#725 - Seerut Chawla - The Problem With Taking Therapy Advice From Instagram

32:24Do you ever, do you ever breathe? Have you ever seen the color blue? You have trauma. So it's sort of, I think what you said was really insightful because it's true. We don't like uncertainty. We don't like feeling, we're not very good at tolerating uncertainty or feeling that we don't have control over something. And so if you combine that, you know, having this emotional experience that is quite difficult and turbulent and you don't have, you know, a lot of control over it, you don't know if it's ever going to end, you're not good at managing it, with having been coddled and protected to the point that you don't have the skills to cope or manage and probably led to some of those feelings that you're feeling.

33:11And then you add to it in this pop psychology culture that's telling you, oh, this is a legitimate diagnosis, and nobody should ever make you uncomfortable, and no one should ever, you know, criticize you or suggest that you have to take responsibility or you have a role to play in learning how to how to deal with this or navigate this. It's it's formal, convenient to say, I have trauma, or I have this diagnosis or that diagnosis or the other, and it doesn't always lead to changing in your relationship. Sometimes it leads to it becoming a bit of a crutch or it becoming your defining characteristic, you know, like what my whole personality is having a HD.

33:51Well, that's not, is there nothing else interesting about you? Is that it? So yeah, there's a few different things there. What do you mean when you talk about therapy culture? is that a culture of people getting therapy? No, it's a cult. It seems to be this overarching thing that's enveloped society and even down to the way we speak. So therapy culture is this. You hear your friends, they will have a small disagreement and then they start having this whole struggle session, like a therapy session. And you know, like you triggered my in a child and when you didn't show up to this thing or people setting boundaries with each other, but they're not really setting boundaries there sort of making demands on other people or you know, it's the way people speak has shifted and changed.

34:51Instead of necessarily developing any real understanding of mental health, we've developed this sort of codification or of fragility that's, I guess, become its own language. I'm triggered when often they mean I'm offended. And it's the whole, I guess, pop psychology, instotherapy stuff beginning to dominate the mainstream understanding of mental health. So talk to me about the difference. you've used that a couple of times today, pop psychology. What's the difference between that and mental health and why is it an issue that it's masquerading? Because it's not related to psychology or psychotherapy often.

35:46which speaking of psychotherapy something you just said was suggest maybe you're a natural psychotherapist when you're talking about how I don't know what sad means to you and that's something again in in analytic therapy that you would do so if you said I feel sad or I would ask you what that means to you you take anything that's abstract and you make it as specific as possible but yeah a bit in the side. The difference is that actual mental health is really spoken about in any real way apart from maybe anxiety and depression and you know when they talk about mental health awareness. It's almost always it's like Instagram therapists have become modern -day clergy or something or like pastoral counselors telling people how to behave.

36:33So giving people scripts for life. Watering down important concepts like trauma and PTSD. Lowering the bar, like you said, for, you know, like no, being someone pinching your bum is not nice if it's unwanted, but it's not the same as actually being assaulted and conflating the two things is absurd. So it's all of those things, was kind of creating this blanket around people, this coddling blanket that ensures that you won't necessarily be really rambling. And I think I've like, you know, when you start sentencing, you're like, I really hope I find my way. I hope I can land the plane. You're making sense to me.

37:26I've got some of one of my favorite posts from you. Some ways pop psychology lies to you. Everyone you dislike is not an narcissist. Every unpleasant experience is not trauma. Having needs does not make you codependent. Disagreement is not gaslighting. Conflict is not abuse. Taking offense is not being triggered. Everything does not need to be normalized. And speaking like an HR memo is not self -awareness. Are these sort of the, whatever it is, nine in horsemen of pot psychology are these sort of the most common culprits. These are definitely some of them. So yeah, thank you for bringing that up because that helps.

38:10And it's stuff like the dialogue around narcissism. It's creating this strange, you know, fanfiction version of narcissism that only lives on the internet. And anybody What do you don't like is a narcissist. Any form of abuse or poor treatment is a narcissism. Again, words mean things, especially when it's clinical language. And we've taken this therapy speak, which is a part of therapy culture, and you use it to inflate every little thing. So yeah, you're not just offended or you don't like something or you're uncomfortable, you've been triggered. When triggered means the involuntary, you know, immersion into a past traumatic experience, you haven't been triggered.

