The Blindboy Podcast - Double Denim Utopia

Episode Date: January 27, 2021

I answer yere Questions about superstitions and mental health and I have a chat with Una Mullaly and Conner Habib about their project, Utopia Ireland Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello and welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast, you howling gowls. Thank you for the feedback on last week's podcast which was... Do you know what, it was quite an extensive hot take on chicken fillet rolls. I didn't think it was going to be that extensive but... I'm glad I did it, I'm glad I did it. And I got a lot of positive feedback. I stepped outside of my comfort zone. I stepped outside of my comfort zone. I stepped outside of my comfort zone.

And. I spoke about chicken fillet rolls. Which is. Something I wouldn't. A topic. That I wouldn't usually interrogate on this podcast. And I did interrogate it. And it revealed several layers like an onion.

About Irish culture. And Irish society and our food culture so I'm actually really glad that I did that podcast on chicken fillet rolls and do you know what it taught me I think going forward with this podcast I won't be so esoteric I won't be so esoteric. I won't be so esoteric. If someone asks me to speak about something, which I might consider to be a cliche or to be basic, I won't dismiss it outright. I'll say, no, fuck it, I can talk about anything. And the way that I speak about the thing I speak about will still be unique because it's my podcast.

So if you're a brand new listener, what's the crack? You don't know what I'm talking about. Last week's podcast was about chicken fillet rolls. This week's podcast, I'm going to answer some of your questions, lads, because I'm consistently getting DMs off me. I'm getting loads of DMs. I'm always getting notifications, I'm always getting questions and I never get around to answering them

by the way if you send me a DM and I don't respond please don't take it personally because I get about 100 fucking DMs a day on Twitter or on Instagram so I don't see them all and on Patreon I respond to what I can but whenever I do question answering podcasts So I don't see them all. And on Patreon. I respond to what I can.

But. Whenever I do question answering podcasts. As is the tradition. I only answer one or two questions. So I'll see what I can do this week. And I'm kind of tuckered out with the old hot takes. Last week's hot take was so hot. That it.

It fried my brain a bit. So I think. This week it needs to be responsorial. Also at the end of this podcast. I brain a bit. So I think this week it needs to be responsorial. Also at the end of this podcast I have a little a little brief interview that I recorded with some people around the concept of utopianism which I'm going to get to in part two. But let's get straight into the questions. B on Instagram asks

How do you support friends who are depressed while taking care of yourself that's a tough old question um you know we we live in a country if you're living in ireland uh you're living in a country that has a mental health crisis which means that quite a lot of us are experiencing mental health difficulties and we don't have access to adequate services right especially if you don't have money and even if you can't afford weekly therapy sessions you still might be on a waiting list do you know what i mean so a lot of people in Ireland we rely upon each other for mental health support which isn't ideal

that's not ideal at all em what answer would I give to this I would draw so how do you be supportive to a friend who's going through depression, if you yourself might be going through depression or other mental health issues as well?

What I would do in this situation is, I would look towards, it's a philosophy within, there's a form of therapy called rational emotive behavioural therapy. It's very similar to CBT, to cognitive behavioural therapy. It's a precursor to CBT. And there's a tenet within this or a practice called responsible hedonism. Which basically means looking after your own mental health first. Okay? And that sounds selfish but let me explain why why it makes sense

do you know when you're on an airplane and you're looking at the safety instructions and it's like in the event of an emergency on the airplane here's what you do and it always says when the oxygen masks come out on the plane attend to your own mask first before helping the person beside you even if that person is a child okay and it's one of these things everyone remembers that bit everyone remembers like we all kind of like to ignore the safety bit on the airplane. Because it's frightening. You know, we all like to ignore it. But the one bit you remember is put on your own mask first, even if there's a child beside you. Because that grates at a lot of people.

Because if you're on a plane and your child is with you you want to save them first that's the human instinct you want to put the make sure your child has got their oxygen mask first before you have yours on but the airplane is saying no and the reason is basically is even though your instinct is to help the child first. If you don't meet your own needs immediately for oxygen, you can't be of service to the child beside you. So the smart thing to do is actually make sure you have your own mask on, that you have access to oxygen, and then begin to help the child beside you, even though it goes against your instinct.

And responsible hedonism is similar. And it's something that I apply to my life. I can only be. Of service to my community. If my mental health is in check. It's as simple as that. Okay. And by community I mean mean people in my immediate vicinity

people that I care about are ye on this podcast my mental health goes up and down and if I'm having a bad week I'm not going to do a mental health podcast on the week that I'm having a bad week with mental health because you know what will happen I'll be unnecessarily negative I'll be unnecessarily negative and I won't have self-compassion I won't understand where my emotions are at that time and it would be irresponsible of me to do a mental health podcast if my mental health isn't in check that week. So I don't. And that's what I mean by responsible hedonism. When I mind my mental health.

And I have my own little routines. Then I have the. I'm grounded enough. To be of assistance to other people. And that's kind of how you need to look at the situation. If you're trying to mind your own mental health. But you have a friend who's going through some shit as well. You kind of have to mind yourself first. Like being on the airplane with the mask.

Because if you don't. And you put their needs first. Even though that appears to be the selfless thing, it mightn't be the smartest thing. Because, like, think of it this way. Like, when you're going through depression, depression is a negative view of yourself, a negative view of other people, and a negative view of the future. view of other people and a negative view of the future and when you're going through depression or going through anxiety or having any mental health flare-up your your opinions are distorted your opinions about yourself other people in the future become distorted to suit the negative lens of your depression so you're you it's it's difficult

for you to be of support to your friend then you know you might put an unnecessarily negative slant if if they're like i just need to talk i need to talk about what i'm going through if you're going through similar shit the things you say mightn't be grounded, they mightn't be rooted in compassion, they mightn't be rooted in rationality, they might be rooted in irrationality, and you'd have a toxic feedback loop with the two of you together.

So what I'd say to you is. If you and a friend. Are kind of relying upon each other for support. And you're kind of like. Fuck it I have my own shit going on this week. I'm having panic attacks. I'm having this. I'm not able to listen to their shit this week.

