The Blindboy Podcast - The Goblin of strange and uncertain times

Episode Date: June 17, 2020

A Hot take on Society's response to coronavirus through the lens of grief psychology. A Post Catholic view of Ireland's response Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the Blind Buy Podcast, you forever Brendans. If you're a brand new listener to this podcast, I would recommend going to some earlier episodes because this particular episode is directed more towards regular listeners. Some episodes I'd recommend would be DeVito's Teapot, Brando's Dartboard, Yorty a Hern,, Malibu castle bastards, a spiky giant full of baldy, rectum pen pals,

whatever, any of the older episodes. I don't, I give the podcast unorthodox names, that's kind of how we do it. But you're more than welcome if you're a brand new listener. How have you been? I have been having tons of fun. I've been having tons of fun with my Twitch stream.

I mentioned to you last week that all this week I was going to stream on Twitch every single night. And I did. I made a promise to myself that I was going to do it every single night. I was going to do it to try and raise money for a charity organisation called Massey, who are a charity for people living living in direct provision. And for asylum seekers. So I said fuck it. I'm going to go on to Twitch. Every single night at 9.30.

And I'm going to stream for an hour or longer. And ask people to donate money. And I did and it worked. And people donated. So thank you to everyone. Who helped out there. And. I think I'm gonna

I'm definitely gonna stream again this week Wednesday, Thursday, Friday 9.30pm probably a bit longer what I'm doing on the streams is I'm playing a game called Red Dead Redemption but I'm not really playing it it's much more of a relaxing podcast hug type space

where it's me kind of talking. I dressed my character up as if he was in the IRA in the 1920s and wandered around some woods and interfered with bushes. And it's different. I'm enjoying it as a creative space. Red Dead Redemption is this game that has this huge open replica of america in the 1890s and i just wander the wilderness i wander the wilderness i try and avoid a conflict if i can i try and invite shooting people unless they shoot me and in general it's i'm using the environment as a place to create stories and to talk with

people who are watching so twitch.tv forward slash the blind by podcast i'm going to start getting into streaming pretty regularly for two reasons number one um i can't i can't do gigs because of the goblin of strange and uncertain times. So my gigs are gone. So I've got all this free time on my hands. And it's genuinely really exciting. It is really exciting for me to now have this space. Which is new enough territory as well creatively. And I now have this space to do whatever the fuck I want.

In front of a live audience. And in the comfort zone of my studio I'm also doing live music I'm considering doing meditation there's loads of stuff I can do so it's lots of fun twitch.tv forward slash the blind by podcast give me an old follow so what I want to cover in this week's podcast is uh I have a, I suppose it's kind of a hot take, but it's more of, there's an element of hot take, but it's much more like a philosophical assessment of the current time. by psychology, a philosophical assessment of the current times, of the goblin of strange and uncertain times, a philosophical assessment of

where we all are right now as a society regarding coronavirus. For me to make sense of the zeitgeist, to make sense of the current zeitgeist and to share it with you. I also want to speak about why.

Why I haven't done a mental health podcast. In quite some time. So you might have noticed I haven't done. A podcast about mental health. In about six weeks. Longer maybe. And I like to do regular mental health podcasts I like to

for myself and for you I like I have a rigorous mental health regime which is informed by psychology and I use this for my own emotional well-being to keep myself in check and I like to share it with you

I like to share my experience with you because I know from messages that I receive that it's actually really helpful for for you and then from my point of view I feel ethically okay doing it because I'm not a qualified fucking psychologist but But I am a qualified person in. Applying psychology to myself. To improve my own mental health. I'm qualified to speak about my experiences. And to point you in directions that. Work for me.

So I'm ethically okay with that. So I like to do it every so often. But I haven't been doing it recently. Because of the coronavirus. The goblin of strange and uncertain times because when i do a mental health podcast and you're listening and you're engaging with it even though it can be quite pleasurable it can be pleasurable to go to an internal part of yourself where you're thinking about ways of how you behave or how you view yourself. When you go to what's known as an introspective place, right? Introspective is when you look inwards.

When you go to an introspective place, you kind of, like anyone who's been to counseling or therapy you'll know that often a counselor or therapist will begin a counseling and therapy session with what's known as a grounding exercise where you ground yourself you sit in your body you sit what emotions are in there before you enter the introspection of a therapeutic environment so I didn't feel that it would be safe for me to be doing mental health podcasts that require you to be introspective during the coronavirus business especially the start of it so the past few weeks for me and this podcast, they've been about distraction. My job has been to speak to you about art,

fun things, things that ask you to go to a cognitive, enjoyable, immersive place to provide you with a distraction and entertainment. And the reason is, like I said, this is how I view the coronavirus pandemic on a psychological level when it happened i viewed it the the lens that i viewed coronavirus and its impact on all of us on our mental health, I viewed it through the lens of grief psychology. Okay? Grief is... You think of grief and you go,

all right, when someone close to you dies. Yes, but grief and grief psychology isn't just that. Grief is... Grief is a painful response to a sudden loss or change that you didn't ask for and that's what coronavirus is we didn't ask for it it was very sudden there was a huge loss you know what do you lose you lose your sense of freedom you lose your sense of certainty humans love certainty and we don't like change

we enjoy patterns we don't like it when patterns are interrupted we seek patterns like simple as this coronavirus started I actually can't even tell you was it two months ago?