39:03You don't like this, so it's caused cognitive dissonance. Anything difficult is trauma. It can't be pain, it can't be bad luck. There can be, it's a foregone conclusion. There's no, it just closes the door on any other possibilities, any explanation that might not be this very convenient boat to wrap around your experience. Any disagreement is gaslighting any conflict is abuse. Yeah. So someone disagreeing with you, what a convenient way to shut down the conversation, demonize them, make yourself the victim and not have to self -reflect, just say they're gaslighting You don't have to learn how to, how to argue properly or defend your ideas.

39:51You can just say everyone's a gas lighter. How convenient. And this kind of, I get policed a lot on how I speak because I'm quite straightforward. And I just, I resent having to put tons of fluff around my words because, you know, someone can't handle just being spoken to like an adult. and I don't want I'm not going to do it. And I guess this is what they call tone policing. So I get a lot of comments in DMs from people saying, you know, your message is good, but the way you come across is really harsh. And I just think it really isn't. If you try and read it, neutrally, it's just stating a simple fact or opinion most of the time.

40:35And if you heard me say it in my tone to your face. I don't think you take it the same way. And there's this sort of, I think, tone people bring to things. And again, it's so similar to what I wrote in that post. I see a lot of that just in some of the responses I get. Even in this last week, I've had just this steady stream of abuse to do with anything I've said about Israel and Palestine. And mostly my position has been, um, don't bomb children. Like, I don't, you know, I don't, I don't know what's, I'm not, I'm not arrogant enough to pretend I know what the onset of the solution is. And I think anybody who thinks it's simple is an idiot, you know, just very, very stupid because it goes back a very long time, there's so many factors to consider here anyway.

41:35And I don't know what the right answer is, but I do know that you don't just indiscriminately kill children.

41:46And people read things that you haven't written and they attack you for them. So, you know, like your Jew -hater or your Islamophobic or you're not taking enough of a stand or Something else, but then the other thing they do is they begin to use this therapy language to Analyze you and then you get that in some of the DMs I think you're in certain some diagnosis or your your gaslighting everybody or your And you know, it's it's um again And it's weaponizing this language. And I think that's one of my big problems with it, is that it gets used as a cudgel against people. Yeah, so weaponizing this language, inhibiting any sort of actual self -reflection, finding a way to always land in the victim position, abdicate responsibility.

42:43Is there any argument to be made that this normalizes the conversation around mental health, which overall is a net benefit? We've got people maybe misappropriating language using it inaccurately, imprecisely. But this is a conversation now where people are opening up about the way that they've in an experience feels. This is a move in the right direction. What's your, how do the scales balance in your world? It's really difficult actually because I often don't think we are even talking about mental health when we say we're talking about mental health. But I think you're right. I think it's good that there's a more receptive atmosphere to people being able to say actually my mental health is suffering at the moment.

43:36And there's a decent chunk of people who won't turn away or turn against you, who would be understanding and incredibly empathetic and that probably is incredibly different to you know, our parents' generation for example. And I think, yeah, but isn't that positive? That's really good. What would an actual conversation around mental health look like? I think an actual conversation around mental health would look like discussing actual mental health issues, what it's like to suffer from them, identifying some of the signs that maybe this isn't normal distress or normal hard time, there's something a bit deeper going on.

44:19Helping people learn how to manage their mental health, similar to how a diabetic has to watch their sugar intake and take insulin when you have an ongoing mental health issue. You need to manage it. I've kind of got it in my head that there's this, it's kind of like a global wide concept creep or an overt and window of what we've considered within the realm of the conversation about mental health. As we've identified, by DSM criteria, many people who say or use particular sort of pathological language to identify whatever whatever it is that they've got going on, might not meet the criteria if they were to be assessed using that, but they've got something going on, right?