Don't feel guilty in saying that to yourself. You're entitled to those boundaries and boundaries is an important word there a proactive thing to do is to establish a contract with your friend and this is okay this is what people do in like um in things like aa where people have sponsors you know around addiction establish a contract with your friend whereby if either of you is going to ring the other person up or contact the other person to look for support or to just have their ear if you need to speak and you need them to listen to whatever pain is going through you establish a contract whereby you say to them

are you in a place right now to listen to me are you in an emotional place right now comfortably to listen to me unload some shit and just ask them that question and establish a contract with each other and make it safe for them to say I'm not I'm not and establish a set of rules whereby if you say to your friend I'm feeling really shit right now are you in a place I'm feeling really shit right now. Are you in a place emotionally to hear me say this?

Establish a set of rules whereby if they say no, that's not a rejection. That you don't have to feel they have rejected me. They don't care. Instead, what they're saying is, no, I'm not in a good place emotionally so if I was to lend you my ear it might actually cause harm to either myself or yourself so I can't do that today

and then you go fair enough we've got a set of rules in place I understand and if you have that contract and those boundaries and that clarity with your mates who you have this relationship with around your mental health, then that's the most proactive thing you can do.

And don't feel guilty about responsible hedonism. Look after your own mental health first, and when that's in check, you're grounded, and then you can be of service to your community. But if your mental health's in check you're grounded and then you can be of service to your community but if you're if your mental health's in shit you're not going to be a service to your community and you're now unreliable help and you know unfortunately that's what we have to do because like i said we're living in ireland and ireland is a country that's currently going through a mental health crisis and you know what's a mental health crisis a lot of people have mental health issues a lot of people have

mental health issues right now and we don't necessarily have access to services so we are forced into a position to take individual responsibility or to rely upon each other which that's a good thing but it shouldn't be the only option that's that's it shouldn't be the only option and one thing i want to draw attention to as well and i usually don't like i don't like bringing in direct is this bringing in politics no this isn't politics this isn't politics this is what i'm doing here is i'm bringing in mental health and someone else has decided to make it political which it shouldn't be um but it's something i'm noticing recently that i'm finding it's it's grating on me um so in ireland there's there's two main parties right, they're both two cheeks

of the same arse, there's Fianna Gael and there's Fianna Fáil, they're the two main parties in Ireland, then there's Sinn Féin and other smaller parties right but there's a trend I'm noticing during the pandemic which I find

troubling so there's a fella called Simon Harris Simon Harris used to be the minister for health now he's the minister for education and he's a member of Fine Gael who are a center-right party very neoliberal in their economics. What is neoliberal? Neoliberalism basically is when a government policy prefers to shift public services towards the private market instead of the government taking responsibility. That's the basic description of neoliberalism. So anyway, Simon Harrisris the minister for education during the pandemic

there's been this very deliberate attempt from fina gale to manufacture an image around certain members of their certain politicians that they have to manufacture an image that makes politicians very relatable to the average Irish person via social media. And one person they're doing this with is Simon Harris. And Simon Harris, the Minister for Education, this is a politician with a lot of experience in a position of influence and power, via social media quite frequently, via social media quite quite frequently is sending out these messages a lot of look after your mental health look after your emotional well-being things are really tough right now things are really hard and ultimately they're positive messages positive messages of self-care and mind your mental health and all this stuff

but the problem i'm having is that something about it doesn't feel ethical this is someone who used to be a minister for health so this is someone who would have had quite a lot of influence in mental health services in ireland and this is someone who used to be a minister for health so he's effectively telling people to cope and mind their mental health because of a system that he's had a part in creating and has the power to fix

so it's on the surface it appears like a good thing that Simon Harris is telling people to understand their emotions cope all these positive mental health messages on the surface that looks like a good thing but unfortunately i i think there might be uh i don't want to say sinister sinister covert undertones under it when politicians right so people in power who have the agency and power and ability to fund mental health services okay the problem is mental health services aren't being funded and because of that people don't have access to mental health services that's a big

problem the government has the power to fix that okay so if the government has the power to fix it a member of that government shouldn't be saying oh look after your mental health look after your emotional well-being i know it's tough they shouldn't be the ones saying that because it's like you can actually fix it buddy so don't be telling us to mind our emotions how about fucking fund mental health services properly so people can access them and then people won't have to look after their mental health

people won't have to rely upon their best friend to be their fucking therapist which is the question i've just been asked here on this podcast someone is basically saying to me asking me a question and the question got a ton of fucking likes on instagram saying i'm my friend's therapist and they are my therapist and i'm burnt out And I'm not a qualified therapist. People are saying that to me. So we shouldn't have government ministers. What it is. Here's what I think it is.

By them making Simon Harris. Into this helpful elf like character. Who gives us positive messages. About mind and our emotional well being. And our mental health. What it's effectively doing it's it's an ideology that pushes all the responsibility of mental health onto the individual and away from the responsibility of government or the health services it's neoliberal so the it's it's it's the government saying, it's Simon Harris saying, I know it's really tough, what can we do about it?