what is it now? it's the middle of june march april may let's just say we're three months into it that three months ago feels like a fucking year lads i was in australia in january it feels like last year and there's a reason for that because our entire pattern of living has been fucked up every day has been filled with anxiety and uncertainty and it's overwhelming and as a result you're not going into autopilot anymore you're continually on edge and that's why march feels like three fucking years ago so within the context of all that i didn't want to be talking about depression anxiety asking ye to look internally

because i speak about defense mechanisms a lot right defense mechanisms are seen in psychology as as negative things in general right when you when you bring up defense mechanism it's seen as negative defense mechanisms can be negative they can uh they can steer us in ways of living that causes pain or interfere with our relationships with other people and they can be the the source of problems in our lives but they also exist for a reason and aren't necessarily always like that defense mechanism it's it's basically it's when your your brain tries to protect you from a truth by distorting your perception of what that truth is that that's what a defense mechanism is denial is a defense mechanism if you embarrass yourself in public and when you get embarrassed what happens is

you get furiously angry at anyone who looks like they're laughing that's the the shame and embarrassment is so great that your brain doesn't let you feel it so it goes for the easier emotion of projecting anger that's a defense mechanism defense mechanisms are also useful because they can help us to cope in the short term and most of us have been using defense mechanisms for the past three months to just live that's why when i did the mental health podcast about coronavirus all I was talking about was the most you can ask of yourself is to cope that's it day by day to cope and look for meaning because that's it's grief I'd say the same thing to somebody who lost their job the same thing to someone who lost their dog the same thing to someone who lost their dog, the same thing to someone who lost a parent.

Grief is, it's unique to all of us, and there's no right or wrong way to do it. And when you're in the experience of grief, you have to just focus on coping. On a day-by-day basis, you cope. So that was the message I had. And what we've all seen over the past three months the world is from a socio-cultural point of view or a psychosocial point of view

we've all been going through collective grief and grief has five stages right in grief psychology in general there's five stages and they don't necessarily have to be in this sequence so the five stages of grief are denial anger bargaining depression and acceptance here's how i see the the the sequence with coronavirus of how these things have played out. Number one, denial. So when coronavirus first became known to us, in Ireland anyway, it manifested mostly as denial and minimization. Oh, there's some disease over in China. Oh, we've seen swine flu before. It'll be nothing. We've seen this this before that was the initial onset of denial then the second most obvious onset of denial when it became very real not just in Ireland but as a

phenomenon of what you'd refer to as western countries the first response was panic buying people buying up toilet paper buying up loads of shops being empty of bread and toilet paper and from a distance that can look like panicking or hoarding and there was an element of that but mostly that wasn't the case. I mean I remember people with shopping trolleys full of very non-essential things, Pring shit like that it wasn't people necessarily stockpiling their houses with food because they thought they'd have to board up their windows it was people under the sudden shock and change of the grief of coronavirus and not knowing how severe it would be under that shock what people did is they denied the fear and terror by responding to

a set of behaviors that we in western society have been conditioned to believe are soothing by which i mean consumerism if you are raised in a western country under capitalism since birth you are presented with advertising non-stop and advertising and consumerism in our culture is not about selling you or advertising products based on your actual needs it's about selling and advertising to you if they're selling you a better version of yourself so from birth our engagement with advertising isn't i need that pair of pants it's this advert tells me that that pants will make me cooler or more whole or this soap will make me a better human being so our relationship with consumerism it's it's a religious relationship advertising psychologically is a type

of religious iconography that offers us salvation okay and that salvation is the opportunity to be a better human being better than what we are so the panic buying of the initial stage of the coronavirus it's people feeling terrified and the only thing we know how to do to cope is to consume consume consume give money receive products receive a small dopamine hit and then achieve a sense of control but ultimately you're engaging in denial that that's mass denial there's a pandemic great i need nine boxes of pringles and 64 bog rolls that's denial that's finding out that someone you love has got a terminal illness and you spend the first night down in three bottles of wine that's what that is that's the first initial response to a shock so that there is the denial

stage of grief as a response to coronavirus pandemic and usually the next response is anger but i think with coronavirus anger wasn't the next response the second stage of grief it went from denial to bargaining that's when the conspiracy theorists came out that's when i mean people have fallen out with family members in ireland over this conspiracy theorists saying that this was a plandemic you know denying experts trying to like i know what a conspiracy theory sounds like denial but it's not it's it's actually it's bargaining a conspiracy theorist is trying to bargain with the truth because they're not comfortable with uncertainty so they need to find a degree of answer or a degree of certainty regardless of whether it's true or not so