45:06They are sad or they are depressed or they are down or they feel anxious or they whatever, or they feel depressed, like they are not depressed, right? Yeah. So I think that yeah, maybe you could say, using the sort of psychoanalytic treatment style language is not really helping and it's pathologizing and it's causing issues, but all that you do, really there is kick the can down the road, right? Okay, so we're not going to use that language anymore, but we still now need a huge new bucket within which people who are feeling a little bit sad, people who are feeling a little bit agitated, a little bit frustrated, they're a little bit wistful, they're a little bit whatever, right?

45:48They're now needs to be an entire new bucket within which we put those people, and maybe Maybe it's not mental health. Maybe mental health should be held for a different, an entire different lexicon, entire different sort of world. But the people who aren't lying about it and aren't completely making it up, which is a good chunk of them, the people who are genuinely feeling something that isn't meeting the medical criteria but is still doing something that disrupts the quality of life, that group of people. You know, like that's, I would guess, the last group of people. But if that's not mental health, we now need to think about it.

46:26I think what's happened is it's become conflated, right? Like the acute, acute but mild distress has been moved into this much more aggressive medical language. But we still need to treat those people and we still need to have a conversation around whatever those feelings are and whatever the name is that we give those things that they're feeling. Why can't we just say sadness or wishfulness or loneliness or why does it need a whole new set of words? That's that again, it's the you know it's the human experience and I think this is one of the things that we've lost along the way with the whole like follow your bliss and people thinking Hollywood films are what life is going to be like.

47:07Life is fucking difficult. You know your feelings sometimes are incredibly hard to manage. things happen all the time. You know, you never know what's around the corner. Life is incredibly unpredictable. And I think there's this idea that it should be easy in some way, or that you, you know, if you're not happy or blissfully happy all the time that there's something wrong, and there isn't. And that's your complete blithering idiot. Who's happy all the time? Like, I I don't even know anyone. Everyone has ups and downs and differences and changes in mood and their own personal difficulties. And I think maybe using a word that I've come to load, maybe that's what we need to normalize is that this is what being a person is.

48:02And you have to find, you can't change that, but you can change is making yourself stronger and more resilient and to know how to respond when these things happen, you might not be able to control about self sadness or whistfulness or agitation. But you can learn that when you're in a hole to stop digging, you can learn that, you can learn how to climb out, you can learn how to avoid that hole sometimes. Where do you go to, if let's say that you're going through a bit of a tough time yourself, for whatever reason. Where do you go to in your mind? What are the things that you rely on? You know, it seems like people are relying on labels and medical language.

48:47What about you? Given that you're a practitioner of this and have been at the front lines for a decade, what are the things that you rely on to help improve your mood? Or to give you some perspective when you're kind of caught in the world pool that is the machinations of the human mind?

49:09So, I've had a kind of eventual life and been through some really, really tough stuff, becoming basically homeless, assault, just, you know, I won't go into all of it, the difficult things or sometimes, there are things that I think would be really difficult for somebody you didn't have those experiences that don't always even register with me, because I guess that threshold has been expanded to the point where it's different. And I'm sure other people who've got that kind of history can relate. But then I also think because I've had that and I've been in the complete depth, like drowning and had to find a way, the hard way to deal with those emotions that I'm not scared of them and not only am I not scared of them, not scared of other people either.

50:06So if something happens like anxiety, which sometimes anxiety, feelings, depression, I lost my mom two years ago so it's been a lot of grief, even rage, jealousy, all the feelings that people feel. I let myself feel them, I let them exist. I don't necessarily even have to, you know, you don't necessarily even have to participate. You know, you just have, you just let them be, let them exist, let them run their course. Not panic about it. Not necessarily think that it's a problem to solve. It's like there's a feeling. If you're so inclined, you could figure out and the practice, you can get very good at this.

50:45Figure out what caused it, what is it coming from? Oh, I had that thought. Oh, shit, that's what, that's what just deflated my mood or that lady I ran into in the supermarket today, she reminded me of the way my mum billitled me and that's why I've been so sad and anxious ever since. So you can trace it back, you can figure that out and also just knowing that like you've survived every single tough thing, bad day, bad mood up to this point, you're going to survive this one too. Why is this any different? And the thing about not being scared of it is anxiety can be incredibly frightening. And I've been through the experience of being very frightened by panic and thinking something really awful was going to happen.

