like I've been talking about it a bit and I did a small bit to try

no what did I do? I used my platform to kind of boost a few signals, okay? I did the minimum amount that you could do. I used my social media. But there's people out there who tirelessly gave their fucking, every moment of their lives for the past few years to repealing this amendment. And, you know, fair play to those people who went out and did this those activists who from the start when nobody was listening

gradually screamed and shouted until they were actually listened to so fair play. To the politicians who kind of came out at the last minute and rallied behind a yes vote, fair play to you, okay? Again, there's a part of me that doesn't want to say fair play because repealing the 8th amendment is what you should be doing anyway to be honest do you know so giving someone a pat on the back for something for a politician a pat on the back for something they should be doing is um I don't know how that sits with me

but fair play to you I'll say it anyway in the mood of it and to the political parties who voted for a yes in Ireland that, don't think

that that means that the people who supported repeal the 8th are necessarily now going to support your party politics that's not how it works you did the right thing for one issue and what this referendum has shown

particularly with young people who came out overwhelmingly to vote that there is now a very political, socially conscious youth in this country and if you want the support of these people getting behind repeal isn't enough okay what where are your other policies where do you stand on universal access to health care

education and housing for every citizen regardless of their economic status where do you stand on unions you know workers rights where do you stand on privatising industries that should be in the hands of the people okay take a look at that shit and then maybe

you might have the support of this the people who got out and voted for repeal okay don't think you're getting off the hook basically you neoliberal cunts and of course

that doesn't mean that I'm completely assuming that everybody who voted to repeal the 8th is necessarily left wing. I'm sure many a centrist or even a conservative got out and voted yes. Because it's a sensible compassionate thing to do. But I'm speaking specifically about the young left wing. That's what I'm talking about.

So what I want to kind of talk about is. So a lot of my friends were very heavily involved in the repeal the 8th movement and I was chatting to them the past few days and feedback I got from one or two people was yes it's fucking fantastic that the 8th has been repealed but a few

of them were feeling kind of not sad right not sad but kind of a frustrated emptiness over the past few days because this 8th had been repealed a sense of

oh fuck what do I do now now obviously there's loads to do they don't have access to abortion in the north of this country um when abortion is now illegal is it going to be safe you know is it going to be legislated to be safe is it going to be legislated to be free we don't know that yet but a few buddies of mine were kind of going yeah um yeah it's brilliant and everything it's just this is fantastic but i feel a sense of i don't know i just feel a bit down and if one or two of my buddies are saying that then that to me would suggest that it's more common than that that there's quite might be a few people

in this country who dedicated themselves very much to repealing this eighth amendment over the past couple of years who are currently feeling um possibly a bit low this week so if you are feeling that way um i just want to point out that that's completely fucking normal. And I want to point this out in the interest of your self-care and your mental health. And that's what this podcast, I think, is going to be about. Not necessarily specifically people who were activists or worked towards repealing the 8th but for anyone um if you spent the past two years like really really working on repealing this thing and a lot of your your online discourse or conversations with family was around how you felt about this

and then subsequently like a lot of people who were trying to repeal the 8th were very much attacked online and then not only were you attacked you became part of a community with a shared goal and a shared purpose and now you've reached that goal it's's over. Right. It's. The eighth has been repealed. The goal you wanted has been repealed. Like I said there's more steps.

But that goal of the eighth has been repealed. And it's a normal thing. Okay. It's. That's called existential anxiety. And. It's what happens when our sense of self and our identity gets kind of tied up in that thing that we are doing and there's a part of us when we dedicate ourselves to something right it can be anything it can be trying to repeal the

eighth or it can be building a shed out the back garden or it can be doing four years of college right when it's over when it's done even though you've achieved that goal you can often be left with the feeling of wait a a minute, why am I not over the moon happy? Why do I still feel a little hum of emptiness or loneliness? Why are all of my internal problems not solved? I thought this would be the case. And it's perfectly normal. And it's perfectly normal. Now this is a hot button topic so I want to clarify that I am not so privileged or facetious to suggest that repealing the AIDS which is the health care of the pregnant in Ireland, the life or death situation, that that is as the same or as important as building a shed or getting a college degree that's not what i'm trying to say i'm trying to say on a broader human level when we as people right get involved in anything that demands our full kind of attention and that has an end point point that has an observable end point and a goal right when we attach ourselves to a goal that's what i'm

speaking about in broad human terms and i also want you to trust in me as a listener that i come at you from a place of compassion um i try not to be facetious you know so if you are someone who gave all of their selves. To. Repealing the eighth. And really really getting stuck in. And achieving. The repeal. And I would ask you to have a sense of awareness. About it.