bargaining is like um a conspiracy theorist isn't accepting that like there's a virus out there and it's killing some people and you can't actually catch it and instead the conspiracy theorists are saying uh if it is real it was made in a laboratory and it's actually 5g it's it's made by the internet and that's what it is these people are bargaining that's that's the bargaining stage of grief it's an advanced form of denial then came anger and depression and i think anger and depression in the grief stages of coronavirus happened at once. I don't separate the pandemic from the recent protests we're seeing all over the world. Not just the Black Lives Matter protests, but people ripping down statues, people protesting to defend statues at the far right fucking people out like the first ones were the militia people in america protesting against social distancing there's been a lot of

very heated out on the streets anger which i haven't seen i've never seen the scale of it in the west before and the closest thing i I have ever seen to it would be what's called the Arab Spring of 2011. And I'm not saying this to minimise something like the Black Lives Matter protests. I'm not. That was an anger as a result of injustice against the black community, which would have happened with or without coronavirus, but the protests do have to be viewed within the context

of there being an unprecedented massive global pandemic, which we haven't seen before. You have to view all of it within that context and backdrop, and history is going to view all those protests within that context and backdrop too. A bit like brilliant Spike Lee film Do The Right Thing, which is about racial tensions in Brooklyn against the backdrop of a particularly hot and irritating summer.

The complete removal of freedom that all people are experiencing, the removal of certainty, the removal of the lack of leadership, all of this stuff creates a tinderbox of anger, which makes civil unrest easier to explode within those conditions. So with the ease of lockdown now that we're seeing, the past week in particular in Ireland, where there's cars back out in the street, people are now talking about going back to pubs

with the ease of lockdown. With the stage of grief that we're entering into now is acceptance. The coronavirus isn't a scary, terrifying monster anymore. We know what it looks like now. Like the early stages of coronavirus when things were being locked down and we were being asked not to leave our house one of the most traumatizing things

about that for me is picking up the phone speaking to somebody I know and when I'm communicating with them I'm not speaking with the same person because they're trying to hide a sense of terror in their voice when you're speaking to someone you know and there there was a trepidation. And their voice was shaky. And it felt deeply uncomfortable. And you're trying to behave normally. But this terror exists in your own voice. And in the other person's voice. Back in March. That was quite traumatic.

That was quite traumatic. And when that was happening. I could feel my defence mechanisms kicking in. I could feel my defence mechanisms going in I could feel my defense mechanisms going you can't focus on that now you must only focus on coping on a day-to-day basis and that's when I did that podcast but now we're moving to acceptance I don't feel I need to distract you anymore that if you even look at the news the news isn't reporting as heavily on it anymore we're we're um moving into what's referred to as the new normal the new normal is acceptance it's like biggest impact

the coronavirus for me is just for me personally not too worried about my health i've got a bit of asthma but i'm gonna do everything i can to not get it but i wouldn't be too worried if i did get it i'd take my chances big worry for me is loss of livelihood i work in the entertainment industry entertainment industry is fucked entertainment industry and travel and tourist industry are possibly the two biggest hit industries by all of this I'd imagine. Can't do gigs. Don't know when I can do gigs again. Can't do television because you can't make television under social distancing. Even my fucking book.

My paperback of my book came out three weeks ago. Can't sell any copies of it because the bookshops weren't open. So that was a big shock for me. but now i'm moving to a place of acceptance i can't change it it's outside of my control so i'm saying well i'm an artist i'm creative what can i do within these massive restrictions to use my creativity to earn a living and it might even be fun so i'm 100 in a place of acceptance now um and all of us in society that's where we're going it's the new normal we're moving out opening things up slowly and we all now accept there's this thing called coronavirus it's not a big scary goblin anymore it's an annoying thing which will affect how we we're going to have to

behave going forward it changes how we behave and we don't know for how long but that's how it is now that's acceptance so in light of that it's that's why it's okay now i think to speak about mental health again that's why i think it's safe to be introspective i i've been i was like avoiding meditation a little bit at the start of coronavirus because i didn't want to go too deeply inside I needed the defense mechanism to cope every single day to just get on with it but now I'm moving to acceptance it's gone back to how I felt before the pandemic just there's restrictions on how I must behave and my behavior doesn't determine my internal world behavior doesn't determine my worth or how I feel My behavior doesn't determine my internal world.

Behavior doesn't determine my worth or how I feel. I'm feeling normal in shops now again, you know. I'm wearing my face mask. I'm wiping down the basket before I put my hand in it. I'm using hand sanitizer. All of these responses are becoming autonomous. And I'm not afraid anymore. Going to the shop is no longer unpleasant.

