The Blindboy Podcast - The Psychology of Aesops Fables

Episode Date: January 26, 2022

A hot take about Aesops fables and what they say about the human condition Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Greetings you bendy Evans. Welcome to the Blind By Podcast. We're approaching the end of January and I'm sensing an optimism in the quality of the light that's out there. The winter sun. I've spoken about the winter sun before. I'm not a big fan of the winter sun. It's very sideways. It's not a particularly confident sun. It's a very strange colour. It's like the dust that rises from a mouldy peach. But this week I noticed the first glimmer of intensity. The sun is becoming a little bit more intense.

It's giving out more light. And I just had that lovely... That brings with it a feeling of optimism. A feeling of optimism that we're about to enter spring and let's not be fooled by February and March. Those are cunty months but there's a wonderful promise to them. You know what's going to happen afterwards.

So the Irish government very suddenly lifted all COVID restrictions which to be honest, I'm cautious about because it just has that feeling of everybody in the Irish government together at once saying it'll be grand. It just has that vibe about it. It's like I don't trust them. I don't trust their decision. I think they just gave up and said, fuck it, open everything up. So I'm both very happy that that's happened, but also very cautious. But the positive thing is it means that my gigs in February and March are now going ahead, which is good news.

It's good and bad news. So the Irish government made a pretty torn-deaf decision around the entertainment industry in November. They brought in these sudden restrictions that were like live gigs can only go ahead but at 50% capacity. You can't run a gig at 50% capacity. You can't pay everybody if you do that. So 95% of artists just cancel their gigs or reschedule them. Now the thing is, November and December is when most entertainers kind of earn their money for the year. Because what you do is you announce your tour in November and December. And then you sell your tickets at Christmas.

Because people buy tickets as Christmas presents. But this year, no one really did that. Because why would you buy a ticket to a gig if you don't even know if it's going ahead or not because of restrictions. So all of a sudden this week they said, that's it lads, the gigs are back on, go ahead. But now we all have less time to promote our gigs.

So I've got three Vicar Streets, for instance, in March and Aprilil they'd usually be sold out by now they're not because people didn't buy tickets for them at christmas because why would you buy tickets for a gig if you don't know what's happening so i just want to do a little plug of my gigs three vicar street dates in dublin right uh The end of March and the start of April. So please come along to those gigs. They're a wonderful crack. And I've put all of these gigs on as midweek gigs.

They're all Tuesday night gigs. And that's a deliberate thing that I'm doing. My live podcast is quite... It's quite an intimate night. And it's not the type of... It's not like a Saturday night, get shit-faced type of gig. It's quite an intimate night. And it's not the type of. It's not like a Saturday night. Get shit faced type of gig. It's.

If you're working the next day. And you want to come to a podcast. And have a nice thoughtful relaxing night. Where it's a lovely intimate crowd. And not drink. Or maybe just have one pint. It's perfect for that. It's a Tuesday night gig.

You can come along to it. You'll be in bed. And you'll be able to work the next day and it also means there's no absolutely shit-faced people in the crowd which is zero crack for a live podcast also throughout February I've got the Eineck in Killarney a few tickets left there Ulster Hall up in Belfast that's sold out and then Castle Bar the Royal Theatre up in Mayo there's a few tickets going for that Cork then in March I've got three dates

Cork Opera House and two St Luke's so come along to those if you've any interest and not just my gigs just to say for every artist in Ireland right now

who has got gigs on in February, March, April I guarantee you they're struggling because like I said Every artist in Ireland right now who has got gigs on in February, March, April, I guarantee you they're struggling because, like I said, they've just had two months taken away from them to promote those gigs. So pretty much every artist you can think of is under pressure right now to sell tickets for these gigs because the restrictions were brought in suddenly and then taken away suddenly. And just to reiterate something there when I said at the start that the Irish government's restrictions were tone deaf around the live industry.

What I mean by that is, obviously, I'm not complaining that they put restrictions on gigs from a health perspective. They needed to contain the pandemic. That's fair enough. But if the Irish government come in and say, all gigs are now 50% capacity, effectively what they've done there is they've purchased 50% of the tickets. So they should have subsidized live gigs so that the artists could financially go ahead

with those gigs at 50% capacity. That's not what they did. They brought in a sneaky rule that basically meant everyone had to reschedule or cancel their gigs. So that was a shitty thing to do. That was utter disrespect for an entire industry. It financially coerced entertainers into rescheduling and cancelling. And if you're thinking, oh no, the poor old artists. It's an industry, so it's not just the artists who are put out there. Like, for instance, like one of my Vicar Street gigs, there's about 25 people employed in that one night. Bookers, promoters, lighting, sound, security, bar staff.

A lot of people rely upon gigs for their jobs. It's an entire industry. So a lot of people were left out of work over Christmas. When you buy a gig ticket you're paying the wages of multiple people that make that gig happen. Not just the entertainer that you're paying the wages of multiple people that make that gig happen not just the entertainer that you're going to see so for this week's podcast i have i suppose a little bit of a hot take three weeks ago at the start of the first podcast of january 2022 i released a podcast called a mental health plan for 2022 and the feedback I got for it was like overwhelmingly positive like I really really got a lot of messages from people for it and I was really taken aback by the the scale of the feedback because as my mental health episodes go

that particular one it was quite broad it wasn't very in-depth and I've got other mental health episodes go, that particular one, it was quite broad. It wasn't very in-depth. And I've got other mental health podcasts where I've covered quite a lot more. So I was scratching my head thinking, why is it this episode that seemed to land with so many people? and I think it's because I explained concepts from psychotherapy and self-help and psychology using the story of the lion with the thorn in its paw which is a fable

that we're all kind of familiar with and it got me thinking why don't I go and look at some more fables or myths or these stories and try to use them to explain psychological concepts? So that's what I want to do this week because ever since that podcast, I haven't been able to stop thinking about that.