You must take personal responsibility for your own mental health because I'm not going to do anything about fixing the fucking services or funding them. That right there is a neoliberal playbook. And Fine Gael are a neoliberal playbook and fina gale are a neoliberal party and the manufacturing of simon harris on social media as a friendly elf type character that's very deliberate it's fina gale pr they've got other politicians they're cooking meals on Instagram to let us see because one of the fears that people have of Fianna Gael these are rich elite the rich elite party that represent landlords and they're aware that this is what people think of them so it's like let's get one of our other politicians

cooking dinner on Instagram just like a normal person it's all ideological pushing so when you get simon harris telling us to listen to our emotions and to to take stock of our emotions but ultimately doing nothing to fund mental health services that right there is neoliberal ideology that's the responsibility for mental health is on you and you alone. And the government cannot help you. You must, you must, and if you want a counsellor, you have to pay for it yourself. We're going to push it all to the private market. And it ties in also with the same message that they're putting out about COVID, which is coronavirus is not caused by government policy. Coronavirus is caused by you, the individual,

going out and having all these house parties, enjoying yourself. It's you. That's neoliberal ideology. It's pushing it all out onto the individual and the government wiping their hands, cleaning their hands of it. And I said it on Twitter today

and someone said to me oh blind boy I guess you're going to be deleting all your episodes so where you tell people to mind their mental health and it's like no

I'm not a fucking government minister this is how I look at it because there's a lot of people who listen to my podcast for for mental health advice and i know from messages i get from you there's therapists in in this the amount of people who sent me messages saying i started listening to your podcast because my counselor told me to listen to your podcast about cbt and on the one hand it's a good it's I'm not saying it's a good thing of course I like helping people with mental health of course I loved like when I

speak about mental health on this podcast I'm doing it for me because it's part of I speak about my mental health and of course it's nice to know that I'm helping other people but isn't it terrible isn't it awful that there's people in this country coming to my fucking podcast to help them with mental health that's really bad I'm some fucking eejit from Limerick with a bag in his head I know I studied a little bit of psychotherapy but like it's really bad that

people are listening to my podcast for mental health advice because they can't access services that's fucking wrong and it's because of that ideology what am I supposed to do you know what I supposed to do? You know, what I say to myself is sometimes I consider,

when I speak about mental health in this podcast, sometimes I consider it an act of protest. Do you know what I mean? A compassionate act of protest where I'm trying to help myself and other people, but it's a bad thing. It's a bad thing. That. People are getting their mental health advice.

From my fucking podcast. Because. I'm doing this. And I've been speaking about mental health. I've been speaking about mental health since 2014. Publicly. And I've been doing that. Because we've been in a mental health crisis.

For that long, I do it because of a sense of duty, but it's just really, it gets my goat, I don't think it's right, that Simon Harris, gets a minister, with power and agency,

a member of government, I don't think it's right, like he's the minister for education when i speak about fucking cbt on this podcast and i speak about transactional analysis what do i say imagine we learned this in school instead of religion imagine if at three years of age your teacher was qualified to explain to you what your emotions are you're like understanding you don't feel jealous you don't feel anger that's jealousy do you know what i mean these basic things i i speak about cbt i speak about psychology in this podcast to ye as adults

and it's like imagine we learned this when i learned it when i was an adult i wish i learned it when i was three simon harris is the minister for education so the minister for education has the power and agency to do that right now if you don't want a mental health crisis in 20 years then completely overhaul the education system so that children from the youngest age possible are learning about depression learning about anxiety learning about their emotions learning how to ground themselves doing all this stuff preemptively so that they have tools and coping mechanisms when they become an adult so simon harris get off your fucking arse and do that then but don't be on Instagram

talking about oh it's so tough right now it's so tough for everyone right now isn't it fuck off do you know and that's not a personal assessment on him it's

this is a well thought out ideological thing this is neoliberalism out ideological thing this is neoliberalism push responsibility onto the individual so that we don't look to government and the portrayal of simon harris as a harmless little helpful elf that you can't criticize because it'll hurt his feelings it's bullshit he's a government minister and we're entitled to criticize his behavior and i'm criticizing his behavior by all means simon tell us about our emotions ask us to ask us to look after our own mental health but only do it when there is clear evidence of you going absolutely out of your way to solve the mental health crisis in this country through funding.

Through fucking funding mental health services so that nobody in this country has to worry about access to mental health services if they can't afford it. Go and do that. That's what we want to fucking see. I don't give a shit about you talking about emotions and why the fuck am i ranting about this something about that question that i got from b that made me angry that made me fucking angry how do i how do i look after my own mental health while also looking after the mental health of my friend that just made me a little bit annoyed to be honest because that's fucking hell that's called burnout that's what psychotherapists have to deal with psychotherapists

have to you know a psychotherapist can have compassion fatigue because a psychotherapist's job is to be present and listen to other people's problems all the time. So a psychotherapist can experience compassion fatigue and burnout. Civilians shouldn't experience compassion fatigue and burnout because they're acting as a therapist to their friend and vice versa. It's unacceptable. Okay, I'll try and horse through some more questions. Because they're acting as a therapist to their friend. And vice versa. That's. It's unacceptable. Okay I'll try and horse through some more questions. Aaron asks. What's my opinion on the trend of idolising artists and musicians.

Once they have passed away. It's very simple. It's scarcity. It's scarcity. You know. If an artist is dead. They can't make any more art. So what's there is all we have. And if it's a good body of work, it means that that artist gets to be perfect forever.

They never get to disappoint us. They never get to have their bad albums. You know what I mean? I mean, what would we think of fucking Nirvana man Nirvana never put a foot wrong all three Nirvana albums are perfection start to finish

Kurt Cobain died at his peak before his fucking peak and it breaks my heart I'd love Jesus Christ I'd love to hear the albums that Kurt Cobain would have been making

in his thirties you know I think he would have gone fully acoustic, but like, it's scarcity, it's scarcity, and we also, when the person isn't around to disappoint us, we get to turn them into an unrealistic god, you know, Stuart Lee always says it about about Bill Hicks Stuart Lee the comedian gets really angry about Bill Hicks he goes you're calling him the greatest comedian of all time and essentially the man has put out three hours of comedy

when you put all of Bill Hicks specials back to back it's like three hours of comedy and Stuart Lee's going he never had the opportunity to fuck up I've several questions about sleep paralysis as usual everyone's always asking me about sleep paralysis it must be much more prevalent do I get sleep paralysis once a year once every two years maybe not particularly pleasant it's completely natural if you get sleep paralysis

sleep paralysis is when it's when you wake up in the middle of the night and you're half asleep and half awake and you can't move or you want to scream and you can't scream and it's not particularly pleasant and some people get sleep paralysis accompanied by hallucinations where they think that somebody else is in the room this is the scientific explanation for alien abductions and i've never gotten have i gotten that i've never gotten that where i felt the presence in the room but i've gotten sleep paralysis and it's not enjoyable and it makes me not want to go back to sleep I've had during times of great stress I suppose I have had the hallucinatory

sleep paralysis but I had one yeah just I had a really unpleasant one around the time my dad was dying years ago where yeah it's just like incredible stress sleep paralysis

where the world becomes you wake up and the world becomes an abstraction it's like the the fabric of reality breaks down and you're living in

in some type of hallucination of abstract fucking shapes and all you feel is terror I don't want to do that one again please if you don't want sleep I don't want to do that one again please. If you don't want sleep paralysis.