51:34And then my dad taught me this because he struggles with some anxiety to do. And he said, when I think I remember, 17 or 18 in that panic attack, my dad said, just anxiety can't do anything to you. And when it comes up, look it right in the eye and tell it do your worst. You can't do anything to me. And I think that's kind of my attitude to a lot of things. That seems based on what I know about you, that seems on brand. Yeah. But it can help. And knowing that, knowing that the meta cognition, watching your thoughts, thinking about your thoughts knowing that right now I'm panicking and I think I'm going to have a heart attack and die, but I know that's the anxiety and the panic.

52:20It's not going to happen. And I said, wait, this out, whiteen up a little if you have to. And then the other thing is with anxiety and panic, especially move, metabolize that chemistry, burn it off quickly, just run down the street like crazy person, it'll go away. And yeah, and so it does depend, but you also have to develop some form of mental health hygiene around it. Just made a course for I have this little online community and I make courses for them. Just made a course on mental health hygiene and you know how to actually look after your mental health and the factors that contribute to you being well.

53:03Where should people go if they want to check that out. There's a link in my bio and Instagram and on Twitter or you can connect to it through my website. What's the website? It's my name .com, cdhavlo .com. And you know, for looking after yourself and for for feeling well, you need certain things and and then non -negotiable, like purpose. If you don't have a reason to wake up in the morning, of course, you're going to become depressed and anxious. If you don't go outside ever, which I struggle with sometimes to work from home and sometimes to absolutely everything delivered, so you have to force yourself.

53:47You have to have meaningful social interactions. Internet doesn't count. Social media's made us so connected and yet so isolated from actual real human beings. You need to, you know, we evolved in nature. We didn't, and we're evolving these in these concrete boxes. You have to, you know, once in a while go and look at a tree for God's sake. If you live in the city or whatever, but there are certain things you need. And the way that our environment is now, of course, everybody is struggling with something. And there's not only the coddling and the safety culture and whatever else. It's your stock on devices.

54:26You're looking at social media, which is, you know, we know that's a threat to mental health. We know that it's a contributing factor to depression and anxiety. We know the impact that it has on young people and teenagers, sometimes to a really tragic conclusion. And then your indoors all day and your sedentary, which is going to make you incredibly depressed if you're not moving. We weren't designed to just sit on our bombs all day. We were designed to move. And I found that, like I've gotten really into working out since last December. And it's gotten to the point now where it, you know, so I finished work and as soon as I finished, I just get on the treadmill.

55:10Sometimes I finish quite late. So just that's just my transition. and it's almost even if I'm tired, even if I don't want to do it, as soon as I start, it's that feeling of like, you know, when you sink into a warm bath and it's that kind of whole body, like, that's better, that's the feeling. And, you know, there's, I'm sure a really good reason for that, for why it feels that good, for why you know, there's so much that we need to be well that isn't a natural part of our environment anymore, even staying up late and looking at the blue light in our phones, and there's so much that actively contributes to us being disconnected, sedentary, eating food that doesn't give us the nutrition that we actually need, the synthesize some of those, some of that neurochemistry, you're dealing with this onslaught of the most horrific devastating things happening all around the world all the time, which we're not wired to handle.

56:16We can't cope with that. Before, I think the figure is something like you would only know the bad news of your area and only maximum in your whole life, no by 150 people in the kind of radius of the village or town wherever you live. And to hear the bad news from this happened to the neighbour, this happened to the next town, and that's kind of it. Now we're hearing everything that happens everywhere all the time at the same time. And you can't cope with it. Given that there's so much there that you've gone through which is outside of the south, the way that we move, the things that we eat, the amount of sunlight we're exposed to, the friends that we have, the purpose that we use to propel us through life.

57:07Why do you think we've spent so much time obsessing about the self and our emotions in the West? Because life's too easy. Like where, I mean, nobody, human beings aren't wired to just sit back on their laurels and enjoy that fucking sunshine. Like that's not what we were wired to do, or wired to overcome obstacles and challenges and keep moving forward in some way. And when you remove all the challenges and make life too comfortable, it's like people start malfunctioning. And you know, when there's, and I think there'll be a lot of people who will absolutely bulk at this and say, how dare you say life is easy in the West.