If you have spent the past few days. Feeling a bit low. Obviously it's been very draining. But. But. When we do these things. When we aim for a goal in our minds consciously we're aiming for that specific goal whether it be building a shed repealing the eighth going to college right in our heads that's the specific goal but in our unconscious what we're actually looking for

is happiness okay i will be happy if that's what the process is once this shed is finished and i'm standing back looking at this shed your mind is saying i can't wait to see that shed but your emotions are gone i will be happy when this shed is complete i will be happy when i finish this degree and i have my degree in my hand and i'm graduating i will be happy then and you might be momentarily happy in the ceremony but then you're left with oh fuck what now and you're confronted with existential anxiety a sense of no longer having a purpose and because the happiness was in the journey now not everybody who i'm not saying necessarily the journey of repealing the eighth was a happy, but it was certainly one that had meaning and purpose and community.

And all of these things, they communicate to ourselves emotionally as a kind of happiness, a sense of purpose. It's the opposite of purposelessness. Do you get me? Now if you're thinking jesus blind boy are you saying that repealing the eight does not bring happiness no it brings justice equality all of this stuff of course that should bring a degree of happiness as a degree of happiness to the country it brings a huge sense of relief to the pregnant people who need to access abortion.

It brings a sense of relief to you to know that these people are going to be looked after better than they were last year. These are all things to be happy about. I'm speaking about on a deeper individual human level. To reflect the complexity of the human condition. Okay. External events. Do not bring what we call. Inner happiness.

You know. And. Like I said I'm bringing it up. Because a few people said to me. The 8th has been repealed. Why do I feel a bit kind of bored or empty this week. It's perfectly normal. It's part of being human it's called existential anxiety it's grand don't be feeling guilty over it you know um and if you're somebody listening going no i feel fucking great I gave my heart and soul to this. And.

Got the repeal and I feel great. Then fair play to you. This isn't. This isn't directed at you. But. It's just a common thing. Anytime we achieve a goal. That we've worked for.

As humans. Anytime we achieve a goal. Often. There is a sense of emptiness accompanied by i thought i would be happy i experience i would experience we'll say existential anxiety when i'm involved in a large project like we'll say writing my book you know that's the last my first book that I wrote, that was a year of my life, every single day working really hard, very stressful, same time fucking loving it, enjoying it, and the saddest moment of that entire process is when it finished not only when it finished when I had the book in

my hand and was getting good reviews good feedback and I felt empty and unhappy so what I did is I reflected on this emptiness and I said what's going on here I have have my book, it's done. Should I not be over the moon? Why was I happier when I was doing the book? And the reason is, is that there's no meaning and purpose in having something already done. I guess the point I'm trying to make is that one of the biggest illusions of being a human is this idea that happiness is a thing that we can fucking reach through external events no matter how noble those things are

and it's not happiness is something that happens in the here and now but we continually confuse ourselves into thinking that any process that we can give ourself give our all to that has an observable end point or a goal we confuse ourselves into thinking that that end goal will bring happiness it's an unconscious confuse confusing you know if if i can if i only i get this career i will be happy you know oh when i finally get to buy this house i'll be happy when i get this car i'll be happy this is the human fucking condition and we chase happiness all the time and are ultimately left with a sense of disappointment when the goal is reached and I say this as somebody who has like I've genuinely achieved childhood dreams you know

and I grew up wanting to be a fucking artist wanting to be a writer a musician and I've achieved these things I mean I suppose the big one for me because I was I was young I was in my early 20s with Horse Outside like I'd worked so hard since about 15 16 to hone my musical skills uh you know to look up to my heroes who were songwriters and producers and to finally make a song that became the biggest thing in the country that nearly brought x-factor to its knees i was on all the fucking papers i had technically achieved a dream and was left with the most terrible feeling of unhappy emptiness and a profound guilt over it because i was young too and i't know. I was looking at myself on the paper.