I'm just doing it now in a different way. So what i'm going to do after the ocarina pause is get to kind of the hot take my coronavirus hot take now obviously i'm not going to do some irresponsible fucking conspiracy theory shit it's more of a hot take on society and culture as it relates to this pandemic and it's it's fun and interesting so let's have the ocarina pause but it is not the ocarina pause this week because in preparation for my live streams where i'm creating i'm making music on the fly on Twitch. In preparation for that, I got myself some new percussion instruments. And I also dug up my old percussion instruments. Basically like tambourines, shakers, loads of little instruments that I can use with my hands to make a rhythm.

And I found this fucking instrument that I forgot that I had. And it's a very specific instrument called a flexitone. And it's a Latin percussion instrument. I don't fully know the history of it. It's a Latin percussion instrument, a niche instrument. And for some reason, this instrument became an integral part of the sound of early 90s G-Funk hip-hop for about four years. And I can't understand why. I can't understand the answer. So we're going to have, instead of the ocarina pause this week we're gonna have the flexitone pause right where I'm gonna just play this strange instrument the pause if you don't know there's

gonna be an advert I don't know what the advert is gonna be I haven't a clue who gives a shit right but it's gonna be placed inside this pause so I do little musical pauses so that you're not alarmed so here's the flexitone pause will you rise with the sun to help change

mental health care forever join the sunrise challenge to raise funds for CAMH 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. On April 5th, you must be very careful, Margaret. It's a girl. Witness the birth. Bad things will start to happen. Evil things of evil. It's all for you.

No, no, don't. The first omen. I believe the girl is to be the mother. 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 did that? The first omen. Only in theaters April 5th. what a queer instrument so that was the flexitone pause last week i i won't say who but i turned down a rather large sponsor because it didn't didn't sit with me ethically didn't want to promote him simple as that i'm entitled to that

so this podcast is 100 independent every so often i might have a sponsor for like a week or two but a lot of the times how podcasts survives is they get a full sponsor to sponsor them for like a year or two years a big company whatever i don't have that i kind of don't want this um i i do i've great difficulty getting sponsors and when sponsors come through i find myself turning a lot of them down because i just don't agree with what they're doing and most importantly i don't ever want anyone a sponsor who's paying my way saying to me i don't like the content you're making the whole reason why I enjoy doing this podcast this podcast is a space for failure and exploration and I never think what will be popular what will

people like what I think is what do I care about deeply today what what what ideas are really interesting me right now and I want to talk about them regardless of whether people like them I'm doing what I want to do last week's podcast was about the evolution of a moth's wings and how that contrasts with an 18th century painter

if I had a sponsor who was paying for this podcast for 6 months they'd be perfectly within their rights to turn around to me and say stop talking about moths wings who the fuck wants to hear that and they'd say to me you know what blind by we're happy with the amount of people listening to your podcast but we'd like to double that we'd like to double your listeners so here's a list of trending topics right now on the internet and you have to do podcasts about

these trending topics because we know that if you do them about these topics more people will click on it and i'd say no that's not what i'm about and then they'd say i'm really sorry but i don't think we can continue sponsoring you and then i'm fucked and that's what i'm trying to get away from that's what working television is like that's been a bit hard no no that's what I'm trying to get away from. That's what working in television is like. That's been a bit hard. No, that's most of my experience. Someone's fronting a lot of money to make a TV show. And when they tell you that something isn't right,

then creative control goes out the window. And now I'm making something I don't enjoy. I don't care about. I'm not passionate about. I'm 100% passionate about this podcast. I fucking love doing it i i can't wait every week to figure out what weird shit can i talk about that's really interesting to me and that i'm passionate about and then to try and communicate my passion for that to ye as entertainment so the reason i'm able to do it, is because, the podcast is funded by you the listener, through the Patreon page,

that's how I want to keep it, I'd like to keep it Patreon funded, for complete and utter fucking independence, so if, as well as that obviously, as well as I've mentioned many fucking podcasts before, coronavirus is after making shit in my job, I can't do gigs,

can't do TV, nothing like tv nothing like that so this is my sole source of income um i rely 100 on this podcast it's my full-time job it's a huge amount of work so if you're listening to the podcast and you enjoy it and you can afford to give me the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month please do it genuinely makes a huge difference it keeps me going all right if you can't afford that though don't be beating yourself up over it all right someone else is going to pay for you to listen that's how i want to do it completely independent i talk about what i want to talk about but at the same time i'm not putting it behind the paywall and excluding people if they can't afford it but if you can afford it cup of coffee or a pint seriously please do it makes a huge