57:47and then I just think go and live somewhere else for a little bit and then you'll understand how good you actually have it. Like from every little thing like you know you're not going to have a power cut every day, you can rely on the electricity. All the sort of public services you might find them too bureaucratic or annoying but they work like Swiss watch compared to some of the other places in the world. your relatively safe, you've got free education and free healthcare in this country, you know, like the dogs in this country that have better lives than people in other places. And when there's nothing external to necessarily struggle against, and then you have had these, you know, coddling helicopter overprotective parents moving any obstacle from your path, what's that phrase, you know, prepared the child for the road, not the road for the child?

58:44And you end up with, sorry, I looked away for a second and I completely lost my training of thought. Well, I've got something, I've got what I've, like something really interesting just came there, which is it seems like victimhood culture has arisen because the human systems demand for challenges in life has outstripped the modern world's ability to supply them. Yeah, I think that's one factor and that's really well said, but I think the other factors also that because things have been so good, people have an unrealistic idea of what life should be like. So there should never be anything difficult.

59:24No one should ever be offended. You should be protected from your feelings ever being hurt. And this sort of very unrealistic, Camelot like idea for how a person should feel. You should, you know, you see some of some of these posts on Instagram like you deserve this and you are worthy and and I don't know about you but I didn't get that messaging as a kid and I'm really grateful and the messaging I got was yeah you can do anything you want but get off your button on it and you know I'm glad and if you're good enough it wasn't you deserve it because you think you do Who are you? None of us go through your schooling system and uni if you go to uni then you're just going to meet someone your soulmate fall in love then you're going to find your perfect career which is going to be rewarding and pay you what you want and then you'll somehow magically have a really nice house in a car and kids if you want them.

1:00:21And then they actually you know, reach adulthood and they're in for such a rude shock because it doesn't necessarily go that way. Instead you kind of, you struggle and you realize no, there's no dream job in soulmate that's going to fall in your lap. There's, you know, you have to make things happen. You have to take responsibility. And, you know, combined with this self -esteem parenting that tells children constantly how special they are, how clever they are, how talented they are. And then they grow up and find out that the world doesn't reflect that back to them because maybe they aren't that talented and amazing and become incredibly depressed and nihilistic.

1:01:08What do you think it seems like self -worth or the interpretation of our own self -worth is kind of an important element here? What do you think people get wrong about self -worth and where it comes from? I think what they get wrong about it is that self -worth, it does not come from other people inflating you or, you know, blown smoke up your ass that doesn't do anything. That doesn't hit the core view. It's this whole validation, you know how it's so important, you have you you invalidated me like, so fucking what? Like you're an adult. And I think it doesn't touch the sides and the thing it does is make people constantly dependent on more from those around them, which is why it's so crucial to have everybody validate your feelings and your viewpoint point and tell you how wonderful you are.

1:02:04But actual self -worth is hard one and it's owned through surviving things and you know setting a challenge for yourself and actually accomplishing it. Keeping your word to yourself, you know how fun and difficult that is and how few people can do it. And I struggle with it all the time, it's a constant battle but don't stop ever trying. Keeping your word to yourself will change your relationship with your sense of self -worth, develop competence in something, you know. Have a purpose that makes you excited to be alive. All those things will not only take your focus off, you know, this idea that having self -esteem, self -worth and, you know, warm and fuzzy feelings inside is the be all and end all of life.

1:02:55But it'll give you that grounded sense of self -assuredness, assuredness, I don't know, that changes how you feel in the world. I think you've just described probably the large, the big changes that I made over the last decade. Yeah, absolutely keeping my word to myself, being able to build up trust that if I said I was going to do a thing that I was going to do a thing, creating a competency in something that I genuinely felt proud of myself about, having a purpose that gave me a reason to get up in the morning. These have been the big movers for me. That's wrapped in better sleep and wake and more of a focus on holistic health and fitness and not just looking jacked and having people around me that seem to care about me and integrating not just on the internet and all the rest of those things.