Don't sleep on your back. Give that a go. I don't. I don't sleep on my back anymore. Because if I do. That's when I will get sleep paralysis. And most people are similar. You get sleep paralysis when you sleep on your back.

I miss sleeping on my back. But I don't want sleep paralysis. What is sleep paralysis? It's just just there's a part of your brain that when you go asleep when you go asleep and you have dreams if you're running in your dream well if you don't want your body moving because if your body moves you'll wake yourself up so your brain shuts off your muscles so that when you're dreaming you don't actually move and sleep paralysis is when you wake up but that part of your brain hasn't clicked yet so now you're fully awake and you can't move your muscles so your body sends you a nice old jolt of terror to fucking wake you up from it and it's not pleasant so sleep on your back if you get sleep paralysis you cunts anya asks i want to do a podcast as part of my master's

project it would involve interviewing people really informally and chatting with them about youth work any tips on where to learn about making podcasts i mean look you can go on to youtube if you want to learn how to use a microphone and record and if someone says to me how do you make a podcast I'd give them the answer I'd give to anyone who's making anything if you're making anything a podcast should be entertaining right people should want to listen to it make sure it has structure set up conflict resolution a three-act structure um listen to something like this american life this american life is is a perfect podcast they invented a lot of the rules of podcasting look at how they interview people

look at how they use set up conflict resolution set up here is the person conflict here is a problem that they're having or a problem they're speaking about resolution here's how they resolve it and edit your interview to accommodate that or interject with the interview and narrate over it so you can set up set up conflict resolution that's how this american life does it if you listen to any of my not this one do you know what even this one is going to have set up conflict resolution because i set it up by saying i'm doing some questions now i'm in the middle of doing the questions the conflict is in the fact that I resisted some of the I resisted that question about mental health and speaking about Simon Harris there's your

fucking conflict and the resolution I started this podcast by saying I'm gonna have a little brief interview later on about utopias but because i mentioned it at the start when you hear that interview at the end there's your resolution so that's a very simple three-act structure and we all know we're waiting for three-act structures but we're not conscious of it so that's the only advice i'd give with a podcast have structure matthew griffiths griffiths asks what's my opinion on how people let superstitions rule their lives e.g one magpie is sorrow makes some people already have a shit day people who allow their lives to be ruled by superstitions these i believe are also the same people who can be prone to anxiety. When you...

If you believe heavily in superstitions, everyone has a little bit of superstitious thinking, but if you believe heavily in superstitions, and this includes astrology, alright, there's nothing wrong with being interested in astrology, but if you really believe that the fucking how you feel right now is because

Mercury is in retrograde like we tend to be we tend to be superstitious when we're terrified of uncertainty and terrified of change and people who need superstitions

are very anxious about uncertainty and they need to have certainty and a sense of control over certainty to the point that horoscopes temporarily do the trick superstitions can also allow us to not accept or take any responsibility for our behavior i see people online going i'm a fucking dickhead to everyone this month because mercury is in retrograde i don't even know what fucking mercury and retrograde means something to do with mercury the planet but i see a lot of people going ah Ah I'm a prick. This month I'm a prick. And I'm being mean to everybody. Sorry about that. Mercury is in retrograde. Fuck off.

Like. That's. That's most likely. A person who. Isn't willing. Willing. To accept. Or acknowledge.

Their emotions. Moods. Or behaviours. And the impact. That has on other people so the issue with a little bit of superstition is fine and i'm not shitting on people who are into horoscopes i can understand that horoscopes are entertaining but if they're governing your life then that might be unhealthy the the healthy thing to do is to embrace chaos and uncertainty. To truly understand

and know life is meaningless chaos and absolutely anything can happen and things aren't predetermined and when you think things happen for a reason that's just your brain making patterns but ultimately we have no control over what happens to us okay and when i was experiencing intense anxiety that used to freak the fuck out of me it's because i knew i have no control over what happens to me that's fucking terrifying i need to be in control i need to be prepared i must not feel pain bad things must not happen to me that's fucking terrifying i need to be in control i need to be prepared i must not feel pain bad things must not happen to me i must prepare i must protect myself by only staying in my house so that bad things don't happen to me and experiencing anxiety is it's quite similar to to superstitions and to being superstitious and how i got over that like when when when you have anxiety you can be prone to what's known as magical thinking

so i wasn't into horoscopes or i wasn't into like fucking if i saw a black cat my my day was going to be shit it wasn't that but i had i had safety behaviors i wouldn't leave my house if i didn't have an inhaler or i needed to have constant access to a water bottle or if if you know i was experiencing agoraphobia so if I was in a public space like a lecture theater or a cinema I needed to make sure that I was sitting as close to the door as possible these are all kind of superstitious behaviors because I wasn't willing to accept uncertainty and chaos I needed to control my environment I need to sit beside the door in case I have a panic attack and what got me over that I had to actually go yeah I might have a panic attack and when it does happen I'm gonna have to just cope with it in the moment so if

someone has been overwhelmed by superstitious activities and they're they're dictating how you behave or they're causing you to not accept responsibility for your behavior mercury and like if you're going for the old sorry for being a dickhead to you last week mercury was in retrograde that's that's just not acceptable that That isn't acceptable because it's hurtful to the other person who you're a prick to. And it's also, it's not very helpful to yourself. So what I did to get out of, we'll say, magical thinking around anxiety. I would simply say to myself a lot and to understand deeply understand I have no control over what happens to me in my life I have no control and that's a fact I have no control over what happens

to me in my life what I do have control over is my attitude towards what happens and once i started to understand that then i started to develop a sense of personal responsibility around my emotions and uncertainty stopped being terrifying because i'm going yes life is uncertain life is chaos bad things will happen life is suffering I am going to suffer as part of being alive that's the trade-off for joy and happiness but one thing that that's a fact no matter what the fuck happens whatever life throws at me in that I have no control over in that chaos what I always have full control over is my attitude towards what happens do you get what I'm saying that's quite empowering so if I get really bad news tomorrow yes it's gonna hurt but I have control over how I cope and how I react to it. And I have a lot of power in that respect.