difference if you can't afford it and you want to support it word them out tell your friends about this podcast share it on social media uh fucking leave a good review on itunes or whatever subscribe to it all this carry on also as well look my twitch channel that's going to be a lot of crack start a twitch account and please join me on twitch twitch.tv forward slash the blind by podcast currently i'm going to be on it three times a week wednesday thursday friday i'm doing something quite similar to this podcast but live every night and it's great crack so that was a particularly long one this week the reason is I just I wanted to make the point because some people say say to me or

people donate to your patreon like it's a charity and it's like, no, people support me on Patreon to pay for the work that I do. They're paying for work that I do. If you're a patron of mine, you're paying me to work to make the podcast, but also you're paying for someone else who can't afford it to listen. And I think that's, under capitalism, that's pretty sound and fair. That really sits nicely with me i like it and it's ethical and also one more thing as a thank you to the people who are patrons of the podcast once a month i pick one person one patron at random and they will get sent in the post a hand drawing one of a kind hand drawing for me as a thank you so one patron picked at random all right patreon.com forward

slash the blind boy podcast so part two one thing i'm really fascinated by is looking at how individual countries respond to the coronavirus based on the the history of those countries and how the identity and history of a country informs it. For example America. The American response to coronavirus has been atrocious. In Ireland we're just recoiling in horror. That I mean look. Trump flat out is just saying conspiracy theories.

Trump right now is getting into a stage where he's paranoid about the election in November one of Trump's huge strategies is rallies he likes to get rallies of people physically in a space together so he can speak publicly that's a huge weapon of Trump's these rallies that he does Trump how is Trump

going to do rallies in an environment social distance he can't he doesn't give a how is Trump going to do rallies in an environment of social distancing he can't, he doesn't give a fuck, he's going to do them anyway Trump is going ahead with his rallies and I think there's like a disclaimer or something to the people who are coming where it's like you're coming to my rally at your own

risk, but Trump obviously is going to subtly find a way to say to them that social distancing is bullshit because he's having the, and this is the fucking president trying to get reelected, killing his own followers. You have governors of states saying, just refusing social distancing or any response to the coronavirus, saying that the cure can't be worse than the disease. Then you've got the people of America viewing the wearing of a mask as an attack on their freedom and it's shocking for anyone on the outside we collectively go how are you all so stupid how are you all acting so clearly in this ridiculous fashion ignoring a virus when

the statistics are showing that it is devastating the country how do you continue to behave like this and i think the answer is in to understand american culture you have to you have to upon what's called frontierism. So America was a country that was colonized quite late. All these Europeans moved over and this huge mass of land. basically told just keep pushing forward move forward through the forest and the wilderness kill everything that stands in your way and take your piece of land that's frontierism that is the founding tenet of what america is founded upon a very greedy expansionist form of looting land where people took what was theirs and key to this taking is violence violence on the environment

violence on the indigenous people not only through the physical violence of killing indigenous American people to take their land but also the spread of disease a huge amount of Native American people to take their land but also the spread of disease a huge amount of Native American people were wiped out by diseases that were brought from Europe all spread in the interest of frontierism a common cold taking out entire tribes or the flu what frontierism also did to the American psyche is that when Americans would go out into the

go out west and take this land like areas like Montana they had this intense sense of freedom but because America was so large one of the most difficult enemies of frontierism was federalism there was huge resistance to the idea of a centrally controlled america a federally controlled from washington controlled america there was always historical resistance to this from frontierists who were out taking their land and the deep distrust of power and the government that you see in america and this belief of civilian militias you can trace all

its roots to this frontierist culture and it was like ex-europeans who were drunk on freedom, who were straight up like trying to, leaving the European countries, leaving what they viewed to be the oppression of the church, the oppression of monarchies or aristocrats, or the oppression of nobles. And what do you see today in America's coronavirus response? This completely disjointed, deep distrust of not only the government but of experts. And it's chaos.

The idea of a mask is seen as restrictive. And also the normalized view of diseases are part of frontierism diseases will kill the poor will kill the disenfranchised i'm out to get mine because that's what america is built upon and then you move to the british response and that you look at the british response to coronavirus and it's when i say both america and britain it's messages coming from the top down from the government down but also the contract of consent that's engaged upon between the people and the government so in america right obviously there's there's people in america who are like wear a mask behave yourself listen to experts that is the case but it certainly doesn't seem like the

fucking majority there is a dialogue of consent occurring between trump at the top who's a fucking quack talking about fake cures asking people to drink bleach and then people on the bottom with guns because people are asking them to wear masks that's a consensual culture right there that's a system and also the one thing with like frontierism is over there's no more of america to take over and claim as your own america's claimed but that attitude of go forth and manifest your own destiny and take what's there and it's all out there to be taken it stopped being about land or undiscovered territory and going west and it became about capitalism money anti-government take as much money manifest the destiny to be completely capitalistic and take all that money for you and fuck anyone else. And that's why it's okay for the President of America to say the cure can't be worse than the disease.