1:03:47right? But like the big move is the big move is largely have been my sense of self which was born out of making promises to myself and keeping them. And I remember the first episode that I did with Jordan Peterson three years ago now maybe more was he's got this little line people can go back and listen to it and he just like throws it away toward the end of the episode and he says if you want a true adventure in life if if you want an exciting adventure in life tell the truth like tell the truth and see how big of an adventure that is He's like, boy, that's an adventure. And it's true. Like if you want to, one of the most difficult, scary, terrifying things to do is to regularly just keep telling the truth over and over again, to not people please, to not be bitter or resentful posture, to try and inflate what it is that you've achieved or downplay it to just say what it is, which is really the path of least resistance because you don't need to create this big fucking mirage of stuff that's all hiding what's actually going on.

1:04:53And yet, for some reason, that seems to be just... It's very, very difficult to do. It's very difficult to do. Yeah. And telling the truth to yourself, I think that can't be stated enough. The ways in which pull the will over our eyes is brilliant. But you know there's a completely agree and like the truth is one of my you know like it's a really important value to me. And a lot of people really hate Sam Harris but I like him for this is because he doesn't try to pander to any tribe especially the sort of like a woke and anti -woke binary and he just says what he actually thinks and feels about things.

1:05:37So everybody seems to hate him. But he's, he's, I'm sure his mind is organized in a different way. In a more way. I agree. I mean, I had him on the show. I got a lot of stick for having him on the show three months ago. And it was Sam Harris's world embarrassment tour, people commenting. And I thought to myself, I had so much fun. I did three and a half hours with him. And I had so much fun sat down, opposite and talking. And I understand that people don't like because of his view on this or you know this just shows that you're not going to hold someone's feet to the fire about this, that or the other.

1:06:10And it's like, dude, there are people out there that I know for a fine fact are way less trustworthy, but just said the right things. They made the right mouth noises at the time when you wanted to about the issue that you care about.

1:06:33And you antagonistic adversary. And for me, like, I'm not saying that, I'm gonna, like I don't agree with tons of the stuff that Sam said, but I fucking believe that he believes it. And the fact that I believe that he believes it gives me a lot of faith that in the future when he says a thing that I can believe it to. And given the fact that truth and being able to actually have faith in someone's words is really important. And maybe there's stuff that he said that contradicts him, I'm sure that there is all the rest of it, caveat, caveat, caveat for the internet. But yeah, like, I believe that he believes the things that he says, and I don't think that that can be said for an awful lot of people.

1:07:10So that was why I was super excited to sit down with him, and I will do it again. And you know, like, fuck the internet for it. Like I had so much fun talking to him. I thought it was really, really interesting. I learned a lot. And, you know, if people have got an issue with the way that he comes across with things, things, then, you know, I guess he's not for you anymore. And the felt sense, one of the things I've reflected on this a lot, one of the things I think people have an issue with is they thought Sam was their guy and Sam was their guy for a little while. Yeah. And now Sam feels like he's not their guy and one of the big emotions that seems to be driving this is kind of like a betrayal, you know?

1:07:48Yeah. Yeah. It's like a group thing, tribalism thing. and people try and pretend they're above it, none of us are really. You kind of have to mitigate your impulses. And I think that's what it is. These very tribal groups online that dominate discourse of everything.

1:08:14Their formal punishing of heretics and dissidents, then they are of actual adversaries, I think. If you change your mind and you speak out against the group and you absolutely should, you absolutely should. You shouldn't, you shouldn't. Because there's a real price to it. It's not nice and I've had a lot of it, like I said this last week, a lot of attacks and losing followers and all that, like fun stuff. But I think there's a bigger price to pay to just assimilate with the group and sacrifice what do you actually think go against your conscience and not tell the truth? Which is why I respect Sam Harris.

1:08:57I don't agree with anything or not with everything he says. I don't agree with everything anyone says But what I can respect about him is that he seems to have integrity He has the courage to tell the truth as best as he can see it And he tries to think things through And like you said, I don't think there's that many people like that out there. Instead, you have this like legion of parrots with huge platforms that just, you know, all say the same thing. Word, it's like you differently. Or they say things that, you know, on purpose to inflame, you know, inflame their own audience against another group of people.