I was looking at myself. Being the talk of the country. Going why am I not happy? Why did this not bring happiness? And I didn't understand it. I'd achieved a dream. And it did not bring happiness. Because it doesn't bring happiness.

It just. It can't. Happiness can't be happiness. It just. It can't. Happiness can't be attained. In that way. You know. Happiness isn't a pot of gold. At the end of a rainbow. Happiness is the.

Journey towards the rainbow. I mean. We can do all these things to. We say. Reduce causes of unhappiness like if your financial situation is a cause of unhappiness at the moment you can do many things to well assuming you can if you can you can do things to make your financial situation better all that does is remove a source of stress it doesn't necessarily bring happiness even though our brains tell us i will be happy when do you know if you're in an unhappy relationship and you then get away from that person and you think to yourself i will be happy when i break up with this person yes you remove causes of unhappiness and stress in your life but it does not bring happiness nothing brings happiness because happiness is not something that can be reached ever it is a state of it's a here and now state

so if you're one of one of my listeners who and i know a lot of my listeners were involved in repeal activism and this week you're just feeling a little hum of uh emptiness or being drained this podcast is for you for all the fucking brilliant work you did but to bring into your awareness and for you to have a bit of self-compassion that it's okay and it's normal and don't self-flagellate with guilt because that that's what we can do Don't self-flagellate with guilt. Because that's what we can do. And. If you're going.

I'm fucking thrilled. I don't feel. Any hint. I'm not down. I'm not drained. This is brilliant. I feel great. Then more power to you.

You obviously have a very healthy relationship with. Your sense of purpose and meaning. And. Brilliant. But some people don't and it just kind of breaks my heart thinking about people feeling a bit low when they gave so much and achieved their goal it's for everyone look this is a very human thing we all give ourselves to a cause or to a project and think this goal will bring happiness and it doesn't and our life is a continual cycle of little disappointments that don't make objective sense because goals have been achieved and it can be quite confusing and it doesn't really have to be that way so i'm using this as a springboard to talk about a psychologist by the name of victor frankl and frankl wrote a book called Man's Search for Meaning, which was written in 1946.

So it should have said A Person's Search for Meaning, rather than Man's Search for Meaning. So it's a person's search for meaning. A human's search for meaning, we'll call it. So Frankl would be one of the founders of existential psychology and where he differs from like he would have started off uh very much into freud and freud felt that life is a quest for power frankl asserts that life is a quest for power. Frankl asserts that life is a quest for meaning, that feelings such as contentment and happiness, they come from a human having a sense of meaning and purpose in their life.

And this is what can lead us into this circle of emptiness when goals end and searching for a new goal. What makes Frankl's work so profound is the conditions under which he came about his theory. In 1942 he was living in Vienna. He's a Jew and he was a young doctor he had a new bride very very happy life and the Nazis took him

the Nazis took his wife, his da his brother his mother and sent him to a concentration camp and Frankl lived in a fucking concentration camp in Bohemia and everything Frankl had worked for up to that point in his life had been immediately stripped away his family gone and he had a manuscript his life's work just thrown away by the nazis he didn't even have his name anymore he was a number

his personage and humanity had been taken away and in the concentration camp i mean we all know how fucking terrible they were it was daily labor and people dying all around them and you didn't know whether you were getting fed because the Nazis didn't really feed people in concentration camps a lot of food had to be gotten via barter. So what Frankl had was the worst possible conditions and life that a human being could possibly have. An utter hell where his sense of self and his life had been stripped away. This was complete and utter rock bottom. This was complete and utter rock bottom. And from these conditions was when he started to develop a profound theory on the meaning of being human. the prisoners who kind of gave up hope and lost kind of meaning were the ones who died the quickest.