And the cure, as far as he's concerned, is to shut down the economy. To shut down the economy is worse than lots of people dying. And then with Britain, which is also a country that has managed all this terribly, you look at what Britain have done and you have to view it in terms of Britain's history. Britain's initial response, which was absolutely idiotic and irresponsible, has to be viewed in the context of Britain being a country that once owned most of the world and the rich Tory aristocratic cunts at the top of Britain, Boris Johnson and all his pals. When coronavirus became a thing, instead of listening to the World Health Organisation,

instead of looking at what's happening in China, China who had the coronavirus before Britain, instead of looking and learning, Britain decided, sure, we used to rule all these people. Why would we listen or look at them? We're British. We're going to come up with our own response because we're the fucking best. We used to run this world. What do you mean, listen to the Chinese? What do you mean, listen to the WHO or the Germans? Fuck best. We used to run this world. What do you mean listen to the Chinese? What do you mean listen to the WHO or the Germans? Fuck them, we're British. So we're going to go with this thing called hard immunity

because it came from some British scientists and they made that error and it was only one week worth of an error and it fucked the whole game up. And now Britain's fucked. And their response, the Yangs have got that selfish frontierist response and then the British are like, that's how you respond when you used to own the world.

You don't watch, you don't listen and you're incredibly arrogant. And most importantly, fuck the poor. The British Empire, the great trick that the British monarchy and the aristocracy and the people with money always managed to pull on their own poor people was how can we make our poor people fight the poor people from the other countries so we can take that country? How can we make them die for a vision that we sell them and that's what herd immunity is when when barris johnson was talking about herd immunity he's basically saying how about everybody gets sick because we all know what that means it means that the poorest and the

oldest people are going to die but young healthy people especially the ones with lots of money and the best health care they'll be fine so that's what hard immunity is and hard immunity is no different to there's this place called china or india and we'd like to take it for their spices and we're going to send a bunch of poor people over there to die by fighting the poor people in india and we're going to convince our poor people that that's the right thing to do that right there is the underlying philosophy of herd immunity and then we come to Ireland and this is where this is where my hot take is and this is the thing that's been kind of grinding me for a while and making me want to understand the Irish response so I would I think the Irish response the response of the Irish people to coronavirus has been

has been positive it's it's now if like where I am in Limerick it's been effectively eradicated from the community like three weeks ago the cases in Ireland are quite low the other day we had zero deaths it appears that the curve appears to be flattened and it appears to be really going down and to completely eradicate it from the community. And it's also been kind of on target too. We've met the targets of the phases. We didn't have a massive surge. The plans were for there to be massive field hospitals and morgues we didn't need them

Ireland responded quite well we responded well to I don't want to say the word instructions that's the interesting thing I don't want to say instructions so how do I view the Irish response to coronavirus if I'm measuring the american response in terms of a history of frontierism and then the brits in history of being a colonial power what do i do with ireland now naturally i always lean towards post-colonialism you'll hear me using that word loads when i'm speaking about ireland and the irish condition and how we view ourselves and how we view our place in the world, you have to go with post-colonialism, which is for 800 years we were ruled by the British

and we were taught to be lesser than them. So we're only, the North is still controlled by Britain and the 26 counties have only been free since the 1920s, which is 100 years. So you have to view still, you have to view still you have to view yourself as you always have to be vigilant of what part of our politics what part of how we relate to each other how do we view ourselves are we still dysfunctionally thinking of ourselves as being ruled by the brits and sometimes people will say to me will you shut the fuck up about the Brits and move

on and it's like you can't no you can't it's it's speaking about the Irish condition and and the contemporary Irish attitude you have to view it in in terms of your childhood just like if you're dealing with your own mental health you have to look at your family of origin you have to look at where was your place in the family were the oldest were you the youngest what was your relationship with your mother what was your relationship with your father you have to view these things and your earliest childhood experiences if you're to understand your adult behavior so that you can eradicate it with post--colonial behaviour, you've got to be aware of it because it's damaging and you can't...

We're no longer a colony of Britain, so therefore you can't continue to behave as if you are or to allow any of the insecurities or 800 years of being told that your culture is shit and that you don't deserve to live that has a lasting impact even to this generation and you have to be aware of it so that you can change it and don't allow it to define yourself so i'm analyzing the irish response to coronavirus and immediately alarm bells are going right is this post-colonial is this post-colonial but I'm not seeing post-colonialism

that's what's interesting me so the Irish government response to coronavirus it's been very strange right first off it hasn't really been authoritarian the guards brought in

certain rules about. You know if you were taking the piss out of social distancing. The guards did have emergency powers. But in general. The government has been asking us. To comply. Rather than telling us. They've been asking.