And just adjusting my attitude towards that line of thinking, because it's fact-based, meant that if I'm in a public space and I'm worried about anxiety, I'm not going to engage in safety behaviors like needing to have a water bottle or needing to make sure I have my inhaler with me or needing to make sure I'm near near a door I don't do that anymore because I say to myself whatever happens I'm going to cope with it in the moment because I have that power and agency so that's what i think is superstitious i think people who are overly superstitious are terrified of change and terrified of uncertainty and they must have the they try to control reality they're trying to control reality same with people same with

conspiracy theories and again i'm not i'm not shitting on everyone a certain amount of superstition is healthy it's when it becomes unhealthy and it impacts your quality of life and your relationship with other people that's all I'm saying let's have an ocarina pause so I'm going to play my little clay whistle and when I play this you're going to hear

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Mother of what? Is the most terrifying. Six, six, six. It's the mark of the devil. Hey! Movie of the year. It's not real. It's not real. It's not real.

Who said that? The first omen, only in theaters April 5th. 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. That was the Ocarina Pause. Support for this podcast comes from you, the listener, via the Patreon page, patreon.com forward slash theblindbypodcast. This is an independent podcast i have full editorial control it's my full-time job to make this podcast i have the occasional advertiser

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twitch.tv forward slash the blind boy podcast you can come along, you can chat to me you can have crack it's free twitch.tv forward slash the blind buy podcast i'm only doing it once a month from now on because i've got some projects on and i don't have time to be doing it three times a week like the podcast share it you know the crack okay i'll answer one more question before I get on to the interview thingy that I promised you at the end. Maeve asks,

Do I have any views on the law of attraction? This would be quite similar to the question before the Ocarina pause about superstition. So the law of attraction, as I understand it, I think it's based on this thing called the secret, which is popular with a lot of people which it kind of states that if you put positivity out into the universe positive things will happen yeah so do I believe in the law of attraction yes and no so a lot of the time when I hear people talk about the book the secret or when I hear people talk about the book The Secret or when I hear people talk about the law of attraction

they tend to attach a kind of a supernatural vibe to it that if you just ask the universe that you will receive the universe will pay you back like I don't believe that part but what i will say is when i when i embarked on my mental health journey and when i became a mentally healthy person all right let's put it that way i used to not be i used to be someone with depression and anxiety. When I had depression, I had a negative view of myself. I had a negative view of other people. I had a negative view of the future.

When I had anxiety, I was terrified of everything. I had incredibly low self-esteem. So my quality of life wasn't good. I wasn't leaving my house. I wasn't achieving goals. I wasn't achieving dreams. I wasn't earning a living. It was a very negative self-perpetuating cycle of negativity.

Because I was depressed and anxious and my self-esteem was low I wasn't a nice person to be around. I was suspicious of people. Because my self-esteem was low and I didn't have emotional intelligence I was jealous of other people. Because I had low self-esteem, if I met another person, I would just assume that that person didn't like me. Because I didn't like myself. So you just naturally assume. You project all your own self-loathing and self-hatred onto another person. So if I feel like an incapable piece of shit,

if I meet a stranger I'm gonna say to myself they think I'm a piece of shit that's why they didn't say hello to me this morning so now I'm projecting all this negativity and if I if I think someone else thinks I'm a piece of shit then I'm not going to be nice to them I'm going to be standoffish I also didn't love myself so if you don't love yourself you won't allow anyone to love you or be kind to you you push them away so what I had while I had very poor mental health poor opinion of myself of other people this then reflected into my environment and my life and my world so I actually had a negative life when I engaged in therapy and self-help and I started to become someone with who was mentally healthy and what that meant was I had good self my self-esteem was improved by self-esteem that meant that I felt that I had worth as a person I felt that I was deserving

of love and to love myself I felt confident because I had self-love I would just assume that other people were good people I was no longer meeting a stranger and assuming that they think negatively of me. Instead, I was just going, I feel okay. That person's probably grand. Now all of a sudden I'm friendly to strangers. I'm not afraid of strangers anymore because I have solid self-esteem. So I'm in a very friendly, confident way. Engaging with strangers.

Now I'm building relationships. Because I have high self-esteem now. The idea of setting a goal. You know? Like. Horse outside and all that shit that happened with my career. That happened within a year. Of me sorting out my

mental health i i'd been doing creative stuff since i was about fucking 16 but it wasn't going anywhere but within a year of me sorting out my fucking mental health lads like truly sorting it out and becoming a confident positive person like within a year i was realizing my dreams like i was on tv i had a a fucking song in the charts that was nearly christmas number one within a year of properly sorting out my mental health now if i was superstitious i could look at that from the perspective of the secret or look at it as the law of attraction that because i put positivity out into the universe positivity came back and it's like yes it did but not because of anything superstitious because i had was mentally healthy because i had self-esteem i had self-compassion i had emotional understanding i'm quite simply a nicer person to be around i'm making more meaningful connections by making

meaningful connections and and genuinely being genuinely being nice to a person genuinely being nice to a person, genuinely being friendly, making meaningful connections, then from that opportunities come. If you're someone who's confident and nice to speak to and you come across as genuine, then the other person is going to want to help you. So opportunities start to arise and I'm no longer scared to set goals for myself.