So I've picked a couple of Aesop's fables that I'm going to speak about and apply to our contemporary lives. So Aesop's Fables, like you probably know that name already because most of us when we're kids, quite a lot of our kids' books, our children's books were Aesop's Fables. books were Aesop's Fables. And Aesop's Fables, it's a collection of stories specifically known as a fable. And a fable is like a morality tale that often involves animals. But Aesop's They're very old. Like, they're 2,600 years old. They're from ancient Greece. And there's over 300 of these fables. And they're credited to a lad called Aesop.

And Aesop was, he was a slave in ancient Greece and a storyteller. But the thing is, we don't know if he was real or not. Because we're talking 650 years before the fucking birth of Christ 650 BC so we don't know if Aesop was real most

likely Aesop's fables are folklore a vast collection of oral stories that were being told that got collectively called the fables of this fella Aesop. Aesop's fables have still survived to the point that there's children now in 2021 and their parents are reading them Aesop's fables Before Bed. And they're not religious. They're just stories about the human condition. And they've survived still 2,500 years. And the reality is they're probably much older

than 2,500 years. 2,500 years ago is when they were collected. But like I said, these come from the oral tradition. And humans have been behaviorally modern for 50,000 years. So 50,000 years ago, there was humans on this earth that are identical to you and I. So some of these stories could have been passed along orally, going all the way back to Africa. We don't know. Some of these could be 50,000 years old and only

the ancient Greeks were the ones who decided to write them down and collate them because effectively what Aesop's fables are is their psychology that's what it is their psychology they explain the struggles of what it is to be human via story.

Because humans, we swim in a sea of language. That's what makes humans unique compared to other animals. We have the ability to use language so that we can hold abstract concepts outside of our body and collectively think about them and that's known as culture when humans use language to communicate abstract ideas to each other that's culture and storytelling is a huge part of human culture and how we understand ideas and a story is basically set up conflict resolution that's it here's the setup here's some conflict oh no what's gonna happen here's some resolution a lovely circle and you get a nice feeling and through that process of storytelling we tend to engage with ideas better and remember them. Why do you think

conspiracy theories are so huge? Like right now in particular during this pandemic. The pandemic is confusing, it's frightening and a conspiracy theory about the pandemic or about vaccines or about where the virus came from, the conspiracy theory is not the most truthful story but simply the most interesting one. That's what a conspiracy theory is. It most truthful story but simply the most interesting one that's what a conspiracy theory is it's a really really interesting story about something that's overwhelming and confusing and when you hear the right story all of a sudden you experience less anxiety I mean that's what my hot takes are when I do a hot take episode about about art or about history i'm straight up saying i'm gonna i'm gonna speak about art and history but i'm gonna do it via the medium of storytelling

and i'm i'm gonna be truthful but i'm gonna tell the most interesting version of this reality and aesop's fables do this they They're about the human condition. They're about the confusing emotions such as anger, jealousy, anxiety. They're about these confusing emotions and they put them together in a nice simple story so that we feel like we understand what it is to be human. It's psychology. That's what Aesop's Fables are. And like I said, we know they're 2500 years old. But they're most likely much much older.

Maybe 10,000 years old. 20,000 years old. And it's just. To me it's amazing that. Humans were still dealing with the same shit. They were still dealing with the. Same. Internal and uncertainty. That we deal with today and that's why i think the podcast from a few weeks ago where i told the story of the lion

with the thorn in its paw people engaged with psychological concepts much better because you could think of a lion in a fucking cave with a thorn in its paw so the first fable I want to talk about this week is one called

The Ass and the Image that's a lovely name The Ass and the Image The Ass refers to a donkey right the thing with all fables, most of them, like 90% of them, they're stories about animals. And I often wonder, what's that about? Well,

I mentioned there, you know, what makes humans unique is that humans use language, humans have culture, animals don't. animals don't have language to communicate ideas to each other so even going back 10 000 fucking years humans would have been aware of this so the concept and idea of having a story about animals speaking to each other and using language that would have been funny, that would have been entertaining. So you've an entertaining story already because it's about animals. The other thing too, and this is something that's quite prevalent throughout satire as well, like a lot of satire will tell a story about humans but will do it through animals.

Classic example would be Animal Farm by George Orwell which is just a feature-length Aesop's Fable really. The thing with animals is that we can't, we won't project on top of an animal. If you tell stories involving humans, humans have a complexity to them. You can hear a story about a human and you can have many different opinions about that human because they have the full complexity of what a human is. You can dislike them, you can, I don't like this person, it reminds me of someone I know.

So when you take the humans out of it and you make it about animals, you completely reframe something and we drop our defences. So the ass in the image this fable to begin you have to consider what an ass a donkey meant throughout human history as it's represented in storytelling and art so first off I can guess that this story is definitely not more than 15,000 years old because humans began farming 15,000 years ago. So only when humans began farming did we start to acquaint ourselves with asses with donkeys and throughout human history

we've had asses and we've had horses and we can see in our art and stories that they both represent two different things so the horse is fancy horses are always represented

in the context of like war like noble is fancy. Horses are always represented in the context of, like, war. Like, noble people, people of high standing, have a horse. People who, knights who go to war, cavalries, horses were really important and fancy. So, the image of a horse connotes a sense of respect and status. But the donkey was a farm animal. It was a work animal. It was the animal that did the most amount of work. A donkey does not connote status or wealth. Donkeys throughout folklore and in art often represented kind of a lower class. Donkeys were looked down upon. Donkeys are also inherently funny.

Horses aren't. Horses are like sexy and big and muscular and tall. And a horse's neigh has confidence to it. Donkeys are just silly cunts. Like, their ears are huge, their tails are a bit silly, and the noise that a donkey makes, it sounds like it's consistently having both an asthma attack and a panic attack at once, so it's very difficult to take donkeys seriously

also like if you want to wanted to portray somebody as being a fool you portray them as having donkey's ears even even in irish mythology like we have a story that's like 2 000 years old about a a king a king a king who kept killing his barbers because anytime he got his hair cut the barber would find out. I can't remember the name of this exact story, it's not King Sweeney but so there was this king in Ireland and he had donkey's ears so he used to grow his hair really long to hide his donkey's ears. But any time a barber came to cut his hair, the barber would find out about his ears. So he'd immediately murder his barber.