And. The tone is what I'm interested in. The tone. The government treats us like children it's infantilising but we don't resist the infantilisation we find comfort in it and look up and it's quite fucking odd

and it's not post-colonial our response is post-Catholic because when the British left, like, put it this way, the terrible history that Ireland has with Catholicism and the power that Ireland handed to the Catholic Church

for the majority of the 20th century, that you have to view that, that's post-colonial activity. It's Ireland all of a sudden achieved, the south of Ireland achieved independence, political independence from Britain and rather than have true, we'll say republican egalitarianism

we went no, no, no, no, 800 years of being ruled, no, no, no, no we're not ready to actually have self-determination, not a fucking hope, we gotta give this to actually have self-determination not a fucking hope we got to give this to the church we give all the power to the church and let them rule and control and abuse us similarly to how the brits is so that's a post-colonial mentality but the church collapsed

in the 90s with the the sex abuse scandals when we like the horrors of the magdalene laundries and the abuse of children ireland had to just go no and also join in the eu so i view the coronavirus response as a post-catholic thing and i'll tell you why there's a strange way in throughout the coronavirus how we all as a people consented with the government knowingly and deliberately not giving us all the information to keep us safe now by which I mean at the start when coronavirus cases started to show in Ireland the government would never say or the HSE would never say where the cases were for weeks they would say there's been three new coronavirus cases in the west there's been three new coronavirus cases in the east and we

collectively that's strange right we as adult people are entitled to say to the government that's not good enough I want to know if they're in dublin or limerick or cork this east west business that's not cutting it for me i'm a fucking adult let me know where the coronavirus cases are please that's the adult response it's what most countries were getting in a different country it's like these are in milan these are in like in italy but in ireland it was regional and right there the government is saying, we know something, we know where they are, we know where the coronavirus cases are, but we're not going to tell you, we're not going to tell you, for your safety.

And Irish people just went, that's okay, just keep us safe, that's okay. And right there you've engaged in an infantilising relationship, you've become an infant. The government's treating you like a child. It's a nurturing. They're treating you like a child. But not in a patronising way. It's in a I'm going to cuddle you.

And keep you safe way. Another really fucked up thing. Which we. As people. We really shouldn't. Like one thing with post Britain independent Ireland is we as a culture

valorised the doctor the teacher and the priest these were the three most important unquestionable cornerstones of Irish society post 1922

it's arse licking we as a society licked the arses of priests teachers and doctors if an Irish family had a good room in their house

no one was allowed into the good room unless the priest the doctor or the school teacher visited and you would never question these people you'd be exceptionally nice to them and you view them as as better than you and whatever information they tell you that's the truth and that's an irish cultural thing that's that's post-colonial but very Catholic. And for a brief period of a month, we started to do that with the government. Like, Fianna Gael, who were the caretaker government during the coronavirus crisis, had their worst ever election.

Just weeks beforehand. People were ready to get them the fuck out. We wanted a left government. Then coronavirus happens. Leo Artishuk is a doctor. And all of a sudden, his approval rating at the moment is 75%. All of a sudden, the whole country started licking Fianna Gael's arses. If you were to criticise the government, I'm talking mid-April.

If you criticise the government in any way. If you brought up the fact that they support something like direct provision that they're responsible for the homeless crisis people would have killed you there was murder online i was afraid to say it myself people would come right in and go how dare you say that about their government they're doing the best they're supporting the nurses and we allowed ourselves to be infantilized by the priest the doctor and the teacher once again for a short amount of time and another really odd thing is how the government would engage in a dialogue with the people whereby it's a it's a reward system it was like they were genuinely saying to us if you'll be good they were, we say, the phases of how the country would reopen.

And the contract that they engaged in with us was, if you're good boys and girls, we might move to this stage, but we're not sure yet. You'll have to be very good boys and girls. Like just this morning, Leo of Radker came out with this plan for the arts and theatres and what's going to happen as the phases unroll and can we go to gigs and can

we have large gatherings and his quote is like straight up the leader of the country to the people but you know if things continue to go the right direction and if the virus stays suppressed I think we could see some smaller outdoor mass gatherings in September maybe outdoor

cultural events of a few thousand people maybe three four five thousand but unlikely more than that and it's not fully up front it's as if he already knows what's going to happen but it's on condition that you behave yourself which is how a parent lovingly talks to a child and the child engages in that game it's a fucking game it's like leo can you tell us man you're the i'm an adult you're an adult you're the t-shirt do you think we're gonna have gigs in august do you think do you think maybe a festival do you think so and instead of him giving an adult response he's basically said I don't know but a little birdie told me that there's be there'll be sweets tomorrow if you go to bed early that's what it is it's there'll be

sweets there might be some sweets tomorrow a little birdie told me we all remember that from being kids a little birdie told me that something good might happen if you behave yourself if behave yourself now or santee won't bring your presence it's a contract of infantilizing and we're not patronized or insulted by it we're actually soothed by it we want that relationship and it's the same relationship we had with the priest the same relationship we had with the doctor and the school teacher traditionally i'll tell you what it also fucking is do you remember when you were a child and every so often maybe once every three months the priest would visit your classroom and when the priest the parish priest came to your classroom

the best part was you fucking knew you were getting a half day you knew that that priest would give you a half day and the teacher knew that the priest would give you a half day but it was never said and you'd have this arrangement in class

that the priest is coming on Friday and the teacher would go he might give you a half day I don't know now if you behave yourselves you know it might go but if you don't behave yourselves I'm gonna have to tell the priest and then he won't give you a half day so then you behave yourself all week the half day is coming we know it's fucking coming the priest has got it decided the principal has it decided but you behave yourself all week and the priest comes and then you get your half day that's what that's the irish response to coronavirus it's the priest comes into the classroom and you get the half day and no one's being treated like

an adult it's like it's you're handing all your power over to somebody and engaging in quite a toxic infantilized relationship now i'm not saying this to critique or to say don't listen to the fucking government this isn't me it seems it's working it's working we flatten the fucking curve we seem to be comfortable with it i'd rather see a bit more people giving out about fucking direct provision and not completely licking the arses of Fianna Gael but like it's short term

it's short term and it's a little bit manipulative when I started the podcast I spoke about the stages of grief and how we're thrust into this phase where you just cope and the reason I didn't want to speak about mental health and go introspective is I felt it would have been unsafe but in in our vulnerability

under normal circumstances when are we ever going to lick the government's arse like that and allow them to say oh you'll be a good little boy now and we'll reward you we you'll get some sweeties later if we we wouldn't stand for that normally but in our state of fear and shock and grief the government found this strange way of communicating with us which went back to the church it went back a few

years to a more vulnerable time we regressed we regressed culturally just like as a human in times stress, you can regress to childhood. We culturally regressed to a time of childhood and then infantilized ourselves and engaged in quite a toxic... I say it's toxic because it's dysfunctional. You're not holding the government to account. You're not holding yourself to account.

You're allowing yourself to be infantilized but as we move now to the stage of coronavirus grief where it's a stage of acceptance that shit's gonna fall we're not going to allow that anymore the relationship will change especially now with the new formation of government and chickens are going to come home to roost from people are going to get angry and start asking questions and people require and want more transparency the government got away with they got away with a lack of transparency they got away with going we do have the answers but we're gonna hold them back for your own good because you're just a little you're just a little child and it'll hurt you this information will hurt you instead of us going no we're fucking adults we want to

know and we're responsible and you should tell us how did it end up in nursing homes what about direct provision all these questions so that's my that's my hot take that's my hot take around coronavirus around the current zeitgeist. What I think is happening. And something I wanted to share with you. I think next week. I think if you want it next week. I'll do a mental health podcast. What I was thinking doing is.

Telling you kind of a unified model. That I use for my own mental health which incorporates bits of CBT existentialism and transaction analysis and a few other bits and try and unify it into one theory which I haven't really done yet

but that's my practice that's how I live my life so best of luck to you I hope you enjoyed this mind yourself be compassionate yourself, be compassionate to yourself, be compassionate to your neighbour listen to the experts, alright

listen to the fucking experts listen to the scientists listen to the people in the professors of science in Ireland listen to the World Health Organisation that's whoever is saying here is some evidence The professors of science in Ireland listen to the World Health Organization, right? That's, whoever is saying, here is some evidence and here is a paper, that's who you listen to.

Another thing the government has done is, with the wearing of face masks, they haven't told us to wear face masks. They've asked us nicely, in a passive-aggressive way. They've said, oh, wouldn't it be lovely if you wore face masks? That'd be very nice. It'd be very disappointing if you didn't instead of going hold on a second you're an adult now we have some evidence here and so do other countries that if you don't wear a face mask and if everyone if everyone doesn't wear a face mask it can actually be quite dangerous that's the adult way to do it government hasn't done that but as an adult i'm an adult i'm looking at what experts are saying so i'm wearing a fucking face mask other people aren't this isn't going to work

unless everyone everyone has to wear a face mask it's underpants all right there is if you don't want to get piss on the floor of aldi wear underpants if everyone's wearing underpants and i'm not and i have piss coming out of me then people are going to fall over doesn't matter how many underpants they're wearing all it takes is my piss to get onto the floor of aldi and then they slip up and it's the exact same thing with coronavirus everyone in the supermarket can be wearing a mask and if one person walks in and they're not and they happen to be wearing a mask and if one person walks in and they're not and they happen to be asymptomatic and carrying that one person can do a lot of damage so we need to normalize the wearing of face masks and look at the evidence behind it and look at the

evidence of how it's helping to flatten the curve and how it's been done for years in Asian countries. For fucking years. All right, Yart. Catch me on Twitch during the week. Or I'll see you next week if you just want to listen to the podcast. All right? God bless. 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. Thank you. Thank you.