These were the ones who starved the quickest. The ones who just completely gave up. But the prisoners who, despite extreme conditions and extreme suffering, still managed to find some type of meaning, were the ones who survived. Assuming they weren't shot or completely starved, these were the ones he found who tended to actually survive and keep going the ones who were able to find some degree of meaning despite how horrendously terrible the circumstances of their existence were as dark and absurd as it sounds frank has said that

suffering ceases to be suffering the moment it finds meaning. He embraced suffering and he embraced his freedom to react to it. And for Frankl what this meant was. Instead of looking at his surroundings and going I'm surrounded by death. I could be shot at any moment. I don't know where my bread is coming from. Later on that day. He focused on. Thinking about one day getting free from the camp. And.

Writing a book or lecturing. About his experiences. Or. He thought about his wife. And. You know maybe. He would. When he found himself despairing.

He viewed it as. Well how. What would my wife think. If I was despairing. Maybe I'll. Persevere. From my love of her. He found meaning in that.

In the most horrendous situation. He managed to find a sense of meaning and this led him on a daily basis to survive and find even in a concentration camp little moments of true happiness and the prisoners who didn't do that the prisoners who didn't do that, the prisoners who kind of just said, this is hopeless, the Nazis have us fucked, I'm going to freeze to death, I'm going to get shot, the ones who could not find purpose, meaning, hope, were the ones who died quickest. ones who died quickest. Frankl viewed human suffering right as a challenge. Do we search for meaning or challenges or purpose in our suffering or do we simply complain to ourselves about how awful the suffering is? And he kept going back to a quote by Frederick Nish which is

if you have a why to live for you can bear any how what Frankel also started to notice eventually having you know survived for quite a long time in the concentration camp and seeing every day the evidence of his theory of the people that give up hope are the ones that succumbed quicker. What he found was that no matter the suffering, right, no matter what it is, like forces beyond your control, they can take away everything that you possess

right except for one thing the one thing no matter the circumstances we always have our freedom to choose how we respond to the situation and that ultimately is what kept Frankl going if he could feel his stomach touching his bones if he felt that today was the day he was going to get beaten to death by a guard if he had to walk six miles in the freezing snow

with other prisoners dying around him so he could dig up a ditch for no reason other than it was work for work's sake that's what the Nazis wanted he found great purpose and meaning

in the power he had and the freedom that he had over how he could respond to that even though he's digging a ditch in the freezing cold he still has the power and the choice to say i can choose to do this with despair or i can choose to find some degree of meaning in digging this fucking hole i'm starving but i can find some degree of meaning in trying to find a piece of food even if i don't get it i can find the meaning in that if i reflect on how

terrible it is that i'm digging in the cold or that i can't find bread I will die I have power and control over how I react over whatever happens and like when we can no longer change the situation the challenge is to change ourselves and this Frankl's theory

even though it's 46 it's one of the cornerstones behind cognitive behavioural therapy behind cognitive behavioural therapy and cognitive behavioural therapy basically teaches that we cannot control what happens to us but we have full control over our attitude towards what happens to us

and negative thoughts lead to negative emotions that lead to negative emotions that lead to negative behaviours but changing the negative thoughts into flexible thoughts that leads to

flexible kind of emotions and flexible behaviours not rigid negative emotions and behaviours you know and with this Frankl eventually survived long enough in the concentration camp to be liberated

and to emigrate to America and unfortunately all of his family were killed he found that out after he left but with this journey he was able to bring this fantastic insight into the human condition into modern psychology and i know it's dark as fuck but it's

like it doesn't get lower than a concentration camp it doesn't get worse than that. And yet from this base level of human suffering, there still exists a desire for life and happiness because life, if your life has meaning and purpose. And this is why when we commit ourselves to a goal of any description, big or small, this goal gives us a great sense of meaning and purpose. And in this meaning and purpose we have vitality and moments of happiness and true living. Moments of happiness.

And true living. But once that. Once that ends. You're then left with what's called. An existential vacuum. Existential anxiety. Which we experience as. Feeling quite drained.