When I was in the heights of fucking depression, I wasn't writing songs. I wasn't like going, I'm going to have a song written by the end of the week. I wasn't because I didn't have the self-esteem to set that goal for myself. And I didn't have the self-love to do something as meaningful as create a song this stuff only came from having good mental health so by having good mental health I was making meaningful connections with other people and having the confidence to set goals and achieve them and also because my self-esteem was based on an internal locus of evaluation which means that my self-worth doesn't come from aspects of my behavior it comes

from just who I am as a person my intrinsic worth because of that then I'm not terrified of failure when I had poor mental health issues I was defining my self-worth in aspects of my behavior so if when I had poor mental health if I was to even attempt to write a song or to create a comedy sketch if if if the result if my attempt wasn't good then I would then use that as evidence to suggest that I'm a bad person it's like okay I'm gonna try and write a comedy sketch fuck it's not that funny of course it's not you fucking piece of shit you've no talent you're useless you're worthless that's what my brain would have said to myself but when I started getting mentally healthy I no longer placed myself worth in aspects of my behavior and my achievements

so if I was to write a comedy sketch then or to write a song if my attempt wasn't good enough I wouldn't call myself a piece of shit human I would just say that piece of work isn't good enough fuck it I learned from it I'll try it again so because i think about this a lot i could have easily attributed that to something supernatural like the supernatural like the law of attraction no no when you are nice to be around when you have the happiness and self-esteem to become the best version of yourself then naturally things will things will start to go right for you because you're doing all the positive things that lead to success and that's not the law of attraction that's called taking personal responsibility and that's another thing that gets my fucking goat

about the mental health system in Ireland how many people are not being how many people do not have access to the best version of themselves because they don't have access to services to help them be that person

I'm very lucky when I was I was in college lads in when I was about 19 in art college and for whatever reason there wasn't big long queues to get to the councillor's office I don't know why that is but there wasn't and when I was 19 in college I was able to go to the counsellor in college and I got two years of weekly free counselling

and that sorted my shit out and that's just how it was back then in the late 2000s you know maybe the recession hadn't know maybe I don't know the recession hadn't happened yet I don't know but when I was in college there was not giant queues for the counsellor I had access to a counsellor and it served me well for two fucking years and I got two years of free counselling because I wouldn't have been able to afford it I wouldn't have been

able to afford private counselling every week but because I was't have been able to afford it I wouldn't have been able to afford private counseling every week but because I was in college it was fucking free and and this is the thing with self-help everything I've done since then is self-help but I didn't I didn't this is what pisses me off about Simon Harris and his message for us to mind our mental health or to exercise for our mental health part of self-help is getting to a position where you can look for help and i'm someone who i i looked for help and i got help weekly for two years from a fucking professional counselor and then embarked on self-help but if I didn't have access to a counsellor for two fucking years weekly

I don't know would I have had a transformative effect over myself or would I still have anxiety and depression I don't know so I'm going to end this podcast with a little interview I recorded during the week with two sound heads two sound heads who I'd chat with um una malali

who is a journalist with a brilliant journalist with the irish times and she also i think she has a podcast too i believe and also connor habib con. Conor was on this podcast before. I had a full episode with Conor before. Conor is. He's a former porn star. And now he's an academic. And he has a podcast too. He has a podcast called.

Against Everyone with Conor Habib. But Una and Conor anyway. Who are pals with each other. They started this project over over lockdown that they got on to me about to go can we come on the podcast and speak about this new project that we have and the project that they have is called utopiaireland.ie and it's kind of a radical idea it's it's a website called utopia ireland dot ie but it's it's process-based how do i explain this it's not necessarily about an end result all it is is a web page and what it says is what is your what is your vision of an ideal

ireland like a utopia and it's 100 completely anonymous all there is is a little box where you can type in your answer what is your vision of an ideal Ireland? And then separately, if you want to give them your email to be part of a mailing list, you can. But ultimately, it's completely anonymous. They've set up a survey asking people, what is your vision of an ideal Ireland? And I've edited the interview. It was longer, but I edited it down.

And I was asking him, like, my first thought was like, what are you going to do? What is the point of this project? You know, if you have this website and you're asking everyone to write down what is your vision of an ideal Ireland, it's like, what are you going to do with this?

But the fact of the matter is, this is a process-based project. So they don't really know what they're going to do with it. It's more, it's like the fact that this exists is providing you, everybody, with an opportunity to privately write down and to contemplate a space to to think what is an ideal Ireland and they're not looking for like political solutions it's literally the way what I compare it to is like in in counseling and psychotherapy sometimes a therapist will ask you what do you want for yourself when you think of the best version of you what does that person look like or what is happiness to you a counselor might ask this this of a client someone who's going through trouble what what does happiness look like for you where would you like to see

yourself in four years and you can write it down yourself privately without any rules and you don't allow you don't say to yourself this is ridiculous or you don't allow yourself say this is unrealistic you truly ask yourself what do you want and you're not thinking of any boundaries or any negativity what do you want and you write it down and you can burn it afterwards because the value is in searching through yourself and simply saying it out loud to yourself and that's what this site is providing a little space for anyone to write into a box what is your vision of an ideal Ireland? And if you want it completely anonymous. If you're worried about data.

I would suggest just use a VPN or something. And pretend you're living in Moldova. It's completely ethical around data. So this is a project that Una Malaly and Conor Habib are doing. UtopiaIreland.ie A process based project where they just want to ask people. What is your vision of an ideal Ireland? To begin a conversation.

And there's a mailing list if you want. And like I said it's a process. They don't know where they're going with it. So I chatted to him during the week. Briefly to explain to me what is this project and why does it exist so i spoke from and that's what i'm going to play for you right now so this is me chatting to the journalist una malali and conor habib who's an academic and a podcaster and it's about their project utopia ireland and i'm aware that the the word utopia is is loaded it's a loaded word but hear them out and and consider going to the website yourself and just submitting without any boundaries what's your vision for an ideal ireland

this uh survey that we're doing i guess for want of a better word, on utopiarland.ie, that's kind of like the first conclusion that we've come to as a part of the process that we've been thinking about where people can articulate what their kind of positive vision is related to Ireland. Their ideas about society, They could be small ideas or fantastical ideas or massive ideas. But what we want to do is remove the parameters

of what people may think is possible and stop thinking about reactive solutions and stop thinking about kind of being in opposition to things and thinking more about what you really want. And I guess like the pandemic instigated it in some ways with regards to all this discourse that was happening around the outset of the pandemic that was really about like, this is a moment to pause and what are the things that matter?