So every barber in Ireland was terrified of this fucking king, right? Because they're like, I don't know what's up, but if you cut this cunt's hair, you're dead. You disappear. So one day this fella goes to the king and cuts his hair and sees the donkey's ears. And then the king says, I'm going to have to fucking kill you. All right. This is the reason why all the barbers keep dying. They see my donkey's ears.

I'm going to have to kill you. So this particular barber says, please don't. I've got a family. Don't. I promise you, I will never ever tell anyone about your donkey's ears so the king then feels a bit sorry for him and says all right I won't kill you but you have to promise never to tell anyone about my donkey's ears because I'm a king and if people find out I've got donkey's ears, they'll think I'm a fool. So the barber leaves with his life.

But then he can't handle the burden of this secret. So one day he goes into the woods. And he finds a tree, an oak tree. And then he screams into the tree. Because he can't hold this secret. He just screams into the tree. The king's got donkey's fucking ears. The king has donkey's ears.

And then he's happy, he's grand. He got got it out of himself he shouted it in a tree but then someone cut down the tree and made a harp out of it and when someone was playing this harp in the king's court when he played the music the harp started singing a song about the king having donkey's ears so that's not a fable, that's an Irish mythology story that's like 2,000 years old. But throughout history, the ass, the donkey is portrayed as a foolish animal.

And it appears in quite a lot of fables as a foolish, funny, comedic animal. So here's the fable of the the ass and the image, or the ass and the idol as it's known. So there was this poor fella he was like he was like a laborer and he had a donkey he had an ass and this laborer's job on this day was he had to go to the workshop of a sculptor because the sculptor had designed an idol now an idol like this story is before christ so an idol would be a religious image a sculpture of a deity a sculpture of a god that when people

saw it they worshipped it so this fella is his his job today is, right, I have to go to the sculptor's workshop, I have to collect this idol, and then I have to bring it up to the temple. And when I bring that to the temple, they're going to give me a couple of quid to do it. Grand. So he heads to the sculptor's workshop to collect this idol with his donkey. And he gets the sculpture, puts it on his donkey's back, ties it to the donkey's back, and then as the man, the master and the donkey are walking through town to go towards the temple to drop off the idol,

what happens is everyone in the street sees the idol on the donkey's back. Now, because they see this fucking idol, this religious sculpture, they all start looking at it in awe and they all start getting down on their knees and showing respect and worshipping this idol that's on the donkey's back. But the donkey's a fucking eejit and the donkey's walking along

and he looks at everyone. Bowing down, worshipping, staring at him. And then the donkey thinks. Fuck it man, they're worshipping me. I'm a cool bastard. Look at all these people staring at me, bowing down. I am the shit. Oh my god.

I'm amazing. Look at them all worshipping me as I walk through town but they're not worshipping him at all he's too thick he can't tell that what they're worshipping is the idol that's on his back so he's thrilled with himself he's the cockiest donkey in town

and him and the master make their way up to the temple so they get to the temple and the master takes the idol off the donkey's back and he goes to the priest in the temple and he says here's your idol i brought it for you from the sculptures workshop now can i be paid please for bringing this but then the priests are like fuck you I don't give a shit about you, I'm not paying you, keeping the money myself, fucking eejit. So now the master is incredibly pissed off. He took this idol all the way from the sculptor's workshop up to the temple and the priest didn't pay him so he's incredibly angry. So what does he start doing?

As he's making his way back through town with his donkey now the donkey doesn't have the idol anymore he's so pissed off he starts beating his donkey he starts taking all his anger because he hasn't been paid he takes it out on the donkey

and he's whipping the shit out of the donkey on the street the donkey's roaring in pain but he's thinking to himself why is no one helping? And he looks around and half the people don't give a shit that he's been beaten

and then other people are laughing and pointing. Look at that stupid donkey getting whipped. Ha ha ha. Look at his ears. Why is everyone ignoring me? I thought I was amazing. I thought they were all worshipping me. Why does no one give a shit that I'm being beaten by this master?

They were worshipping me five minutes ago. And then it dawns on him. These people weren't worshipping me. They were worshipping the idol that was on my back. So what does that mean in 2021? We are the donkey. So the donkey is us. The master is the unavoidable suffering of life.

Right? Being alive contains happiness, but being alive also contains unavoidable suffering bad things are going to happen you will be rejected you'll lose people that you love you'll be disappointed life contains unavoidable suffering so we're the donkey the mean cruel master is the unavoidable suffering of life now what's the idol on the donkey's back? That's what the psychologist Carl Rogers would call the ideal self. Rogers states that we have two selves.

We have our real self. Our real self is the person we're born as. Our real self is us with all our flaws to accept all our flaws and if you can have self-compassion and accept who you are then you can live in your real self your real self is the person who you know if you have good mental health and self-compassion and self-esteem all going well you will become your real self and when you're when you're your real self then you can experience happiness but we also have our

ideal self our ideal self is how we think we'd like others to perceive us like is your self esteem dependent upon other people thinking that you've got a really good job or do you own a car that you can't really afford but you have this car because if other people see you in this car

then you think they'll respect you or is it hugely important to you that other people perceive you as being physically attractive? And the thing with our ideal selves, it's always out of reach. We continually try and live up to these standards that we create for ourselves, which ultimately we can never reach.

So even if you get the nice job, or you get the nice car and you think that everyone now respects you and thinks you're fantastic for having these things, you're still not happy. You think that this is what will bring you a sense of happiness and wholeness but it actually makes you more unhappy and you keep trying to reach for more and you don't like yourself. That's your ideal self. And Rogers states that if you live too much of your life trying to pursue your ideal self, and not your real self, not who you actually are, then you will experience mental health issues, you'll experience depression, anxiety, unhappiness because true contentment and happiness comes from

accepting who you actually are accepting your real self accepting that to be human means being flawed being imperfect that you can you can't be a different version of you. You can only be you. You can't change it. So the route you have to take is to love you for who you are. And if other people don't approve of that, that's none of your business. But the idol on that donkey's back, that's its ideal self. That's its fancy car, its fancy job. And the donkey is confusing the praise that it's getting from people in the street as that praise being actually for the donkey for who it is, but it's not.