Or. Feeling unhappy or negative. And then a frustrated guilt because there's no good reason for it the goal has been achieved what's going on it's a normal part of the cycle of just being human so that's where I'm kind of going with this

if you're feeling that way this week you've worked incredibly hard you've dedicated yourself to something you've built this community you've fucking fought many battles and now you've achieved the goal and

on the surface it appears as if it's done and I would say to you where do you find your meaning in that do you know and I would say it's self compassion have some self compassion

over the fantastic work that you've done big or small whether you were out canvassing or whether you were simply talking to your fucking grandfather about it have a sense

find the meaning in that and build upon the communities of the people that you've met through that activism and where can it go from here do you know what I mean

and another reason I'm kind of doing this particular podcast too is a prominent anti-choicer who lost the referendum went on a bit of a twitter spiel the other day uh saying that the repeal the eight people were inherently kind of unhappy and that they tried to repeal the eight as a way of finding happiness and it was very mean-spirited and shitty because it's quite a clever but highly disingenuous barbed twist on a

a given of the human condition and a given given of human existence. That I've outlined. And my podcast is. It's kind of a response to it. It's like. Nobody's fucking happy. Like this is the thing. That I fail to address. Is that.

Life is inevitable. Suffering. I don't give a fuck who you are. That is the human condition. Life is inevitable. i don't give a fuck who you are that is the human condition life is inevitable suffering okay death disappointment rejection unfairness people being mean to you these are inevitable in every single one of our lives no exceptions and happiness is how we as individuals react to the inevitable suffering of simply existing do you know like happiness has to be worked on no matter who you are like happiness has to be worked on no matter who you are and you get that happiness through finding a sense of meaning and a sense of purpose like i'm currently a happy person you know generally for the past few years my day-to-day living has been i would experience

it as quite happy obviously Obviously disappointing things happen. I have moments of sadness. But I'm generally a happy person. Because I work on it. Through self compassion. Through compassion for other people. And really working on finding my sense of meaning. My sense of meaning I think is creativity.

If I'm involved in something creative. And I'm using my creativity. Whether it succeeds or doesn't succeed if I'm actively creating a lot then I tend to be happy I tend to have a general hum of happiness because my life has purpose and meaning if I decide to do no creativity and go on a run of video games for two months then i will find myself to feel empty and unhappy now you your meaning could be in playing video games that could be what brings you fucking happiness everyone's meaning and purpose is different it's unique we're all complex individuals and our own meaning is personal to us and it's as unique as us as people do you know what i'm saying so don't be listening to any fucking eejits who are telling you you're inherently unhappy

my arse life is suffering if we respond to that suffering, with the understanding that we have the freedom, to respond to it, in that you will find your happiness, and give a fuck who you are, this is why I always have a message of mindfulness, at the end of each podcast, because what mindfulness does is,

it forces you to find purpose and meaning in whatever the fuck you're doing right now you know whether it's washing dishes eating a chicken sandwich or looking at a lot of seagulls mindfulness asks you to notice every sensation of what it is you're doing right now in the present moment and loads of people have sent me messages and tweeted at me reporting back to using a little bit of mindfulness in their day in what they were doing um like one fella just said he was on his break at lunch he was eating a sandwich he really made the effort to experience every moment of that sandwich and he's like it felt fucking brilliant because yeah you're in the present moment you gave that sandwich purpose you weren't worrying about last week or worrying about

next week you were enjoying your chicken sandwich and giving it sense of meaning and purpose and you felt not only satiated in your stomach but spiritually satiated from a chicken sandwich and that sounds mad but that is human existence so what i would say to you now if you're if you're having a shit day right for whatever reason if you're doing something today or right now that isn't particularly enjoyable you could be stuck in a job that you don't really enjoy and you might want to be outside drinking cans with your friends or whatever you might have to go to a family

function be around someone you don't want to be around whatever it is right try and find instead of allowing your mind to focus on only the negatives only going around a cycle of i don't like this this is unbearable i could be doing something else fuck my life instead of this type of internal dialogue search for purpose and meaning in this painful thing if you really search for it you can find it and within that you'll find you'll find a contentment that's a hell of a lot better than the stress of telling yourself how shit it is and it'll go quicker too so I hope that was of benefit to you I hope you were able to take something from it everybody