1:09:41I mean, this is like my rule of whether a creator is or is not acting in good faith is, is their audience mostly bound together over the mutual hatred of an outgroup or the mutual love of an ingroup? That's one of the easiest rubrics to use. Okay, like, do they bond together by identifying the other and then saying, we are not that, or is it this is a community of people? Because shared hatreds are much more powerful than shared loves, right? Way more powerful. War time fucking patriotism versus peacetime patriotism, you kidding me? But one of your other posts that I really loved was sometimes we are the toxic ones.

1:10:25And no one wants to admit that. No one wants to actually point the finger at themselves, you know, whether it's fundamental attribution error or, you know, whatever type of motivated reasoning to wiggle your way out of being culpable for the things like everybody is a prick, lots of the time, right? Yeah. Me included. And you know, just accepting the fact that we can be like that. And to kind of round out that same thing, I've been feeling it a bit recently. We're deep into the episode now, which means that all of the people who don't actually usually listen to this don't aren't listening anymore.

1:10:58So I can talk more openly. I've been feeling it a bit recently because the channel's grown so much. It's like tripled this year, I think, maybe more by the end of this year, it'll have more than tripled. And an awful lot of like increasing levels of scrutiny and then you kind of become, you become a thing. You're no longer a person. You're a representation of ideas and there's expectations and there's not judgment, but there's a rhythm to how people expect you to show up and you're kind of put into this particular box, you know, like Chris used to be X or Chris is a part of Y. And I feel in myself these dynamics moving below the surface and this kind of engine begin to tune up, which is precisely the one that Sam is kind of feeling the other side of at the moment, which is like we thought that you were on our side with X or Y or Z.

1:11:54And if you seem to be an unreliable ally, if you seem to do something that goes against what the main group was supposed to I mean, I had an interesting conversation with Constantin Kissin. I know you've been on trigonometry. I had this conversation with him about how people on the right say you shouldn't judge people by one interaction, but Bud Light had had a pretty stellar career of making watery beer for Americans, and then they did the Dillamel Vany thing, and now the entire company was thrown at the bus. And I was like, that's, I know, it's just a thought experiment. Like, it's an interesting, should this maybe, you know, maybe it could be a different perspective and we could think about it in this kind of a way.

1:12:30But people are so incapable of seeing any idea or any discussion as anything shy of a hill that someone's prepared to die on that they immediately come back with that same sort of energy. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, this is this channel is evidently not for fucking you, right? If I can't play about with ideas on here. But again, you know, I see this dynamic, the one that we're talking about with Sam and maybe the one that he is on the other end of, where you go, well, it's way easier for me to just not play about with those ideas anymore. You know, this month, like 20 million people have seen the channel.

1:13:08And it's way easier for me to not ever say to just feed red meat to the mob, to not say anything that's like interesting or adventurous or playing around with ideas or exploratory, because I know that if I do do that, and I'm imprecise or I'm off that day, or it's just a fucking shit idea, which I have all the time, like I know that ultimately that's going to come back to bite me in the ass. So why should I do that? And again, like that dynamic is one of the reasons why I think the people that are deciding, yeah, I'm gonna, even if it's unpopular, even if it's, and the same goes for you. You know, like you could continue to sort of spout cotton candy for the soul at people, but to say something which is gonna get you as many haters as it does, lovers is a more difficult path.

1:13:52Yeah, I love it. I really appreciate your your contrarian slightly prickly but very, very honest approach to all of this stuff. I think that it's a very important redress to the sort of cod psychology stuff that we do see on the internet and it validates people in a much more honest way. Like it is still validation. It's just not the kind of sort of cotton candy for the sole validation that everyone's looking for. So let's say that someone's loved what they've heard today, why should they go to find out more of the posts that you've got and everything else that you do? You can find me on Instagram and on Twitter and my handle in both places is my full name, Cedet K.

1:14:32Javila, where website is the same, my name .com and that links to this online community that I run with courses and so on, that interests people. So yeah, that's where you can find me online. Don't try and find me in person, please. Oh yeah, I really appreciate you. Thank you. Thank you so much.

1:14:57Yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah.

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