Those people are just momentarily impressed at a decoration that's on the donkey's back. To give a more specific example, it's a bit like instagram so instagram is is a particularly dangerous social media app for people's self-esteem because instagram is exclusively image based and what we do on instagram instagram is about presenting to people via photographs an idealized version of your life and who you are Instagram is dangerous because it allows us to perfectly curate our ideal self as we'd like to present it to other people and the rules of Instagram dictate that that's what you kind of have to do and like there was a facebook whistleblower because instagram is owned by

facebook there was a facebook whistleblower a couple of months ago where she flat out admitted that facebook knew the huge massive damage that instagram was doing to the mental health of young people in particular but the thing is with instagram that's where you post pictures of yourself or you look as physically beautiful as you possibly can look that's where you post the pictures of the holiday you're going on that's where you make your life look better than it actually is you create a false version of your own life for likes and approval. That becomes your worth. Instagram is particularly dangerous because there's young people in Ireland.

And I say young people because this tends to affect teenagers and people in their early 20s more than people older. But there's young people in Ireland who are developing agoraphobia. people older but there's young people in Ireland who are developing agoraphobia people frightened to meet people in real life because they feel they're not as physically beautiful as they can make themselves on Instagram because they're able to use software to literally change their faces and bodies in a way that used to only be the case for magazines 10 years ago but now there's regular Irish people uploading selfies uploading photographs of themselves at the gym and then just I'm going to change this I'm going to make that a bit slimmer I'm going to make that a bit bigger and you're creating a false idealized version of yourself putting it online

getting all these compliments oh my god you look amazing you look oh you look incredible like the donkey in the street taking all this praise but the praise is for this false idol, this false image that you've created. To the point that then you actually don't want to meet people in real life. The dopamine hits and the sense of approval and the false sense of self-esteem and the praise are not for you, but for a digital avatar that you've created for yourself. So your actual sense of self your actual self-esteem is now nil because you can't compete with a fake version of yourself or a fake version of your life that you've created online and what gets worse is like you see really vicious shit

around it like people who would be what's called micro influencers so influencers who have less than 5 000 followers like i i know people in ireland who'd be micro influencers as they'd call themselves and you see people just talking shit about them online saying do you see that photograph of their house they posted last week that wasn't their house that was someone else's house that was an Airbnb

and they're pretending that it's their house oh I saw them out last week they look like shit it's all filters and I investigated some of this in my BBC series that I did in 2019, where we went investigating plastic surgery clinics in London. And there's plastic surgery clinics that deliberately target people, right, based on how they tune themselves on Instagram.

So they will find people who are uploading photographs of themselves on Instagram with a smaller waist or smoother skin or bigger lips or different cheekbones. And the plastic surgeons literally go, we can make you look physically like you try to make yourself look with software on Instagram. And it's ravishing people's mental health, giving people anxiety disorders, depression, exacerbating eating disorders. Creating body dysmorphia. And that's what that story.

That's the donkey with the idol on its back. That donkey. Is facetuning the fuck out of itself on Instagram. And making its ears smaller. It's curating an ideal self and everyone's giving it praise. But when it comes to the actual suffering of existence, an ideal self won't do anything for you. In fact, it'll make things worse. If you're going through a rough patch, you know, if you receive disappointing news, if someone close to you dies, if you're going through a rough patch, you know, if you receive disappointing news,

if someone close to you dies, if you're just feeling shit, Instagram likes aren't going to come around and make that better. They'll make it worse. And what's even more impactful is when you live your life completely in the ideal self when it comes to facing the adversity of life when it comes to coping and being resilient with suffering and pain you need to have self-compassion self-love and self-acceptance you need to 100% accept yourself for who you are.

Whatever way your body is, whatever way your personality is, whatever your job is, that's where you are right now and that's absolutely fine. And all you can be is the best version of yourself. You're better than nobody else, and nobody else is better than you, because humans are too complex to evaluate against each other. We all have intrinsic value. All humans have intrinsic worth that's equal to every other human being. And I've mentioned intrinsic worth before, and a lot of people mail me just going, I don't understand this concept of intrinsic worth.

I've got very low self-esteem. What do you mean that I have this worth inside me that's equal to everyone else, that you can't compare humans? And I've thought about that a lot because it's hard to explain it exactly, but think of a baby. Every single baby is just amazing and perfect and wonderful.

They radiate with this glow, this innocent happiness. All babies want is to smile and find wonder in the world around them via curiosity. to smile and find wonder in the world around them via curiosity and when a baby's upset that's because that's how they genuinely feel in that moment there's no ulterior motive a baby is a glowing ball of utter joy that makes everyone else smile and the thing is you can't rank babies babies break the social media algorithm like if you type into tiktok babies of tiktok you'll just get all these videos of different babies parents filming their babies every single one of them are just amazing every one of them are beautiful wonderful little balls of happiness and joy and they might be different shapes of this one might be bigger this one might be smaller but you can't look at babies and go I prefer that one they're all equally incredible it's

impossible to compare them against each other. So that there is intrinsic worth. Every one of us was a baby at one point and we were born with this utter purity, this wonder for the world. But then as you get older, then you learn the rules of society. Your parents teach you things. You go to school and you start to rank yourself against other children and then your feelings get hurt and that hurt turns into anger and that's when you develop the the fallibility and the flaws of being human and becoming an adult and then you learn to be insecure or you learn to be anxious or you don't like yourself as much but at the end of the day that wonderful beautiful baby that's still you and that's still there inside you so

all of us have that that's all our intrinsic worth our intrinsic worth is what we were born with and it never leaves us even though we accrue fallibility as we get older. So when you're trying to develop self-compassion and to find the intrinsic worth within yourself so that you can love yourself, you kind of have to psychically go inside your own head and attend to yourself as a tiny little child. You have to go back and hug young you. Hug, love and kiss you as a baby. You have to do it for yourself. And that there is your real self. Your real self is congruent.