not just the people involved in repeal and as well too one thing I am cautious of I'm speaking about this from the point of view of being a fucking

a male and I have no context for what it feels like for the eight to be repealed uh for a pregnant person or someone who can get pregnant I haven't a fucking clue so I am taking that on board and I'm aware of that so we're 43 minutes in I think it's time for our delicious ocarina pause, the digital angelus, if you, the Acast, the app that this podcast goes out on, they insert digital adverts in this podcast,

and you may hear them, you may not, but what I do is I play my little Spanish clay whistle for a small amount of time. And if you're lucky, you'll hear the whistle and not an advert. You might have noticed as well, occasionally, every so often, one of my episodes might get a sponsorship. And it'll be me advertising some product for for one or one episode or two episodes that that's happened once or twice so you might hear that instead of the ocarina pause but if you have been hearing adverts in this podcast it's because occasionally i'll find a sponsor who'll take me on

someone who doesn't have a problem with me saying the word cunt and talking about the ira so here is the ocarina pause, you pricks. Will you rise with the sun to help change mental health care forever? Join the Sunrise Challenge to raise funds for CAMH, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health to support life-saving progress in mental health care. From May 27th to 31st, people across Canada will rise together

and show those living with mental illness and addiction that they're not alone. Help CAMH build a future where no one is left behind. So, who will you rise for? Register today at sunrisechallenge.ca. That's sunrisechallenge.ca. 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 oh yeah um also i'll just quickly take the opportunity to tell you that this podcast is supported by you, the listener, via the Patreon page, patreon.com forward slash theblindbypodcast. If you enjoy the podcasts, it's about five hours of content a month,

and you would like to support me financially, you can give me the equivalent of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month uh so please do and if you don't want to that's fine absolutely grand you can listen for free i'm appealing to your sense of soundness so we move on now to the questions i've got some delicious fresh questions from you. Jonathan asks, I asked over Twitter too, but it's just something that's been bugging me lately. Where do we draw

the line between free speech and hate speech? The rapper Valtonic was sentenced to prison for lines like, kill a fucking civil guard tonight. I understand speaking out against the monarchy, but isn't glorifying murder another story? I don't know there

if you don't know the background to this story there's a Spanish rapper called Valtanic and he had some lyrics that were highly critical of the Spanish monarchy right? had some lyrics that were highly critical of the Spanish monarchy right and one of them alluded to a rumor that the king of Spain shot his brother because because when the king of Spain was a very young I think he was dueling with his brother and the brother died and some there's there's aour or a conspiracy that it was deliberate

a deliberate way to get rid of the brother and I think Valtonic referenced that he also had some lyrics that were explicitly supporting ETA

who are like ETA are like the IRA when it comes to the Basque country I don't think he deserves fucking jail. I mean. Would we. It would be like the British government.

Jailing the Wolftons. For their lyrics against the Black and Tans. You know. There has to be a bit of artistic license. I mean. NWA. Getting jailed for fuck the police this rat he's now fled spain as far as i know this valtonic chap but i don't think that deserves i mean it's a tough one like one of the lyrics that this valtonic fella has been given a jail sentence for is he says what is it george campos deserves

destruction with a nuclear bomb something to that effect i think george campos is a politician now that's a direct threat to a living person called george campos deserves destruction with a nuclear bomb so you need to ask what's the context and intent of that statement is he literally wishing death on someone or is there artistic license in it I mean put it this way Donald Trump has tweeted actual nuclear threats at

North Korea and Kim Jong Un so this lyric that this Spanish rapper is going to jail for I wish a nuclear bomb on fucking George Campos Donald Trump did that like two months ago to North Korea in violation of Twitter's rules like it's

what's the difference between Donald Trump doing that and me doing it to some lad in Carlo and saying I'm going to up to carlo and shoot you i don't what's the difference you know it's context and intent this shit can't be legislated with a black and white rule i mean the rapper tyler the creator he's not allowed into the uk because some of his lyrics when viewed on the page are seen as inciting terrorism and violence but tyler the creator is doing it ironically through a character context and intent needs to be taken on board