And there's so much potential for change here and I think that through just being normalized by the grind of what's been going on the past year it's fair to say that a lot of people maybe are losing that feeling a little bit but that happened and it exists so part of this is a is a bit of like how do you hold that potential and how do you keep that imagination going so the vibe i'm getting is that this project was inspired by the early days of the pandemic where there was this collective sense of camaraderie camaraderie and cooperation and the people of Ireland really came together. Jesus, did 70,000 people volunteer for the HSE

or something like that? So if I visited the website utopiaireland.ie and the landing page is there. What is your vision of an ideal Ireland? And put on the spot and type into the box, what's my vision of an ideal Ireland? I have to type and put in put on the spot and type into the box what's my vision of an ideal Ireland I would probably say off the bat and I

would like to see an Ireland where health care education and housing are genuine human rights and everybody has access to, equal access, to healthcare, housing and education, regardless of how much money they have. Simple as that. Everyone has access to it. That's what I would like to see in an ideal Ireland. So, Conor, I interviewed you on this podcast two years ago. You'd been living in Ireland one month at the time. Now you've been living in Ireland for two years and you're involved in this project what would be your vision of an ideal Ireland well um I mean and

as far as my idea of utopia maybe mine will sound a little simpler than Una's at the start I mean basically like when people ask me what my politics are you know I try to avoid saying things like I'm an anarchist or I'm a socialist or i'm a whatever like basically i like to suck dicks and read books and i want to be able to do that all the time connor connor is a farmer porn star by the way no no mention i was i was i haven't made a porn for it's been like eight years or something but but what i mean by that is that like pleasure the things that we find pleasurable are what is available to us to actually dedicate our time to. That's just on a sort of surface level. So our days are composed of what we want to do. And in fact, it's something that I'm in the habit now of doing

is like asking people how they'd like to spend their day. You know, what do you want your day to look like? I think that that's a really important question for all of us. And I don't need everybody to answer in a way that's remotely similar to how I answer. But the end result of that would be, you know, maybe like a spiritual way of saying it is that people get to live out their karma and encounter the challenges and the things that give them pleasure in the ways that they want so that we have people who are extraordinary as a kind of normal thing. Like if we look back on history, we see people like, I don't know, like let's say Beethoven or, you know, like Michael Jordan for basketball or whatever, these people who are absolutely extraordinary, but actually

that should be the norm. Like people should have the conditions set up in their lives to be thriving that much, to be flourishing that much that in whatever area, and it doesn't have to be on the public stage, it could be gardening, it could be being a mom, it could be, you know, like being a farmer, whatever, that you're thriving in that area because you're not so beaten down by the social conditions that demand that you work and die you know from day one to the very end so the freedom basically to to live our lives in a way that affords us personal meaning individually which that sounds pretty nice to me that sounds pretty nice to me. That sounds pretty nice to me, to be honest. So can you tell me so far with the project,

what have Irish people been submitting when you ask them, like, what's your vision for an ideal Ireland? What have people been writing? Well, one of the things that I thought was really interesting is a lot of people seem to be referring to public space. And this is obviously like pandemic related and everything from like develop or like

just have awnings that actually cover streets so people can eat peacefully obviously this has been happening in Cork before Dublin. Put a fucking roof on Ireland Yeah It rains all the time like I go to Spain I love going to Spain and when it's really really hot in Spain they put a roof over the streets.

So my vision for an Irish utopia, put a fucking roof over the country. It's raining all the time. You know what I mean? That is definitely a vision to enjoy the public space. But there's been loads of like really kind of loving stuff around people like this real kind of simple desire around things to just not be so hard um and not be so grinding and i think that that's you know the part of the pandemic which has obviously killed so many people and made people really sick you know to return back to that thing that became almost a cliche instantly about the pause

and about the breath and about the stopping and I think that an awful lot of the stuff that was coming through really kind of speaks to how a lot of people even though they may be living you know relatively privileged lives and they might have, you know, they'll have a roof over their head, they may have a job and an income, but there is a feeling, a broad feeling of dissatisfaction, of burnout, obviously is, you know, another pandemic and of just feeling like one's very existence and desire to enjoy simple things and have nice things is not being met and so we really have to dig into knowing that we have very simple desires you know you want to go to a rave at six o'clock in the

morning or you want to have like barbecues in your park or awnings over a street or you know, you want to go to a rave at six o'clock in the morning or you want to have like barbecues in your park or awnings over a street or, you know, housing that isn't, you know, half a million quid for, you know, one and a half rooms and this kind of stuff. Why is that so difficult? And what does progress, quote unquote, really look like when it comes to economic systems and how much of that is almost like anti-pleasure anti-human and peace you know personal peace so an awful lot of that stuff is coming through around this feeling of what where is this grind coming from? So one thing I find really encouraging about the survey you're doing is if someone goes to the website and it's just a simple landing page that says, what's your vision of an ideal Ireland?

And you have the little box to type it in. You're providing a contemplative space for that person to think about you know without any boundaries what do you actually want what do you what is the ideal society that you would like to live in but most importantly it's not a social media space when we if if we were to ask this question on twitter what is your what is your vision for an ideal Ireland? You couldn't because when we use social media whether we know it or not there's always an element

of performatism. When you express an opinion on Twitter, on Facebook you are performing you know that people are watching and as a result you're not completely honest because people are watching and you might be result you're not completely honest because people are watching and you might be judged or you might want to impress so the complete anonymity of this and

the privacy of it is as a process of just reflecting that's the value that i see in this yeah and how like how are we honest with ourselves you know really really fundamentally and you're so right about how the performative aspect of social media and any kind of online discourse and and the tragedy of twitter discourse actually now being framed as societal discourse when obviously which is which is really bad and and the idea that everybody is at their wits end and everybody is angry and this is just a rage pit designed as we know to like encourage this kind of like polarization and so therefore the tech companies can benefit from the emotional fallout of that and like you know i i mean the we could talk about that for ages and we shouldn't but like just bringing things back to

um you know yes this is a website but like trying as much as possible to bring it bring it back to an a real human reality um that is not an anti-human space as so much of the digital space increasingly is and like it can be very very simple needs or wants but like those are really really important and really legitimate and as connor says around pleasure um you know that's it's something that has been really lost you know just the the validity of pleasure um for loads of reasons and and you know i don't think that that's a privileged thing to say because then you're saying like only a certain cohort of people you know can afford to or are allowed to feel pleasure if we've learned anything over the past year it's how removed from uh materialism pleasure actually

is you know just about data and stuff here right so i know that when when i put this podcast out there's going to be people really skeptical and afraid of they're just going to go anonymous really is it really anonymous um like it's simple as that and i know what shit like this like i said when i took it back to a therapy context when a therapist would say to the client just write down how you want to feel and you can burn the paper afterwards. It's that act of having full autonomy over your own data of your thoughts to be able to burn it afterwards

that allows someone to be 100% honest. And this thing here can only work if the person writing down can truly, truly feel. Like if a person's vision of ireland is i i think everyone should have their kneecaps on the backs of their legs and someone wants to be able to write that without shame i'm not saying it's my vision but like if someone wanted to write something crazy and it's like here's my space to say the thing i would love to say but i can't because i'll be publicly shamed if i do can they truly have anonymity you know should they use a VPN beforehand

if they're worried about their data these are questions that you're going to get however people feel comfortable with it the little survey box you're referring to like that is anonymized we have a separate box where you can email if you want

if you want to put your email in you can if you want but the actual box just put the fucking answer in and it's enough yeah disassociates the email from the answer so those are actually two completely separate forms yeah so when we get the answer if it's the person that wants like deer legs for everybody in ireland we'll get that answer as a separate thing okay maybe someone wants that and if that someone wants that. I won't shame them for their dear beliefs. But the email thing, which we have there, sends us a completely separate email for that. So we actually don't even have the answer to it.

And we ask people in that, and this is how we will bring people into following up as the project develops, is if you sign up for the email list, which we're not sending any emails out yet, so don't worry about getting weekly emails from us or anything like that. We're only going to use it to real effect. And it's like, are you interested more in culture, economics, or politics, as I broke down those spheres before and then that's only to get people involved in the process as we get down the line interacting with those spheres and involving people more and it's completely disassociated from the answer the other thing is if like people kind of look at the page and think about yeah what do i want but i don't want to write it on the website just fucking write it for yourself and burn it if you want to, you know?

Right. There's nothing wrong with that. It's that you've begun a thought process that you wouldn't have done otherwise because society, as you told, the things are a certain way. Yeah. You know? Yeah. And tell other people about it and start a conversation about it if you want as well. I mean, it's like this spreading out away from the website is also a healthy act.

So it's not like it all has to come to us, you know, or anything like that. We're trying to inspire that process and people like... So as a final word on this, why should people go to utopiaireland.ie and respond to the survey question, what is your vision of an ideal Ireland? Why should people do it? Everybody has gone through a pandemic in the last year. We've also gone through a profound period of social change and social evolution. And this is kind of an evolutionary call as opposed to revolutionary call we can build and be amazing we can build something that is fucking beautiful and empathic and loving and kind and where you know that is has massive like egalitarian qualities to it and we can do that within ourselves, because if we're not willing

to do the work on ourselves and imagine something for ourselves and put the work in ourselves, then we can't keep defaulting to the structures and systems that we know can't provide for it. So this kind of just like just, you know, just click into this and just think about it yourself a little bit. There's no commitment. There's no obligation. It's just take some of the magic that you were feeling last march maybe along with the fear and pain and trauma and disruption and wonder how can that little glimmer be progressed into the prism that kind of does an awful lot of things yeah yeah and i and i just want to say just to go on that you know this isn't about revolution

right we don't want to we don't want a revolution that brings us back to the same place that we're always in again and again. That's what revolutions often do. They just result in changing the faces of who's in Ireland, there's a tradition of, you know, certain writers who make all the aspects of Ireland transparent to themselves. So we could talk about John O'Donoghue or we could talk about John Moriarty. Those are my sort of go-to examples. But even we could talk about Peg Zayers or somebody like that, like people who are going to show that there are many different versions of Ireland, but there's a kind of thing that's rising up through them in this really beautiful way. So we don't have to think about going back to an old way of how things were, or going forward to a new Ireland, which people have been talking about since like the 1930s, but like, rather just saying, who are we and what do we want? And like, and what do we want from the depths of, you know, of who we are in our

various different histories, and this land and this island, you know, and I think that that's really beautiful. So it's not quite nationalism, it's just sort of a recognition of the many different, many different versions of Ireland and all those forms of beauty that are here. And I realized some of that, you you know some of what we're saying may sound sentimental in a way but i think also getting past the sentimentalism of it like people can feel it people can feel that you know so thank you there to una malali and conor habib talking about their project utopia ireland give it a crack give it a go I think I it's I I admire I look it's process based I admire anything that's process based that isn't necessarily

focused on end results it's about process and reflection which we don't have a lot of in society so give it a crack have a think about your vision for an ideal Irelandireland and submit it anonymously and know that nobody's watching nobody knows who it is be as honest as fuck i'll be back next week with a hot take i'll be back with a hot take next week i don't know which one i have three or four hot takes bubbling we'll see what comes up mind yourself have some self compassion be compassionate to yourself be compassionate rub a dog rub a dog feed a stray cat wink at a crow you know what i mean yart Thank you. 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. Thank you. Thank you. you