And congruency is a big part of Carl Rogers' theory. Congruency is when you fully understand your emotions. So what you feel and how you act. So what you feel and how you act and what you say are kind of one. When you're incongruent, that's your ideal self. Your sense of self-worth is quite low. Internally, you don't like yourself. So you have an outward performance where you perform a version of yourself based on what you think other people want that's incongruity and that's to live like that is to live a life of not being happy babies want happiness, love, comfort, friendliness, laughter, playfulness, fun, enjoyment. This is what a baby wants.

A baby wants food and a baby wants warmth and comfort. Babies don't want to fight. Babies don't want to get jealous of people. Babies don't have a context for being better or worse than another person. If a baby wants love, it reaches out and asks for it. It hasn't learned rejection yet. If a baby is sad, it cries because it's congruent with its emotions. So that's the real self and intrinsic worth. The journey and the goal is to find and love your inner child and connect with it while still being an adult.

I went on a bit of a ramble there about intrinsic worth, but the story of the donkey and the idol, that's what it is. The donkey had constructed an ideal self. The donkey was on Instagram pretending that it owns a Ferrari when it's really just hanging around a showroom. And when it came down to it, when it's really just hanging around a showroom.

And when it came down to it, when it came to the suffering of life, that beating from its master, it had no resilience. It had no resilience. And the people that it was impressing, some of them were quite happy to see its downfall. And that story, like,

we can confirm it's 2,500 years old. But it's most likely a lot older. And there was people around fucking campfires 7,000 years ago. And that's the story they were telling. And they're talking about fucking Instagram 7,000 years ago. In a hut. And I just think that's amazing. It's time for the ocarina pause now before I get on to another fable.

I don't have the ocarina this week. Let's not even get into it anymore. Let's not even get into it. This week I've got a, we'll do the grinder pause. I have a grinder here that I use to grind perfectly legal herbs. And I'm going to grind this for you

against the microphone and when this happens you'll hear an advert for something. Rock City, you're the best fans in the league, bar none. Tickets are on sale now for Fan Appreciation Night on Saturday, April 13th when the Toronto Rock hosts the Rochester Nighthawks at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton at 7.30pm.

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that was the grinder pause for grinding perfectly legal herbs em the you would have heard an advert there for something I don't know em this podcast is supported by you the listener

via the Patreon page patreon.com forward slash the blind boy podcast this podcast is my full time job this podcast is only possible This podcast is my full-time job. This podcast is only possible because it's my full-time job. It's a lot of work putting this podcast together. I adore the work. I love it.

And if you're taking something from it and you're enjoying it and it's giving you a bit of solace or entertainment during your week, just please consider paying me for that work that I'm doing. All I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month. That's it. If you're out of work, you can't afford that, don't worry about it. You can listen for free, and the person who's paying the Patreon is paying for you to listen for free.

So it's a beautiful model. Everybody gets a podcast. I earn a living. It's fantastic. I am back doing gigs, but as I've mentioned a few times over the past two years. I don't want to do as many gigs anymore. I really want to reduce the amount of gigs I'm doing.

I don't want to rely upon gigs as a source of income. The last two years have shown me that it's far too fucking unreliable. So I want to continue gigging but only doing the gigs that I want to do. And rely upon Patreon as my source of income. That's what I can count on. That's what gives me a sense of certainty. And allows me to financially plan. And to do all the work I can do as a fucking artist.

Without worrying. Patreon also keeps this podcast independent so i can turn down loads of advertisers if an advertiser comes on the podcast and i don't want them on the podcast i have the agency to say no i don't want to do your ad and they can't tell me to talk about certain things or to edit or control my content in any way. So thank you to all my patrons. Thank you so much. You're incredibly valued. Support all independent podcasts, not just mine.

The podcast space is being overcome by large corporate podcasts and it's getting really difficult for smaller independent podcasts who are being completely drowned out of the space now. So support all independent podcasts. Who are being completely drowned out of the space now. So support all independent podcasts. Not just financially. But like. Liking podcasts.

Sharing them. Leaving reviews. Recommending them to friends via word of mouth. That's really important. Follow me on Instagram. Blind by boat club. I know I just did a tirade against Instagram there. I'm in a lucky position in that Instagram for me is actually quite a pleasant place because the thing with Instagram is that people are

actually nice and friendly on Instagram which is a breath of fresh air because most social media is is hostile i wear a plastic bag on my head so i don't have the anxiety of presenting an idealized version of me being extra handsome i don't have to worry about it i look like rubbish i look like actual rubbish in a bin so i'm grand i'm grand but if instagram is fucking up your anxiety if Instagram is creating problems for you get rid of it speaking there actually about my my plastic bag um and the the fable of the the ass and the idol that's one of the reasons I have that fucking plastic bag, is because, if you have any, bit of notoriety,

or fame whatsoever, that can really fuck up your mental health, because, you have to live your everyday existence, with the idol on your back, like, I've said it many times before. I know what it feels like to walk into a room of people.

With the plastic bag on my head. And for everyone to know. What there's blind by. And then people act really differently. Because they've seen me on TV. Or they listen to the podcast. But then I can walk back into the same room. With no bag on my head. And no one knows who the fuck I am.

And I would choose that. any day of the week because now when I speak to people I have to use empathy and kindness and I have to put in all the effort that normal humans put in when speaking to someone you don't know when you have any type of fame or notoriety that goes out the window. Everyone knows who you are already and they behave differently towards you and if that's unchecked you turn into an absolute fucking prick. You turn into a prick who expects people to know who you are and to treat you differently and that's a huge source of stress and unhappiness for anyone who has any type of public platform. And it's why, in my opinion, like if you look at the entertainment industry and look at the amount of people in the entertainment industry

who have addiction issues or who die from drugs or drink, it's not just because in the entertainment industry you have greater access to substances it's that celebrities are just self-medicating to deal with the odd and surreal terror of walk being the donkey with the fucking idol on their back. And the thing is, as a society, we don't have any compassion for that. We don't want to hear a celebrity or someone with a platform saying,

my mental health is in tatters because I'm very recognisable. We don't want to hear that because we think we want that. We see someone who has fame or notoriety and we're conditioned to believe that i want that isn't that what happiness is what are you complaining about this this kind of acts as a little segue to the next fable that i want to speak about. And this fable is known as The Fox and the Grapes, which is one of the more well-known fables. So first off, the fox is an animal that appears in fables quite often.