ice t the rapper had a song in 1991 called cop killer which explicitly talks about killing cops and when ice t was challenged he goes yeah this is a this is a song about rage this is a piece of fiction about rage like a Stephen King novel or something about that he was allowed context and intent and the FBI were coming after him for sedition which is treason so I can't give a black and white answer all I can say is that each individual case needs to be viewed in terms of its context and its intent and needs to be legislated intelligently and not in a black and white fashion in a rigid fashion you know regarding i don't like it when the state gets involved and when people go to fucking jail the other thing though that i do kind of non-platforming i am a fan of non-platforming

specifically when it comes to people whose views are essentially nazism under a different name okay i spent half this fucking podcast talking about the concentration camps and people whose views essentially echo Nazism. Like, the biggest act of non-platforming was World War II. The Nazis lost. The world had to fucking fight these cunts because they wanted to eradicate ethnicities that they considered to be unpure and when people in

today echo those views and try and sanitise them or change the wording around it I don't have any fucking time for that whether they get sent to jail I don't know about that for words I'm not sure about the state getting involved

but non-platforming and protesting their speech I see no problem in that because non-platforming is also an expression of free speech just because you have free speech doesn't mean that people have the freedom to fucking

tolerate it you know especially around anything to do with Nazism and you can call it fucking alt-right whatever you want but if your goal is fucking like ethno-nationalism

or whatever they call it, fuck that but you might be saying but blind by some of your opinions are quite Marxist and look at what Russia did look at the Soviet Union that's true that's a good point but I mean

explicitly all I want is for my taxes to visibly and explicitly pay for free health care education housing i don't want housing education and health care to be out of bounds of somebody because of their financial situation i don't want to live in that society so socialistically take half my money please via taxes

to make that happen I don't want Soviet fucking communism with a dictator and secret police I do not want that Jennifer asks why do you think humans have a visceral response

to music for example minor chords equals anxious or danger or sexy V major chords hopeful or happy or ultimately accepting do you think it is an evolutionary response we just don't understand and the transition between the two leading

you to feel I think look it all boils down to our pattern recognition you know humans strive for pattern recognition because i think it's the complexity of our brains to recognize faces to recognize other humans faces and to know who our friends are and who our enemies are so we strive for pattern and music is quite abstract because you can't see it uh you can't really feel it it just is it's ethereal and it impacts us it makes us feel a certain way but when you think of it like music is is it's as symmetrical as something visual you know when we see a symmetrical drawing or a painting you know something that has balance with shapes that are

pleasurable we experience that as happy you know we we like that we like to see that pattern and music is no different when music is mathematical card progressions notes that work with each other they are symmetrical if you could visualize them they have a symmetry to them that they make mathematical sense in the exact same way that mathematical sense in the exact same way that visual patterns would on a painting or on a drawing so music is symmetrical vibrations of air and again it just appeals to our innate desire for balance and patterns we experience patterns and balanced patterns that make sense as aesthetically enjoyable and pleasurable and music is no different it's full of patterns and repetition and this predictability gives us pleasure and it's one of the reasons that bird song keeps us awake because birds when birds sing they have stochastic rhythms their bird song does not follow explicit patterns because of that it wakes us up in the

morning or it warns us of danger because our brains are continually trying to rationalize and compartmentalize the chaotic irrationality of a bird singing that's what music is really it's the rational rationalization of bird song so that that's what i think it is it's the exact same its mechanics aesthetically are no different to visual patterns music is also patterns you just can't see them and it's they not as tangible. But it's there. Alright that concludes the podcast. Because we're almost at an hour. It's slightly shorter this week.

Because I'm recording this one late. It's very fucking late. And I want to go to bed. So this is about 10 minutes shorter than usual. But. There was a lot to take on board this week. You know. And it wasn't.

There wasn't a hell of a lot of jokes. Was there. Which is ironic. Because it was essentially a podcast about happiness. And how to achieve it. But please take it on board. Listen to it. Send me questions.

If you disagree with it. Whatever. Don't quote tweet me live in the present moment take some of this shit on board enjoy your week, look after yourself have some self compassion, be sound to other people you'll be grand

yart Thank you. you Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. so 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 center in hamilton at 7 30 p.m 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.