Like the donkey, as I explained, represents foolishness. The donkey is seen as a foolish, comedic animal that's worthy of laughter. And the fox then is seen as not wise, but crafty and sneaky. That's how the fox is portrayed in fables. Like the donkey represents the part of ourselves that's silly and easily taken advantage of. And then the fox represents the negative, vitriolic, sneaky, jealous part of ourselves.

So the fable of the fox and the grapes. There's this fox walking along and it's a lovely day and he's hungry and he sees a grapevine. But all the other animals have gotten to the grapevine and they've eaten all the grapes so there's only one bunch of grapes left on this grapevine and they're real high up and the fox is starving

looking up at these grapes that he can't reach and the grapes look amazing no one's gone near them, they're extra ripe they look like they're ready to burst open with juice. They look so sweet. The fox's mouth is watering. He wants these fucking grapes. But they're really, really high up. No other animal was able to get them. These are the best grapes at the top. So he's looking up. And he's like fuck it man I want to get these grapes. So he has one jump. He's like fuck that's not good enough.

Tries another one. And it's like. He realises he's not going to get the grapes. So what does he do? He says to himself fuck those grapes. Fuck am I doing? They're sour. Those grapes are probably sour anyway. I don't give a fuck about them grapes. Fuck them. And he walks on about his day. And that fable there is where we get the phrase sour grapes from. And what that fable is about really is it's about the human tendency to begrudge success

to be jealous of other people's success and when we see something that we don't have we will belittle it or hate the person for having it if we feel it's beyond our reach or beyond our reach. Or beyond our abilities. Or if we're afraid to try.

If we're scared to achieve a goal. Or if deep down we feel we're not capable of that goal. It's easier to begrudge the person who has achieved it. Than confront the pain of our own shortcomings. Because that's what that fox is doing. The fox really wants those grapes, but he can't catch them. He can't catch those grapes.

He can't jump high enough. He can't think about how to get them. He's got low frustration tolerance and he doesn't want to stick around long enough to try. So the easiest thing to do is to tell himself they're sour anyway. They're fucking sour grapes. I don't even want them. And that there is begrudgery. And begrudgery is something that we all, begrudging again is part of being human.

Begrudging is part of culture. No one likes admitting that they begrudge things. Like if you see someone online actively begrudging is part of culture. No one likes admitting that they begrudge things. Like if you see someone online actively begrudging, like this is Twitter, you don't see a lot of begrudgery on Instagram, but on Twitter you'll see a huge amount of begrudgery. Sometimes people get called out on begrudgery when they're actually begrudging.

When have you ever seen anyone admit it? When have you ever seen that person say, yeah, I am begrudging. I'm actually jealous of what this person has achieved. And because of that jealousy, I'm trying to hurt them. Like you never, ever see anyone admitting that. They immediately get defensive and they say I'm just offering critique but there's a big difference between critique and begrudgery and we can all see it but begrudgery is very common we all we all have partook in it at some point but we never want to admit it because it's it's quite a shameful thing and because of that shame it's never spoken about and I think begrudgery should be part of any discussion about mental health because when you engage in begrudgery

first of all it's a very powerful defense mechanism where you're using anger and rage to protect yourself from an insecurity you have about yourself. So I'll give you an example. Begrudgery is something I have to deal with quite a bit. Now, I know the difference between critique and begrudgery. I get a fair bit of critique. Usually critique, to be honest, happens, people critique me privately. They'll just say, oh, you got this wrong last week on that podcast,

or I disagreed with what you said last week on that podcast. That's critique. That's someone respectfully speaking to me only about a piece of work I've made. Grudgery is when a person is actively trying to hurt me trying to hurt my feelings in some way about my work or trying to take me down a peg and it can be really draining because the thing is someone who's really good at begrudgery they know exactly what to say to get under your skin or to get at my insecurities. So I got this really, really angry message a couple of months ago. I think it was on Twitter.

But someone just really furious. It was a man. And he was basically flat out furious that I make a podcast and that I'm able to earn a living from my podcast. That was it. It was like, all you do is talk into a fucking microphone and people give you money on Patreon for this. You're a fraud. You're a fake. You're terrible. Your work is awful you don't deserve any of this so I got this like really really angry I don't know who the fuck the person was but it was just I went holy fuck this person

is is deeply deeply personally upset that I'm making a podcast. This has hurt them deeply to the point that it's hurt them so much that they think it's okay to attack me. And the message was so extreme that I had to then check out the person's page, try and see what they were doing. And then I'd seen they'd tried to start a blog in 2014 and they only did like two posts and then gave up and then they were trying to do poetry at one point so it was someone who wanted to be professionally creative they

wanted they wanted basically to be making art and for them to be able to earn a living from that art and they weren't doing it for whatever reason and seeing me doing it hurt them so deeply that they felt they needed to attack me and it was hurtful for me because that's not nice I've said it before like I get ferocious amounts of abuse online you'd never get used to it you never get used to it I'm a human being and it's not nice to have a stranger hating me flat out hating me that's hurtful but the only way I can let go of that and not allow it affect me too much is to have compassion for that person and not focus on their anger but try and see where the pain is coming from and that person reminded me of the the fox with the grapes that they couldn't get because the way that they spoke about my podcast

is they they had reduced it down what was it they said you? You just read Wikipedia and talk into a microphone. So they'd taken what I do and were deliberately reductive with it, which is a common theme you see with begrudgery. When someone is begrudging the work of somebody, they reduce it down to the simplest possible thing to make it look easy and not having worked to portray the person's success as being fraudulent in some way that's the fox looking up at those grapes and saying they're sour anyway i don't even want to reach for them but the thing is when you engage in begrudgery you ultimately you end up hurting yourself now i'm a fallible human being so I have engaged in begrudgery at points in my life I can't remember the last time I did it it was probably before I

started to achieve success in my career but definitely when I was younger definitely I would have been online talking shit about artists that I was jealous of or whatever. Or I wanted what they had. Or I was like, why isn't my work successful and theirs is? I hate them and what they're doing is shit. But then, about 12 years ago, I actively stopped. actively stopped like I actively I refused to allow myself to begrudge because I knew that it was stopping me from achieving goals and how I got over it is anytime I felt a little bit of jealousy towards another artist who's creating work anytime that feeling of jealousy popped up I immediately actively

converted it instead into forcing myself to feel happy for that person instead so the begrudgery would come up I'd feel like taking a person down in my head or minimizing their achievement in my head and what I'd say to myself was, hold on a second now. No, that's jealousy. What's that telling you about what you're doing right now? And let's be honest, this person has just made a brilliant piece of art. You're an artist.

You should celebrate this. Isn't this fantastic? Fair play to them. Well done. They've just made something good. They must feel amazing, so I started to do this for me, to start feeling happy for other people's success within art, and then going one step further, and actually giving the person a positive compliment, like well done, this is excellent, fair play.

And what happened was all my jealousy and anger went away and I stopped viewing art as a competition. I started to naturally become aware that every artist can only be the best version of themselves. So art isn't a competition. So if someone else writes an amazing short story or makes a nice song or puts out a good podcast fair fucking play to them isn't that brilliant it has nothing to do with me because the thing is when you're excessively critical and vicious and mean and reductive about someone else's art. That's then how you become

towards yourself when you try to create art. The fox who assumes the grapes are sour will just walk away and never try to get them. But the fox who says to themselves those particular grapes are delicious and I can't reach them right now the fox who does that won't get angry won't get overly emotional and will walk down the road and see some different grapes that they can get so by me feeling happy for other artists when they achieve something and not feeling threatened by it. When I then create my own work I'm not as harshly critical on myself. I can't look at someone else's work and say fuck them that work is shit anyone could do that they no talent. They probably paid for all the views on their video. I can't think like that and then sit down to try and create my own work and then expect me to not be afraid of failing.

Because, see, if you're afraid of failure, you can't create. Because the cost of failure means me being hypercritical and vicious towards myself like I'm being to people online so if I'm compassionate and celebrate other people's work when I try to create something I can be happy for myself that I'm just doing it and that sense of relaxation that lack of criticality that lack of anger means that I'm now having fun and I'm being playful and I create something I actually enjoy. But if I'm actively online

begrudging people, I'll create fucking nothing because creativity doesn't exist where jealousy, anger and hatred exists. Art isn't a competition. I can only compete with myself. And what I wanted to say to that person, the person who'd said to me, all you do is talk into a mic and read Wikipedia. Anyone can do that. And you don't deserve to have a Patreon.

What I wanted to say to that person, now I didn't because it's fucking Twitter. So when someone says something shitty to you on Twitter, you can't respond either way because everything is a performance, but what I wanted to say to him was, so like six years ago, I was over in London gigging, I was gigging with the Rubber Bandits in London in in Soho, and we were doing good gigs, but like we were not earning money. Like I was really, really poor. I was putting my heart and soul into this thing and I wasn't able to earn a living from it. And that didn't feel nice. That felt like pissing

against the wind. And while I was there in Soho, this podcaster, Scroobius Pip, he said to me, you're in London. Do you want to be on my podcast? I can come and meet you and I'll interview you for my podcast. Now this was 2015. So I wasn't really thinking about podcasts. I'd listened to the odd few podcasts, but I wasn't really thinking about them. So Scroobius Pip came over to my apartment and we sat down and we had an interview and I saw him bringing with him just a little case with two mics and I remember chatting to him because Scroobius Pip used to be a musician as well you see and I remember saying to him how's this podcast going for you because this is 2015 remember

and he goes it's going really well and then I said to him are you earning money from it are you able to earn a living and he's like yeah yeah this is my fucking job this podcast is my job now remember I'm in London gigging every night

earning nothing so at that moment I had a choice. And the choice in that moment was. Scroobius Pip you fucking cunt. You prick. Earning a living from a podcast. And I'm here gigging doing. Earning no money.

I didn't. I genuinely. Felt really really happy for Scroobius Pip. Really happy. Because he had been gigging five years beforehand. He had come from a background of rapping and doing gigs. Now he changed his career and he's doing something totally different. And he's earning a living from it.

Something that's almost impossible from music. And I felt really happy for him and because I felt happy for him I then said to myself fuck it maybe I could try this maybe I could get a microphone and try talking into this and try a podcast what's the worst that could happen fuck it maybe I could try at the very least. And it stuck in my head. And then a year or two later, I contacted Scroobius Pip. And I said to him, can you tell me a little about this podcast? How do you do it? How does it work? And then he introduced me to Acast. And that's how I started podcasting. So I had every reason there to go towards Sour Grapes. I had every reason there to go towards sour grapes. I had every reason.

I was doing all these gigs. I wasn't earning money. I wasn't happy. I had every reason to begrudge and to reduce what he's doing. But because I chose to be happy for him and to have compassion, that emotion freed up my creativity and freed up possibilities. And instead of going, fuck you, what you're doing is shit. I said, maybe I could try that. And then it worked out. And now here I am doing something I fucking adore, something I'd never even thought of, earning a living from something I fucking adore something I'd never even thought of earning a

living from something I fucking love and the other thing too because I was genuinely happy like when Scroobius Pip told me in 2015 I'm doing this podcast and it's fucking amazing I love doing it and I'm earning a living from doing it. Because I was actually genuinely congruently happy in that moment and he could see that, that's probably why he helped me when I asked him, how can I podcast? Exact same thing with my Twitch stream and a comedian called Limmy. Like, Limmy is a Scottish comedian.

I had him on this podcast. Limmy used to do TV shows on BBC, absolutely excellent fucking comedy sketch shows. But his shit was just too creative for TV. So he made all this incredible television, but it didn't turn into like this really lucrative, successful television career. But instead he went on to Twitch and now he's on Twitch doing something he absolutely loves earning a living from that and when Limmy started doing that I was fucking thrilled for him I was genuinely so fucking happy here's this creative artist that I look up to and that I respect doing something he loves and earning a living from it when the career of being a successful TV comedian is becoming impossible and then what happens? Limmy helps me to set up my Twitch and instead of begrudging him

I say to myself fuck it Limmy seems really happy doing this Twitch stuff maybe I could try that what's the worst that can happen? Maybe I could try it. Only through compassion and being happy for someone else's success did it open up in me the possibility for creativity and flexibility and achieving a goal.

If I'd have gone down the route of begrudgery, I'd have done fuck all. I'd have just become more and more bitter and I'd have gone down the route of begrudgery. I'd have done fuck all. I'd have just become more and more bitter. And I'd have been as critical of myself as I am about other people. So that's what the fox and the grape is about. We don't talk about begrudgery enough because there's so much shame around it. But it's a natural response. much shame around it but it's it's a natural response when you if you find yourself begrudging and you're someone who if you want to achieve something if you want to be an artist if you

want to create something if you want to be a fucking a sports player if you find yourself begrudging people and the thing that they're doing is something you kind of would like to do, stop yourself in the moment and try and feel happy for that person instead. And if you do that, you will no longer feel insecure. You won't feel insecure and you won't be as self-critical. The anger that you have towards yourself when you try and create something will disappear, and you'll become more forgiving of yourself,

more compassionate towards yourself, and way more accepting of failure. Failure won't be a terrifying thing anymore. You'll understand it as a natural part of the creative process. Begrudgery is when you angrily call another person a failure and demand that they admit it. That's what begrudgery is. That's why it's not critique. It's a completely separate thing. You are shit and what you're doing is shit and you have to admit this to me. If you're doing that to other people,

you're going to turn it right back on yourself when you try to create. So try being genuinely happy for someone instead and then all that fear will go away. And that fox with the grapes, maybe if that fox stuck around a little bit longer and didn't call the grapes sour,

someone would have come along and helped him and given him a boost up to eat the grapes. So yeah, let's talk about begrudgery more and have some compassion for the begrudgers because they're actually just, they're howling in pain, utterly howling in pain. And if you are a begrudger, admit it to yourself. That's the first step. Admit it to yourself and there's no shame around it. We're all fallible human beings. You can change. So that's all we have time for this week. 70 minutes. I haven't done a 70 minute podcast in a while. That's all we have time for. I mentioned Scroobius Pip there. He's an independent podcaster. He's been going for years.

He's, like I said, he's been very helpful to me. He's been a great inspiration to me with podcasting. His podcast is called Distraction Pieces, if you want to check it out. And then Limmy, you can go back and listen to my interview with Limmy. And Limmy's on Twitch. What is it, twitch.tv, Limmy?

You'll find Limmy on Twitch he's got like 400,000 followers dog bless I'll catch you next week em I'm gonna do that thing where I say goodbye

but if you want I'm gonna leave a pause and then I'm gonna play a song that I would've written on my Twitch stream if you're not into music you're not interested in that you can just bid farewell now if you are and then I'm going to play a song that I would have written on my Twitch stream. If you're not into music,

you're not interested in that, you can just bid farewell now. If you are, hang on a couple of seconds. 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

host 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. So this is a relatively new thing I've started doing on the podcast. Once a week, I go on to twitch.tv forward slash blind by boat club and Thursday nights. and what i've started doing is i write songs on the spot i make up songs in the moment to the events of a video game it's hyper real songwriting i call it when we create art in real life you might get inspired by nature or the environment or you

might walk around and that inspires art because of the pandemic i decided why not use the video game red dead redemption walk around that video game while a live audience is watching and instead of like commenting on the video game i write songs songs. I make them up on the spot, in the moment, about whatever's happening in the video game. As a new way to write songs. Hyper real songwriting. So this is a project I've been doing. And it's an ongoing art project. And I write about five songs a stream.

Most of them are shit. And one of them every week is usually something I'm quite happy with. So I'm going to play you one now. This one is called Jesus Christ in the Woods. I was playing the game and my character kind of looked like Jesus Christ. And they were huddled on the ground in such a way that it kind of looked like they were masturbating in the woods so the song is about christ masturbating in the woods i didn't put much thought into it like i said this is all improvised on the spot so it's pure creative flow it's whatever came to me in the moment

one thing about this song that's unique to the other songs I've played before one of the limitations when I'm writing these songs on Twitch is so I have audio equipment and I use a looping pedal now the problem with a looping pedal is you have to loop the same four chords over and over again so I can't do chord changes mid-song I can't like have this set of chords for a verse and then I change chords for the chorus, which I'd much prefer to do because that's better songwriting. When you change chords in a song, it's like panning the camera out in a film, you know?

It changes the scenery. It changes the feeling. I can't really do this on a looping pedal I can but it's intensely difficult it's like it's like balancing a soccer ball it's like balancing two soccer balls on my head at once it's an incredibly difficult thing to do but I did it for this song so this song actually has a verse and a chorus with two separate sets of chords, which was fucking difficult on a looping pedal. But I managed to put it off. So this song is called Jesus Christ is in the woods masturbating at nature. He is taking his big throne.

Jesus Christ is in the woods and he is taking his big throne. Jesus Christ is in a bush. He's pulling himself up in a bush. Oh yeah, Jesus Christ is master feeding and nature. Jesus Christ in the woods. Lydian, oh yeah Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ

Jesus Christ Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ What would you say, what you wrote for your life If you were in the woods and you saw Jesus Christ What would you do, what you wrote for your life If you were in the woods And you saw Jesus Christ, oh yeah And Jesus Christ in the woods He showed his dick to a horse in the woods, oh yeah

Jesus Christ in the woods He showed his dick to a horse in the woods Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ He's in the waters, in the waters, in the waters Jesus Christ Jesus Christ He's in the woods, he's in the woods, he's in the woods Jesus Christ He's in the woods

Jesus Christ was sent to heaven and he came to the woods And tore his dick out in front of our house He showed his dick to our house In the woods, oh yeah Jesus Christ Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ.