As we wade through the murky waters of modern dialogue, we're reminded just how vital it is to confront misconception without becoming the very fabricators we challenge. Brené Brown's "Braving the Wilderness" serves as our compass as we dissect the art of "speaking truth to bullshit." Our exploration doesn't stop at the concept's surface; we dig deeper into the psychological trenches of false dichotomies and toxic debates, highlighting the profound strength found in our collective humanity—a theme that permeates our discussions on everything from Jeffrey Epstein's complex web to the divisive chasms of political and social strife.
Navigating the entanglements of conversation requires a mix of open-mindedness and discernment, a balance we strive to embody. With an investigative lens, we dissect the nuances of contentious issues such as border security and the refugee crisis, steering clear of oversimplified us-versus-them narratives. Our dialogue becomes a beacon, encouraging you to approach every conversation with a curious heart, whether debating policy or dismantling the misinformation that so often infiltrates our collective understanding. Through real-world examples and personal anecdotes, we illuminate how empathy and critical thinking can pave the way for meaningful connections amidst a landscape riddled with snap judgments.
Concluding our journey, we share tales like the unifying power of a grueling cross-state bike ride, which underscores the community and growth found in collective challenges. We invite you to embrace the paradox of strength and vulnerability, to recognize the importance of self-worth beyond polarizing perspectives. In the face of life's complexities, we champion the cultivation of a "strong back, soft front, wild heart," an ethos that inspires both personal fortitude and an openness to the world's pain and joy. Through each chapter of this episode, we encourage you to discover the profound impact of seeing beyond the surface and nurturing a more harmonious existence.
As we wade through the murky waters of modern dialogue, we're reminded just how vital it is to confront misconception without becoming the very fabricators we challenge. Brené Brown's "Braving the Wilderness" serves as our compass as we dissect the art of "speaking truth to bullshit." Our exploration doesn't stop at the concept's surface; we dig deeper into the psychological trenches of false dichotomies and toxic debates, highlighting the profound strength found in our collective humanity—a theme that permeates our discussions on everything from Jeffrey Epstein's complex web to the divisive chasms of political and social strife.
Navigating the entanglements of conversation requires a mix of open-mindedness and discernment, a balance we strive to embody. With an investigative lens, we dissect the nuances of contentious issues such as border security and the refugee crisis, steering clear of oversimplified us-versus-them narratives. Our dialogue becomes a beacon, encouraging you to approach every conversation with a curious heart, whether debating policy or dismantling the misinformation that so often infiltrates our collective understanding. Through real-world examples and personal anecdotes, we illuminate how empathy and critical thinking can pave the way for meaningful connections amidst a landscape riddled with snap judgments.
Concluding our journey, we share tales like the unifying power of a grueling cross-state bike ride, which underscores the community and growth found in collective challenges. We invite you to embrace the paradox of strength and vulnerability, to recognize the importance of self-worth beyond polarizing perspectives. In the face of life's complexities, we champion the cultivation of a "strong back, soft front, wild heart," an ethos that inspires both personal fortitude and an openness to the world's pain and joy. Through each chapter of this episode, we encourage you to discover the profound impact of seeing beyond the surface and nurturing a more harmonious existence.
Welcome to another episode of Terribly Unoblivious. Today we are discussing part 3, braving the Wilderness by Brene Brown. On today's episode we get into our favorite chapter, speaking Truth to Bullshit. What is bullshit, how do you fight it and how can you keep yourself from becoming a bullshitter? We discuss false dichotomies and toxic either-or arguments and what it feels like to wander into the wilderness when faced with these arguments. We discuss common humanity and how we can nurture that feeling by sharing pain and joy with others, and we end with a discussion on what Brene calls strong back, soft front, wild heart. We hope you enjoy the final part of Braving the Wilderness by Brene Brown.
Dylan:Yep, I said it before and I'll say it again Life moves pretty fast.
Brad:You don't stop and look around once in a while? You could miss it. Please don't do cocaine by the air returns.
Dylan:And we're back for part 3 of Braving the Wilderness. We were pretty good on the last two episodes sub 60 minutes, which is pretty hard for us.
Brad:Yeah, do you think people like it? Do you think they like it less time or more time? I personally like Long Form Podcasts when I listen, you want to just blow through this one. Go as fast as possible.
Dylan:Speedcast yeah, let's do it. No, I don't want to do it. Okay, we're not going to do it.
Brad:I don't think my brain works like that. My brain doesn't even read like that.
Dylan:You like, alex, you don't have to Alex Jones, gene, where you can just go.
Brad:No, that's a whole different level that, or like a Ben Shapiro. Those guys are trained debaters.
Dylan:Yeah.
Brad:Because the whole debate scene is just talk as fast as you can.
Dylan:And hope that whatever argument or whatever holes in the argument there are or blasted past so quickly that you can't go back. Yeah, I know, and the idea that you just put so much out there and you put so much pressure you got to adjust stuff before we start the episode.
Brad:But I sat up taller. I didn't feel like I wanted to slump.
Dylan:I'm muting you, so you can do it, you go for it.
Brad:You like it? Does it sound good there? Oh, there I am. How do you like it? Now? Love it, okay. This is bullshit. You want to speak some truth to it?
Dylan:That was just the easiest intro I've ever seen. You're a genius.
Brad:So this is where we ended off. We are up to chapter five and braving the wilderness and something that we have touched on before. Speak truth to bullshit, but be civil.
Dylan:That's the hard part, I think, probably for most people isn't it?
Brad:Yeah, I'm going to start off with the quote that she starts off with Harry G Frankfurt. This is her little intro to chapter five. Someone who lies and someone who tells the truth, or playing on opposite sides, so to speak, in the same game. Each responds to the facts as he understands them, although the response of the one is guided by the authority of the truth, while the response of the other defies that authority and refuses to meet its demands. The bullshitter ignores these demands altogether. He does not reject the authority of the truth as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He pays no attention to it at all. By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are. Thus begins the chapter. So it is helpful to think of lying as defiance of the truth and bullshitting as whole sale dismissal of the truth.
Dylan:And there's a little. I don't know if she uses the terms moral virtue, but there's almost more virtue in a liar, because they're defiance but they're not dismissal of the truth, as a whole.
Brad:They play in the same game. They know the truth is there, but they're just. You're on the same field, exactly. A bullshitter is just somewhere totally different.
Dylan:Mars. They don't care when women are from. Wait, no, men are from Mars, venus, venus, they're on. Venus. Yeah, I had an ex-girlfriend buy me that book one time. How'd that go for you? How do you think it went? Not Shannon all, I guess? Obviously, hi, shannon, happy to have you here.
Brad:In spirit. So what do we mean by bullshit? Because we use it. We use it differently in a day to day term.
Dylan:Yeah, she talks about how it's kind of misconstrued.
Brad:I would say shooting the shit, like that's something that we would typically do. Yeah, shoot the shit. What are you talking about? Nothing in particular. We're just raving, putting words into the air, yeah pretty much Bullshitting is, I would say, taking some kind of authoritative stance on something that you know nothing about Does that sound, fair Sounds fair. You're gonna have to pause this, aren't you?
Dylan:I think so. God damn Well, real fast Officially put the cat back in the closet In the box.
Brad:Put the cat in the box, clark. What's in the box.
Dylan:Is Rusty still in the navy?
Brad:We should just have Annie next to us in a box.
Dylan:That would maybe a nice Jell-O mold to go with it. It'd be good listening right there. Absolutely.
Brad:So yeah, we, I think we think about bullshitting as a something we do at the bar. We're just talking out of our ass.
Dylan:Yeah, nothing delicious about it, nothing.
Brad:The bullshitting that she is talking about is there is intention there, and sometimes the intention is just to derail everything.
Brad:Sometimes, it's to make people believe that you have an educated opinion on something that you may not and we're all for sure guilty of this and once you start thinking about it, it's easy to find yourself getting caught in those circumstances. Absolutely, you're in a group of people and they're talking about something and if you, if you don't really know anything about it, you at least feel like you have, or should have, a take on it or a side to it. It's the nuclear option.
Brad:So you kind of you're just like, yeah, yeah, artificial sugars are bad. That's not good for you.
Dylan:I read it somewhere. I read it, I heard it on a commercial somewhere.
Brad:And yeah, she gets to the point later where kind of braving the wilderness is. Do you have the cahones to say? I don't really have an opinion about that. I don't really know much about that topic.
Dylan:Maybe you could explain it more to me the most dangerous thing you can do is to put an opinion out there that's not well educated and, like you're saying, it's okay and what she's saying is it's okay to say I'm not versed in this. Please bring me up to speed.
Brad:And the funny part about that is, a lot of times this will happen when an argument and I use that term loosely, it doesn't have to be a malicious argument, it could just be a conversation that you feel like could turn into a two sided type thing, and if you say I don't really know that much about it, can you, can you tell me more about it? Man, I wonder how many times that will go poorly for the person that you're asking, because they're, I think, a lot of times probably in a similar boat, like they feel like they should have a side and they know at least a couple of sound bites and talking points and that's what they're going to go off of, and then the rest of the argument is based off of what the other person is going to say.
Dylan:You want somebody to escalate because it makes your stance easier.
Brad:Yeah.
Dylan:Yeah.
Brad:It's easy to respond to that, to react to it so, and it becomes a screaming match. It could.
Dylan:I mean in both the literal and the figurative sense.
Brad:So that's that's where she kind of starts off with the speaking. Truth to bullshit is don't fall into the trap, don't don't be a bullshitter yourself. Start breaking the cycle, being curious we talked about that a little bit before. Being curious, not judgmental. So if you feel like you should have an opinion and it's different than another person that you're in the conversation with, be curious about why their opinion is the way it is like, let them educate you and and you may still not agree with it, but maybe they'll give you some background as to why, why they believe that, the experiences that they've had, and then you can say, okay, yeah, I.
Brad:I can understand how you got here. So there's some common ground. I don't necessarily agree with you, but I can see why you would think that way. So that's that's another option. But it she goes on to say you don't want to get into the point of denying that you can't ever know anything. So it's really hard to have a conversation and we've talked about this a little bit before too where if you can't start out on some sort of common ground, like we are humans that exist in the world, and you're like, no, we're not. Okay, well, what the fuck are we doing then we, we're not going to be able to get very far. We're in the matrix. Okay, that's fine, we're in the matrix, let's have a conversation about that. Okay, we can do that.
Brad:Tell me how we got to the matrix, but if you're like I'm an ethereal ghost floating through nothingness. Cool that's, that's great, we're, we're not going to talk about much of substance probably.
Brad:I mean we could go down that path, but for why? So this was was the same guy Frankfurt. Yeah, a good old Frankfurt, he says when we give up on believing that there are actual truths that can be known and shared, observable knowledge, we give up on the notion of objective inquiry. It's like we just collectively shrug our shoulders and say whatever, it's too hard to get to the truth. So if I say it's true, that's good enough.
Dylan:It. It goes back to that conversation about open-mindedness we had, and I don't Remember what quit, I don't remember what episode that was, I'm really bad at remembering those. But it's just because you may Be open to a more outlandish idea doesn't mean you are Open in general. You have an overall openness. Just just because you're oh yeah, I believe in aliens really cool, that's that's. But if you're stuck there and you won't listen to the other side, you're not actually that open.
Brad:No, and it's getting to that, to that point here, which is I would say think about being open as as a slide rule where you can slide anywhere along that that line. That's openness is your ability to move, not this far right side.
Dylan:I say, right here is an eye only and I only discuss right here. Yeah, it's the ability to treat or to transcend the boundaries.
Brad:It'd be like every crazy conspiracy theory is way out here on the right side of the ruler and that's where I sit, so I'm the most open-minded, because I have the the most far. It's like no, you're not, because If you're admitting that you'll never slide to that other side or the middle, no matter what?
Dylan:no matter what that's, even if I was given hard evidence, I would never go over there, right whoa?
Dylan:Yeah it's a I. You're gonna see. Today is the day that Epstein's documents got released, still heavily redacted. But even it's only happened in the past few hours. But you've got everyone who's ever Been a conspiracy you know conspiracy theories have been proven to be true before, so it again. It's it's, it's all. What does the truth say at the end of the day? But this is just feeding it. You can just see people just being living their best life reality right now going. I've been saying this forever.
Brad:It's. It's easy to take little chunks of information and then just plug them into your story, and what do you find? In almost everything, it's more complex than that.
Dylan:It goes back to. You're gonna watch the news channel that is going to feed your thoughts and beliefs.
Brad:So again, like, if you, if you're taking that, is everyone that's on his flight log culpable in all of the bad shit that he did Not necessarily? Yeah, could it be it? There's good be possibility but you have to keep going down that road of like All right, we're gonna need a little bit more than I said in this plane.
Dylan:We've got a magnifying glass on you now but yeah, so there's no fingerprints there. So we the trails gone cold.
Brad:There are other things, like Like Trump in like 2002, you know saying, yeah, he's a really good friend of mine and I will say this he, he likes, he travels and likes beautiful women and much on the younger side of things. Okay, well, that that's starting to lead a little bit more Into that dark path. It's like, well, there seems to be a little bit more information there versus Somebody that he probably was giving money to or donating towards and was like, oh yeah.
Dylan:He was a power broker. Yeah, come on, he was a power broker, and it Don't. It wasn't just about, though. He was addicted to power and he found an easy way to get. That was people are sexual beings and I can broker sex, and Not ethical way, because it's taboo and it creates a little bit of allure. So that was one of his tools, but he had many tool sets. It wasn't just the.
Brad:Also, if you want to, if you were doing something nefarious and you want to have Either some more leverage on your side or some plausible deniability, you're gonna have people involved in that that weren't involved in the nefarious things that are just associated with you. Because, one, they they bring a lot of power with them and two, you bring that up to somebody in here like oh hey, by the way, I'm into this and you wrote on my plane a lot, so it's, it's almost like a, like a backdoor blackmail.
Dylan:Oh yeah, kind of thing, you know. So it's a gray male.
Brad:It's a gray male yeah.
Dylan:I don't know if that's actually a term.
Brad:So this, this gets into the, the meat of this chapter, which is the, the false dichotomy, the you're either with us or against us.
Dylan:So when we start, if you take this stance at all when there is zero nuance, you us versus you red flag.
Brad:Mm-hmm, you need to throw a red flag. Not a yellow card, red card right, straight red, straight red, straight red.
Dylan:Yeah, spikes up into the shin intentional.
Brad:Yeah, you knew what you were doing. Yeah, and again, I Don't remember what the the topic was, but just about a week ago Me and Shayna were talking about something and she she went straight for the false dichotomy and I think I responded with do even listen to my that's good, the Because it's, it's super easy to. It's the new, it's the nuclear option, because you can.
Dylan:It's nuclear option in the sense of, if I don't have the capacity or the I don't have the Fortitude at the moment to take this on and nuance it out and have the hard conversation, well, no one's gonna have a good time. I'm just. If I'm not gonna have a good time, no, it's gonna have a good time.
Brad:Yeah, and it's also a a false sense of security where it's it's easier for you to say either or mm-hmm, because you either gain Somebody on your side, mm-hmm, or you break and you don't have to have that conversation anymore and that's it. Those are the two choices that you're giving them, and what she's saying is no, that's not. That's not at all how it works. 99.9% of the time it's not. Either or there's all kinds of little nuances and gray areas in between there, and what that should signal is there's a conversation here to be had about Waiting into those gray spots and figuring out exactly what what I mean and exactly what you mean and they're not on either side of the spectrum.
Dylan:We're both probably somewhere in the middle and and please tell me how you've arrived out where you're at and I can talk about how I've arrived to where I'm at. Yeah and we can share some Commonalities along the way. Possibly and maybe we don't, but we can gain a better perspective of each other versus just cutting each other off at the knees.
Brad:Yeah, I think. I think that's essentially what you do, and I think there's different reasons to do it. Sometimes, maybe, you're scared to have that conversation.
Brad:Sometimes, I think, you want to make the other person look like something you know yeah where, okay, well, if you're not gonna do this, then You're this no, it's, that's, it's not, that, it's not that easy. So, because I'm not on your side, you want to jump to the opposite end of the spectrum and make me the bad guy and that and she kind of leads into that too that, that that negative talk right about If, if we're gonna get into an either or situation, and then this is going to become something that has actual consequences, I'm gonna start talking about you as something other than human. That way, when bad shit really starts happening, I feel kind of okay about it, because you're not like me.
Dylan:Yeah and we see this all the time to fight, to be able to yeah, take away the humanity Genocide is the easiest I mean way to look at it.
Brad:It has happened in every, probably every, genocide that's ever happened there.
Dylan:There is some sort of propaganda campaign that yeah, there's some sort of dog.
Brad:That it's that there's a group of people that is less than that, is dirtier than that, is more diseased than and they're causing these terrible things to happen.
Dylan:And it could be.
Brad:It could be a physicality, it could be a religious aspect, it could be a Knowledge aspect, and there's lots of different reasons why why people would want to outcast other sides, and All of them end up being these people are not like us, they are, they are subhuman, and so when you start eradicating them there, there is something that changes in your, in your mindset.
Dylan:That it's amazing. It is amazing what humans are capable of in terms of rationalizing, what people will rationalize to save themselves some despair, heartache, whatever that may be the guilt.
Brad:Was it the Rwanda, the John?
Dylan:Cheetol.
Brad:That was the genocide in Rwanda. Yeah, when John Cheetol did Hotel Rwanda that those stories are I Don't eat maybe more shocking than I don't want to say more shocking, but Because they were, so I mean I remember. I remember watching that on yeah, a hundred days.
Dylan:The Tizi minority ethnic group.
Brad:Yeah, what's the number?
Dylan:The hood on TWA were killed by armed who to oh some moderate who do and eat the hood, will even kill the moderates of their own tribe. It's a lot but they have hundred to eight hundred thousand Tizi deaths.
Brad:Yeah, wolf, and the way that they mostly did it was by machete, and that's that's pretty effective.
Dylan:That's a lot of blood sugar, that's a lot of hacking, because that's personal, that is I mean well, here's something to be said about being a hundred yards, 200 yards away over the rifle.
Brad:Here's how personal it got was when someone Was asking Some of the survivors because if you look at, just take where we're at right now. Right, it's a community of people and we're going to base it on who's?
Brad:we're just going to pick a religion out of out of this entire metro area and we're going to say, ok, all these people got to go. And the question was well, how do you know? How do you know who's who you are? You all live in the same area, like you're in the same neighborhoods. It's not like you're divided geographically. Right, you're all in the same areas. And the response was because they're your neighbors, I know what clan they belong to, I know what church they go to, and then they go kill them.
Dylan:Yeah.
Brad:Or they tell somebody you know and they go. But it got to be a lot of the Like the Russian army and in World War Two, where some people are like I'm not going to do this and they're like you're gone, they would just kill you just for not killing the other people. Yeah, so it got to be. That's probably a lot where the moderates came. But yeah, that's there. I don't think there's a better example necessarily than that. Just because it is, the Holocaust had already happened. We'd already seen what a trotty like that looks like on a large scale. And then it's again you. You were intermingling with neighbors.
Dylan:And so country.
Brad:So think about how hard you have to think of somebody as the other in order to go do something like that. So, yes, that's an extreme case, but that's how. That's how that gets started.
Dylan:It's. It's no different than the walking over to your neighbor's house that has the Trump sign. Or you walk over to your neighbor's house that had the Clinton sign or the Biden sign and it's defacing that. It's whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. We live in the same community. We end up. We settled here for a reason, whether that's because I'm, you're from here, or you settled here because of a job, and then you like the community.
Brad:It's even more personal than that, because it's not like they're advertising. It's just you heard about your neighbor talk about Trump one time, and so you go in and get him right. Yeah, like it's more like that.
Brad:Yeah like you had this interpersonal connection with them. It wasn't like they were, you know, voicing it outside, where anybody, like anybody, could walk by and notice your affiliation with something. It was much more interpersonal than that, which kind of makes it all the worse, it seems like. So that's, that's the extreme side of that, but it shows, it shows capabilities and and and why.
Dylan:And why it's important not to think in those vacuum chambers and not to just be us versus them, why that dichotomy is so dangerous. Yeah, those false dichotomies, yeah.
Brad:It's. And so, yeah, red Guard, if you, if you find yourself in that situation, there's a lot more to that situation, and that's it is not on the scale of genocide. A lot of times it's on the scale of a husband and wife arguing, or family members arguing, or the way you talk to your kids, and that's probably, that's probably a real easy one, because why are you explaining to your kids? It's an either or situation. It's because you don't want to have to explain the fucking nuances of life to them at that particular time, which is which is valid. Sometimes it's it's not a great way to do it, but sometimes you're just like listen, we're going to get out of the fucking door here. Ok, we got to be someplace. I don't have time for this before bed, then we'll talk about all of this. It's the why the?
Dylan:why? It goes back to the. Why is the origin? A lot, which is what? Why is this important? Why is this what we're doing?
Dylan:The other one, though, is it's a little bit about you, and you and I have been kind of discussing the past few days we won't get into the hot takes, but with some modern day philosophers and we won't name names, so we don't trigger anyone. You most likely yet yet, but it's, it's. It's when you take your empathy, sympathy, virtues and you weaponize them into moral right and wrong verses, removing what is right, what is wrong and debating the virtues as a whole, and it's hey, we both come from places of good and giving them that space. I understand, you believe this, I understand this, I believe this. Neither one, necessarily, is right or wrong, but we need to understand the context. What's happened in your life to get you to this point? What's happened in my life to give me to this point? What we've studied, what we've researched, why we believe the things we believe, and stop thinking in the you're right, I'm wrong or I'm right, you're wrong mode, and just a mutual understanding.
Brad:Yeah, because there are. There are good and bad to multiple sides of of the argument. Yeah, right, so that you'd sent me something earlier about borders and refugees and things like that. The border is something really simple to think about. I'm going to say I think we should have ironically, has nothing to do with the Mexican border.
Dylan:This what they're talking about. No, this is in general, borders in general.
Brad:So borders in general, I'm going to say that people that want to escape a bad situation and make a better life for themselves In a sense open borders right. In that sense, yeah, that's a good thing, and so it's easy for somebody to say I'm morally superior to you, because that's what I want. I want good for people to have less and you say I'm for secure borders because that makes everyone on the secure side of the border safe and feel good and it keeps bad things out. Are they both right?
Dylan:Yeah, there's positives, but is it super nuanced. Yeah.
Brad:You know, should you? Should you have a wide open border? No, I don't think anybody that can think clearly for five seconds would would want that. So bad shit would happen all over the world really fast.
Dylan:And you're also not advocating this is my playground, I've got my ball Fuck off. You're not coming in.
Brad:Right, right. So yeah, there's, and that's a much, that's a much harder issue, obviously, just because of the amount of populations that are you going to take everybody in the world that wants to get out of a bad situation and put them in the best situation, okay, happens. Well, that could turn sour, pretty bad, when you you take a bunch of people that don't have money, don't have skills, don't have whatever, because they're coming from A land of violence or poverty or regime oppression or whatever the case is, and then if you're going to put them all in the best spot, so not spread out all over the world, just in one particular spot, it's like, okay, well, that that's not going to work either. So in that sense, that's a there is good and bad to both sides, and then the solution, obviously, is not putting your walls up for lack of a better term, obviously not simple.
Dylan:It's, it's, but that not putting your walls up with the person you're debating with and not just throwing up the you're right or you're wrong, I'm right and a spousing bullshit. Yeah creating a false dichotomy.
Brad:Yeah, Talk about why, why you think that's a good idea.
Dylan:And then also people. You have to. It's harder. It's harder to do than it is to say. You've got to remove the idea of winning and losing a debate. A debate is supposed to educate and help you get closer to the truth. I mean, it's not always there. I mean, and what we're going to say is, you're going to go to modern debate and you're going to, we're going to go back to Alex Jones and we're going to go back to I mean, I mean the idea like the essence of what debate originated as back to the Greek times, and even you know it was there.
Dylan:And was there still some politics involved with that like there is today? Absolutely, but there is a little bit. There was some purity there of we need to get to a core truth and we're here to seek truth, not necessarily right and wrong, but what is.
Brad:Yeah.
Dylan:Yeah.
Brad:And there's some, maybe some better ways to do that than than other ways what Just interject the whole ton of human emotion?
Dylan:Yeah, couldn't think of a better way at all.
Brad:No, I mean, there's there's that, but there's also the idea of, like the rhetoric, where you and I are having a conversation but I am asking you pointed questions so that I can respond to those questions in a way that I already know how I'm going to, because I'm the one that's asking you the question.
Dylan:Yeah, you're, you're setting up the lob.
Brad:Yes, yeah, and that that is not something that I don't think normal people have to worry about. But when you are watching things on clips or channels or podcasts or whatever, that was a big thing in in Greek philosophy. That was what Socrates played over all about and why he was such a good debater, because he, he would ask you the question. That is an obvious answer, and then just keep asking those questions, leading you down this path to the point of no return, and then, oh, I got you and that's. That's a practice that is still in existence. So so be careful, because the way that the rhetoricians use the either or is a little bit more sophisticated, but it's still at its core.
Dylan:It's still there. It's a simple it's form. It is still the either or it's still there.
Brad:So that leads us to this, this page, these two pages. There's a lot in here. So she kind of talks about the we've talked about, like you and before, and the paradox and she brings up the. The ability to think past either or situations is the foundation of critical thinking. She says. Getting curious and asking questions happens outside our bunkers. Of certainty. For most of us, even if the with us or against us mandate sounds a little oversimplified BS, it still feels easier and safer to pick a side that that whole little paragraph sums it up pretty well.
Brad:There's so much in it because the foundation of critical thinking. People ask, well, what do you guys talk about on that? And usually I just say you know like which Christmas tree smell the best or something. You never know what people are into.
Dylan:The critical, critical thing Pickle flavored.
Brad:I think that's, if there's something that we can touch upon on a regular basis, critical thinking. So the foundation of critical thinking, she says, is the ability to get past either or situations, which is the ability to wander into that nuanced territory and that wilderness of everybody has kind of. It's not this cookie cutter shape of an opinion, it's your opinion, it's, it's your knowledge, it's your shared experiences, and that is where you truly belong.
Dylan:And you're exposing possibly some weaknesses, possibly some strengths.
Brad:Yes.
Dylan:But you're opening yourself up. You know it. Why is it so hard to become nuanced with people? There's some fear there that your world might get rocked in a sense, because some of your arguments might not be compelling or thoughts, and you might start thinking a way that you're not used to thinking, and it might be uncomfortable.
Brad:But also it's the. There's also a sense of courage there, though. Like how, how long can you hang out there? Because if you are in a debate where you're kind of partially on one side, she uses the gun debate and we've mentioned it before, but she comes from a hunting background as a large family process, like it's a, it's a major thing, and also, obviously, you see all of the damage that guns can do in society. But it's not a, it's not a this or that kind of thing. It's way more nuanced than that. And so for her to have a true discussion about that, she's got to go into that, into that weird space where she's with people that are on totally on one side and say you know what? I think that some safety protocols should be in place for people to own and operate guns, and those guys aren't going to like that. And on the other side, people that say we need to get away with guns.
Dylan:All together she's like no no, no, no, no, no Like this.
Brad:There's also a place.
Dylan:I've watched my family. I've watched my family ethically farm and hunt animals for decades and it has brought food and provided not just food, but a sense of spirituality, spirituality to the family and I've seen what it's done to create stronger bonds.
Brad:So so, just in the sense of where she's coming from, imagine yourself in the middle of two people just playing whack-a-mole and you're the mole. Yeah, that's got to be what it's. I mean, essentially that's what it's like. So Do you want to go in there? How long do you want to hang out? How long do you want to get?
Dylan:Can come on ahead.
Brad:You know, and but that's how, that's how you move things forward, because if you don't take that stance, it's just the two sides and the two sides are so far apart how do you, how do you move that forward in any meaningful way? It's, it doesn't happen. You're going to have to find some common ground somewhere, and that in the middle is is where it's at.
Dylan:So unfortunately it's, it's uncomfortable and I like that, though, for most of us, even if the with us or against us. Mandate sounds a little like oversimplified BS. It is. It still feels easier and safer to pick a side. You do, I'm guilty of it, and not necessarily everybody is.
Dylan:I think my I was. I always kind of wash my hands of it in a way of these are little things that aren't going to do anything for me, but at the same time it's like what? Why? Why am I just choosing not to there? There's a time and a place, choosing not to, but everything doesn't need to be a battle.
Brad:No, it also also understanding the audience. Okay, who's?
Dylan:my who's, my audience, and there is a point where you go, I'm I'm not waiting in. It's not because I'm afraid to wait in, it's just not the time it's. You're not going to talk, you're going to, you're going to create a false dichotomy and this is wasted effort.
Brad:This is a Christmas party and and if I, if I dive into this, no one's going to leave. You're happy.
Dylan:I think you're the most guilty of that.
Brad:No.
Dylan:Oh.
Brad:I've never done it.
Dylan:How often are you like people are going to?
Brad:like it. I know exactly, I know.
Dylan:I get texts all the time. Oh, I'm about to rock this place From what you you.
Brad:What are you talking?
Dylan:about you always be like, oh, I'm going in hot.
Brad:No, I know. And then you're like, oh, I kept my mouth shut. I never do that.
Dylan:Okay.
Brad:I don't like upsetting people.
Dylan:Brad's not takes. I don't, I don't get upset.
Brad:Don't get upset, don't get your feelings hurt, britt.
Dylan:Britt texted me the other day. She heard she asked me she's like why is Brad always just so hot at the world? I was like because he's in his head all the time.
Brad:Uh, I'm going to need some more reference points than that. Nope, that's it. Mm hmm, hmm, you're her to white lies. No, that's a black truth.
Brad:Oh, like that, yeah, okay, uh, let's see down the yeah, so that that little paragraph had a lot Uh, either, or arguments. This is this is why people use them. Uh, they like to, like I said earlier, silence, descent. So I'm going to set this argument up so that you either agree with me or I have drawn the line in the sand and we no longer have a basis for a discussion. Like, I make my opinion of you as a person based on and I think I think there's a I think there's something to be said about why Descent is so dangerous.
Dylan:I think humans do have some innate reason in them, as much as we like to debate, as much as we like to complain and say everything's unreasonable, but descent is so powerful because, if you can Start to lay facts out and I think that's why the bullshit narrative is so imperative right now Is because we have to keep them in these echo chambers, because if we let them start to think for themselves, it's going to become way more moderate. The bunkers of certainty.
Brad:That's what she uses.
Dylan:Hmm.
Brad:I like that and the the meaningful conversations you have to. You have to come out of the bunker and then what happens? You get hit by some traffic.
Dylan:Yeah, that's, but if you're in power, you don't want people coming out of the bunkers.
Brad:No, you, yeah, you like that. Don't question things. Just stick with my side. And this next point the amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it. I, I, there, I, to my knowledge, is not a better example of this than I Can't remember if it was when Trump started running initially, or when, when he won and the news channels Start like, some people got actual jobs fact-checking Trump statements mm-hmm, full time, full time fact-checker and it was Just like holy shit, because he is prolific In his tweets and speeches and media interviews. He's saying shit non-stop, and so the, the, the energy needed to refuse, so he's just taught. You know he's on I'm getting on Air Force one and he blurbs out two paragraphs and in order to paragraphs.
Dylan:How many characters I'm is no, no no, I'm just the in like a audio or video.
Brad:Audio video clip and Then something in your you know. Initially somebody in your head you're thinking that doesn't sound quite right. Then you have to go and you have to research and you have to find this specific site. And then you have to look at this example of something and the amount of time it takes to Say no, that that was not correct at all. In fact that was the opposite of correct. It takes so much time and if you can, just it's kind of like that the debate topic right, how how much can you put out in a short period of time? And if you put out the most and it just wears people down.
Dylan:Yeah, because then they have to work that much harder to try to even get square with you and you can't.
Brad:Let's. Let's say that is in the debate form, where he's debating somebody else. You can't even debate him because he's a bullshitter. You're not talking about the same thing. He's on Venus.
Dylan:Yeah.
Dylan:You're not on the same playing field, so there's something to be said about that, and I think an example of that is my job. We have IT. We house hundreds of passwords, configurations and all this data that we have to have documentation on For all of our clients, because we're third-party IT, so we have to. We have to know our clients intimately, we have to know all the nuances of their business to be able to provide those services to them effectively.
Dylan:And we've always said there is nothing worse Then wrong documentation, where somebody took the time to enter something that wasn't actually what it was supposed to be, because now we have to work three times harder to verify that that is wrong. And then we have to go on a wild goose chase Chase to find out what is right versus if it wasn't filled out in the first place. Right, you just go. Oh, I need to go to the client and I need to ask them hey, we're missing this information. Where can I go and locate this? But you can't go to the client, be like I've got this wrong and then this and then that, and then that it's. It's Misinformation is so potent and so powerful. Yeah, it's way worse than lying.
Brad:That's why. That's why we use it in warfare Green it works.
Dylan:Green brace.
Brad:Tim Kennedy come on.
Dylan:Yeah, I mean yeah, that's there. That was their mission set. Sometimes what?
Brad:we had a thinking soldier what?
Dylan:oh, there was a, there was a breach of a government organization. It's like the American radio blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like I've never heard of this organization before. And they're like oh, we're going to the newest, latest Microsoft, this and that to protect ourselves. I looked it up. The agency was created during the Cold War to blast radio stations into communist countries and drop pamphlets. Their whole job was to pro oh Propaganda. And I'm like and that agency still exists, which I think is hilarious, yeah, I've never heard of this agency. Oh, our job was to set up radio stations and blast pro yeah, pro democracy, anti-communism Propaganda and it's effective.
Dylan:Look at social media how many times have we found North Korea, china and Russian bots? Just they're the ones putting all these videos out.
Brad:Would you ever Exactly? Okay, fake news, russia, russia, the. The crazy thing is when countries do it to their own citizens. So I mean that obviously happens Still. But a really bad example was World War two and the Japanese, and they had convinced their people so much that if they Were to become occupied by US forces, just the worst of the worst would happen.
Dylan:Oh, and US soldiers are gonna do this to you.
Brad:Yes, that is better than what is coming and so when they rolled up on one of these islands, they they made landfall, and there's just hundreds of people jumping off a cliff, onto rocks, just One after the other. Because of that, they're like, they're here, hell has has arrived, and now they would. Just women, children, men just chuck themselves off the side of the rather than.
Dylan:Probably would have gotten, like a cigarette, a chocolate bar out of it.
Brad:Yeah, GIs are pretty good about that. I mean, they had seen enough death to Want more death at that point. I think so. Another extreme example. But she ends this chapter. She goes back to Jung again and quotes. Only the paradox comes anywhere near to comprehending the fullness of life. We are complex beings who wake up every day and fight against being labeled and diminished with stereotypes and Characterizations that don't reflect our fullness. Yet when we don't risk standing on our own, speaking out, when the options laid before us Force us into very categories, we resist. We perpetuate our own disconnection and loneliness. When we are willing to risk venturing into the wilderness and even becoming our own wilderness, we feel the the deepest connection to our true self and to what matters the most. I can't believe you wrote that last line. I don't know what that means. I've obviously had something in mind when I wrote it. Example of my relationship to Dylan. Explain that's what I wrote in my notes. I don't know what that means. I don't know that relationship.
Dylan:We don't have a relation, we don't even like each other.
Brad:Yeah.
Dylan:I wish Martin was here right now.
Brad:No, oh, it's what I've talked to you about this before, in terms of and this might make up both ways very likely it someone who has met us individually, briefly, or or have heard us talk about each other on a specific topic and then form an entire Philosophy around. This is who Dylan is. Right, shbag, that's. That has happened before, where I can take an example Like where's Dylan at? Oh, he's in Spain.
Dylan:Oh okay.
Brad:Oh, where's Dylan at? Oh, he's in looking Monaco driving an F1. I don't know, it's not far off. It may happen someday in the future. Maybe it's happened, and so the the, you have a fullness of life experiences that many people don't have very fortunate.
Brad:Yes but you also have a lot of this trauma and darkness from personal life and past.
Brad:You know experiences, and so people, people get a sense of one thing without knowing the other thing and then develop a worldview based upon that, you know. And so we all do this to each other and it's, it's just that it's. It goes back to that again like, be like, be curious, and so it's easy for somebody to say, well, yeah, that's easy for for him to say because he's done so, and so it's like, yeah, but you, you haven't seen all of the sides, you don't know where else someone is coming from. So to to take only the good without the bad, and vice versa, yeah, you're not really in a full picture of of someone. So we are complex beings and and for like for me personally, I I know a quote where it's something, something along the lines if you, if you deal with a chronic illness, you fake being well more than you fake being sick, you know like normal people can fake being sick, and when you're constantly in pain, you just fake being well.
Dylan:That seems cruel, but it is a real thing, but it's a real thing.
Brad:Yeah, and. And so People were like oh yeah, I saw you the other day. I see you seem so good Fucking really good at my job. Been doing this for a while.
Dylan:Yeah, so when I'm not so good, you should yeah, yeah, like come check that out, but you're not getting the full picture.
Brad:You're just getting what that person wants to portray at that time.
Dylan:I think suicide is probably a good example of that. How?
Brad:many people. How many people what?
Dylan:he had everything, she had everything.
Brad:They were great about funny funny yeah. Yeah God, I never thought that being funny could be a fucking coping mechanism, Don't worry guys, brad and I are fine. I am fucking funny Sometimes, sometimes, and I that kind of walks us right into that. That next chapter, which is a what does she call it Hold? Is it the hold hands? Yeah, hold hands with strangers. And we're kind of skip Mostly over the chapter that she wrote it's a lot of stories.
Brad:It's a lot of stories, but it's Common humanity and she really emphasizes the Like joy and pain. Joy and pain and the sharing with each other are Are what connect us. So, if you look at, the one that I like to go back to is a natural disaster, crisis, because it's the, it's the easiest, least political thing that can bind a community together.
Dylan:Look at what happens to a community after a natural disaster yeah door-to-door. Everyone has all hands on. I would never talk to you before.
Brad:But what do you need? That's, and I think by and large, as a, at least as a country, I think, yeah, that's a pretty good indicator. I mean, we may be Slightly biased in the Midwest, we have a little bit more of a natural propensity for that possibly. But I think in general, that's yeah you know, oh, oh, sorry, didn't see you there.
Dylan:We don't need a. We don't need to talk about the floods.
Brad:Oh yeah, we don't need to talk about floods. So that's, that's how we can Kind of reconnect With each other. And then, when you have that connection, you go back to the previous chapter and having conversations become a little bit easier, because you have, you already know something outside of the conversation that you're having about that person. You already, you already know that you are connected in a little bit more of a visceral way and Then it makes you, I think, a little more curious or care about that person or whatever we funny example, regbry.
Dylan:For you listeners, the the five that don't know regbry is the registries annual great bike ride across Iowa. So it's a bike ride last full week of July I don't know that acronym the morning register, wow. So it started in the 70s and, um, two journalists a photojournalist and a journalist wanted to Showcase Iowa at its finest, so they just set off and they put an ad in the paper and Like 50 people showed up and then the next year they're like that's really fun, we should do it again. And then like 300 people showed up and then it just, it just naturally evolved to the 10,000 people it is now.
Dylan:But I ride with a couple teams. I have a team we're like 20 or 30 and then the other teams all are 30 to 50 and you know, I would say I ride with anywhere from 100 and 150 people that are like my really it's funny to say that but my really good friends on right, right, okay, there's a hundred to 150 and the nice part about that number is you can kind of pick where you want to ride During that day and you, you're gonna find somebody a long route, right?
Dylan:Oh, I've got a riding partner, but anyway the point here is I've got people from the West Coast, people from the East Coast, people from the Midwest and there are the leftist liberals. They're the most right. Trump conspiracy theory Everything is corrupt in the world. We have to, you know, fight our own liberties. Atheists to the most religious, and it's hilarious because by Today's standards and I don't think of rag bra existed as a commonality between these people, these people would hate each other, but they're such good friends and they all enjoy each other so much because they have a A shared. Without Reg Bratt, these people wouldn't be able to coexist. You happy with my line? You happy with my line? No, you're just gonna fucking do this.
Brad:I am gonna do this.
Dylan:Everyone needs to know the truth and the raw. We're not, we're not. We're not together, I mean we're not, we're not fake. People need to know our trials and tribulations as fake podcasters. Okay, so what happened? There is.
Brad:I realized.
Dylan:You just waste more of my time. I realized that the memory card had run out of memory and so it cut us off, as by today's standards. But going back to that, to really kind of tie that off, commonalities between parties in getting out of their bunkers, as we were saying, getting out of there, what were the bunker terms?
Brad:again, I'm sorry, yeah literally getting going into the middle and that.
Dylan:Going into the middle.
Brad:You can think of Reg Bratt, as you have this spot over here. This because you're literally going across the state, so you have these bunkers on opposite sides and it's this group of people that's traveling through the middle which is the wilderness and the argument.
Dylan:It is, in essence, traveling through the wilderness together because there isn't a lot of support on Reg Bratt. Yes, there's me, towns there's, etc. But if you don't want to ride your bike and you don't have to, no well, you don't. This year was so crowded I think the average SAG vehicle wait time was eight hours this year. What's a SAG vehicle Like? They have a van that has a trailer for bikes on the back and you get to ride in it. You can, and it is very uncomfortable.
Brad:And this year was about 110 degrees, yeah, so that van probably smelled great, if you could even get one.
Dylan:I mean, you really have no choice but to just bear it and we keep moving forward Is this a business opportunity for me. No, oh, you do not want anything to do with this, okay.
Dylan:But anyway the point being commonalities with people will be able to help bridge gaps. There are people I was kind of talking about the story before we realized that we weren't on the air anymore in the traditional sense of the word. On the air, I've seen people tell each other hey, you're crossing boundaries right now. I need you to pull back a little bit. Let's just agree to disagree and let's just move on, and we'll fight another day. And there's something to be said about that, which is I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm not saying I'm right, I'm just saying not right now, and let's just appreciate each other in the moment.
Brad:But that is when you say commonality. It goes beyond that, because it is an actual shared experience. It's not just something that, like me and you, met on an airplane and we're like, oh, you ride bikes, I ride bikes. Open bar dude, you know that's, you are going through an experience together, and that is something a little bit different than just having a common trait Pain and joy.
Dylan:And weird senses because it is a fun activity. But my tire popped. I'm at the bottom of a hill 10 miles outside of town, no support. I've got my buddy next to me who's in the 100 degree heat with me, and now we need to change this tire and we only have one tube and we only have one air cartridge and it better work, because if it doesn't, it's going to be really, really hard. And then it becomes joyous after that. You have that story like dude, we're on the brink and so it's that shared pain. It might not be the pain that you know you want to fight for, that you have this virtue for, but you have a shared moment of hardship, yes. And then you get to. You get to relish in the joy of the, the con, or, you know, of the, of the survival and the success afterwards.
Brad:Yeah, I don't know, there's something about that pain aspect of it. Right, you can't just Can't be all fun, I mean, I guess you have to have that.
Dylan:You have to have that moment where you're like I've hit rock bottom and and then Reg Brat truly becomes Reg Brat afterwards.
Brad:I don't want to say rock bottom and like, oh, I'm doing in the corner and but also if it was Perfect writing conditions, it's not meaningful.
Dylan:All downhill, it's not hard.
Brad:It doesn't. It doesn't do the same thing. My example was like a go-rock challenge was similar to that, although many hours less, so it's just more intensity over time, or?
Brad:orders of magnitude more on the intensity side over shorter periods of time, whereas we're less intensity over longer periods of time, but doing doing those same kind of things on your own which, if you look at a go-rock challenge versus their selection process, when you're going at it alone, it looks a lot more like insanity than when you're doing it with a team and the, the, the being in pain together and sharing in that and then overcoming and accomplishing goals. There's something it's fine. There's something to that it's fine. So why it has to be yeah, I don't want to say it's fun, because I don't want to say it's real, it's, it's, it, forges, it forges something deeper than the superficial.
Brad:Yeah, in both yourself and a team sense.
Dylan:It takes away a lot of the if you will, you have to go into the wilderness because it takes away a lot of yourself defense mechanisms. You become you. You become raw. You don't have the energy to fake it. You don't have the energy to keep the good smile on your face.
Brad:You get angry, honestly you know, some people get angry. Yeah, honestly, you just accept.
Dylan:This is where I am, this is who I'm with. All right, and the only way forward is forward, forward. This is the only way out is forward, yeah.
Brad:It's, it's another, it's another evolution, it's another hill, it's another 20 miles, it's another flat tire, whatever, whatever it is. Eventually you get to the point where your mind just goes.
Dylan:Okay, I'm here.
Brad:I'm here and all these people are here with me and this is what we're doing, and then let's go do it. And then, somewhere in there, you find this sense of joy where, in a sadistic way, it becomes fun because it's it's within the group, because everybody else is experiencing it with you. You, you can't go back and tell other people that story and have them go. Oh, that sounds like fun.
Dylan:I know exactly how you felt, because nobody says that. I know exactly what you're feeling.
Brad:Nobody says that that sounds stupid. Why would you want to do that?
Dylan:There are. There are times when you're just at your end. I don't want to be here, but I also don't want to be anywhere else, because if I'm not here, I'm never going to understand the stories they tell me and I'm going to get a heap of shit. And it'll always be. You can tell me the story a million times, but the feelings will never be there for me. And there's that FOMO of that mutual, those mutual emotions.
Brad:Yeah, they're like for the go-rock. It didn't feel like FOMO, it felt like you were just trying to keep a sense of pride in the beginning. That's all yeah, because and that's not how everything starts out Like hiking, climbing, some of those kind of things those start out fun, right, you get a ways into it and then, and then some realities hit you and you got to. You got to figure out what you're going to do with the go-rock thing. It's a sledgehammer to start. That's that's kind of the whole point.
Brad:And this was like when I did it, I did it with a group of people from a gym, so people that were in good shape, I mean by all accounts. And then you start off doing all sorts of movements that you do not do in a gym or daily life, or even a really fucked up kinky life. You don't do them, but you do them there and 10 minutes in you're thinking I have to. This is 12 hours and I am fucking smoked at 10 minutes and your brain just goes no, no, I want to do this, I want to do this, and as long as nobody quits, nobody would quit. I think if one person would have quit, probably half of us would have dropped in that first 20, 30 minutes yeah.
Brad:I wasn't the first one, no you don't want to be the first one, and so it starts as that and and then it it proceeds to get hard in a different sense, I guess.
Brad:But, like for me, it was just okay. Heavy objects, long distances, let's go, that's, that's where I want to be at. And then when we got to that place, it was okay. Now I'm good. It's not in a comfort zone, but it's a lot more about I think it was a lot more about what I was anticipating and so I was, I felt, comfortable with that.
Dylan:So I think, I think the term evolution is good, because so many people look at the mountain as a whole instead of just the one foot in front of the other. And that is true for a lot of things in life, and it's never let yourself quit in the middle. Always make yourself finish that evolution, because once you finish that evolution, you get that little bit of, you get that little, you get that little high. You're like, oh, I did something. And then tell yourself, okay, next evolution, we can think about it. But if you never give yourself the option which is really, really hard- but in a literal sense.
Brad:The only time I would disagree with that is mountain climbing.
Brad:Well yes, that just because you'll die. Yeah, you can think about it in Ed Vistures, who's one of the guys that has climbed all the 8,000 meter peaks with no oxygen Headset early on. His reaching the summit is optional, but reaching the start, like coming back down, is mandatory and that's the sense where, at least right off hand, that's the only time I can think about. Obviously that's real danger. There's not real danger in me deciding not to do elephant walks or continuing to do them or whatever.
Dylan:I guess Mistaken mistaken it could be Ravdo Mistaken for a 19 year old rat boy. Yeah, Do the quad doing his elephant walks.
Brad:Yeah, that's what we look like, but the shared experience was. That's what it was about.
Dylan:So to really tie that section up, don't pull the ego out, don't create the false dichotomies. Move in a little bit closer, try to try to understand and maybe share some experiences together. In person In person.
Brad:In person.
Dylan:Social media trolling.
Brad:Go to concerts, go to funerals, go to outdoor.
Dylan:Funerals is your number two on that list.
Brad:Well, it's the joy and pain.
Dylan:It's joy and pain. Ricky Gervais is new comedy specials out, yeah. And his one of his opening lines is I love funerals because all the hope is gone and it's just final. He goes, but he's like everyone's going to die. There's some solace in that, but weddings are full of hope and whimsy and it's just not fun.
Brad:Not my wedding, so, but yeah, funerals is definitely on there. And I say that because there there is some sort of visceral connection that you feel that you can feel pain with another person. You don't feel their pain, but you share a sense of loss.
Dylan:It's a very centering if anything, it's a very centering event. I don't know if centering is the right word, because they can definitely tilt or kill people, tilt people off their axis, but there's a lot of commonality, I guess, in the sense of pain.
Brad:Yeah, Even in the sense of not even sharing their pain. I've been to some before where I've hugged a person and wished that I could absorb some of their pain. Let me shoulder the burden for a hot second. Take some of that off just a little bit.
Dylan:That's the fix, right. Yeah, that's why you're so depressed. It's quite possible you want to talk about it.
Brad:I don't think it probably worked.
Dylan:Okay.
Brad:But maybe it helped me cope.
Dylan:Yeah.
Brad:Maybe it was more for me.
Dylan:It seems selfish. Right on par with you, I got you Shannon, can't be perfect.
Brad:So we end with this idea of there's a lot of dichotomy.
Dylan:It is a paradox. There's a lot of you need to be this, but also this. Yeah, I think the first one right there strong back soft, front wild heart.
Brad:How do you have a strong back?
Dylan:and a soft front.
Brad:What is it?
Dylan:I'm vulnerable on one side, I'm strong on the other. It's like yes.
Brad:And that's what she ends this whole chapter with is how do you do all of this you? You have to have all of these things. You can't just be armored up all the time Like you can't just be this strong, immobile, unseen person. That doesn't work, it's inauthentic. And you also can't just be weak all the time and let people just toss you around and not be able to stand up for the things that you believe in and the things that make you you so she last section.
Dylan:I'm just sure should we go in the last chapter with the name of it so people can follow along.
Brad:Well, that's what this is. In a strong backs, soft front, wild heart standing alone. No, okay, I don't like it.
Dylan:Okay, I don't know.
Brad:You have the, you have the paperback copy. Yeah, strong back, soft front.
Dylan:You title the section standing alone.
Brad:Don't ask me why I do things. I don't like it, okay.
Dylan:Sorry, audience Strong backs off front wild heart Wild heart, that's it. Yeah, that's. That's all you need to know. There's no more to expand upon than that.
Brad:No, you, just you only read the. The one bad thing, the standing alone part, but it's the. The wild heart maybe needs a little bit more explanation.
Dylan:I think the soft front, the strong I mean all of it the strong back being, you have to be willing to take on the burden of going out into the wilderness.
Brad:Yeah, being the like the whack-a-mole, you got to stand up to the punches. You're going to take punches.
Dylan:You're going to take punches. Soft front meaning Vulnerable Moving in, vulnerable being able to move in, be closer with somebody.
Brad:Expose your own weaknesses. Expose your own weaknesses.
Dylan:And then you know, let's expand upon the wild heart now.
Brad:Use this particular spot. She says a wild heart is awake to the pain in the world but does not diminish its own pain. A wild heart can beat with gratitude and lean into pure joy without denying the struggle in the world. That is hard for people. It's.
Brad:I have problems with it when you think about, from from terms of empathy, and struggles that other people are dealing with that you're not dealing with, and your tendency to minimize what's happening in your own life. And what she's saying is no, you, you have to be able to experience the real joy in your life and and appreciate that and not discount it or shy away from it. And you can do that without having to deny other struggles in the world. So you can realize that life is hard for a lot of people, while still being able to experience the joy in your own life, and also probably vice versa, that other people have it really good, and being able to understand that you have some circumstances that need dealt with. So it it's not again, it's it's getting away from that either or thing. If everybody's not happy, then I'm not going to be happy. So like, no, that's not.
Dylan:Painting outside the numbers.
Brad:No, don't do that. That's what the lines are for. Okay, stay in the lines, stay in the lines. No, don't stay in the lines. But is it yeah, is it hard? Yeah, it's hard. She also says today, I choose to. Today, I choose not to acknowledge what's happening around me because it's too hard. The goal is to get to the place where we can think I am aware of what's happening, the part I play and how I can make it better. And that doesn't mean I have to deny the joy in my life.
Dylan:So there is a people feel it. This one always interests me because I think I'm a lot like you where if I receive a compliment, if I receive something positive, my my, my first reaction is to to minimize it. And you know, oh, you know, I was really lucky, I was really fortunate, this or that, and and not and it's something I work on, which is I just because something is being said positive about me, doesn't make me insincere or not humble. You can accept it, say thank you, but then also acknowledge that you're very fortunate in life. You don't have to try to be like oh well, I just got lucky or I just and there's, I see a lot of people do it and I. We've almost created a standard in society where you're not. It's almost a double edge sword You're supposed to compliment people but you're not supposed to receive it, because if you receive it, that makes you, that makes you not humble and that's not okay, I remember specifically a girl in high school that was really smart and worked.
Brad:I think she worked at it. It wasn't like wasn't natural God give him. I mean, she was naturally smart, but she also, there's an IQ level you're born with.
Brad:You didn't get a hundred percent on every single thing you ever did by not doing any work, and it was exactly like that. It was like, oh you know, good, nice work, good job. Oh yeah, I don't know. I just I guess I got lucky on that one or whatever. Like, just just why are you not proud of, of doing well, I'll get it. There is definitely a sense in high school where it's where he didn't want to be too good.
Dylan:That was you'd be in the wilderness, and the wilderness in high school is almost scarier than a wilderness in the in adulthood. That was definitely a.
Brad:So let me, let me end with these two things. Freak getting the A's. Yeah, a hundred on everything. Yeah, cause this kind of touches on that a little bit. So she says stop walking through the world looking for confirmation that you don't belong. You will always find it because you've made that your mission. Stop scouring people's spaces for evidence that you're not enough. You will always find it because you've made that your goal. True belonging and self-worth are not goods. We don't negotiate their value with the world. The truth about who we are lives in our hearts. Our call to courage is to protect our wild heart against constant evaluation, especially our own. No one belongs here more than you, so it's not just so. Part of the wild heart I think she talks about is is the scars that you acquire from being in the wilderness and the things that you endure and and and growing and learning from those things.
Brad:But some of those scars are from yourself. It's not just from outside sources.
Dylan:You put rules on yourself that nobody's ever put on you. Yeah, that's a very interesting concept in itself, but how many times have you lived by a rule that's implicit to you, that's implicit by you, that you think other people are putting on you, but it's never actually been laid upon?
Brad:People do it all the time.
Dylan:Yeah, I love it.
Brad:My son does it about me all the time.
Dylan:We've talked about this. Yeah, dad is mad at me. He's doing this and I need to do this, and you're like. Whoever said that, man. I haven't said shit. I didn't say shit.
Brad:I didn't do any of this, so she she leaves us with this, and this reminded me of a, a breaking bad quote. But I don't think I'm going to do it, because it's tacky, it's tacky. It is. We're not tacky because it really goes the whole other way of what she's trying to do.
Dylan:As I say, we're not tacky. My immediate, my immediate trigger is I want to hit the air horn button, but he doesn't know which one it is.
Brad:So this, this is how she ends the book. I'll leave you with this. There will be times when standing alone feels too hard, too scary, and will doubt our ability to make our way through the uncertainty. Someone, somewhere, will say don't do it, you don't have what it takes to survive the wilderness. This is when you reach deep down into your wild heart and remind yourself I am the wilderness. So take that quote and extrapolate it and see if you can think of what quote I was thinking of from a popular TV show. It's just you, man, this is me. It's just you. Come on. That had to pop into your head. No, not at all. Maybe Great. So that was Bernay Brown's Braving the Wilderness and the read, and it's definitely one of those books that I don't recommend you read it and forget it. I recommend you read it and highlight it and go back and try to put into practice some of these things. Start by noticing them in your life. It's worked in line Absolutely. I've noticed the false dichotomies. Oh yeah, a bunch.
Dylan:I think that I think that's the biggest. I don't want to say that's the biggest takeaway from the book, but I think that's the easiest to recognize the either or you're either with me or against me.
Brad:And it's the easiest to start to combat against. It's the low hanging fruit.
Dylan:If you start to understand that and you start to make an effort to not do that, it's amazing how much easier life becomes because you don't create this conflict, that either, or conflict you create, causes, I think deep emotional chasms that are harder to repair, and I think that is just low hanging fruit. Or it's like if I can just not have the hubris, or I can, I can, I can. It is what I move my ego for five seconds and just go. Okay, I understand where you're coming from. All right, I don't quite understand where you're coming from, but I'm going to take some time to try to understand it and be patient, which I have no patience, by the way, so that's very hard for me.
Brad:But if you can recognize that and then start walking into that nuanced area and we've talked so many times about how do you have hard conversations that's a good way to start it, because the hard conversation typically starts as heavily opposed to sides Right, like how am I going to wade into this with this person?
Dylan:Yeah, most people enter those conversations with the immovable object and the unstoppable force which is just going to create catastrophe. It's better to go in with a little bit more surgical execution.
Brad:Yeah, the nuanced understandings of, and also, it's not an argument to win.
Dylan:And when we say nuanced, it doesn't mean you need to know everything. It doesn't mean you need to know anything, you just need to be curious.
Brad:You just need to know that there's not probably only two options to the entire thing that you're talking about.
Dylan:And the other thing is people confuse choices with one good choice and one bad choice. Just because there are options or choices doesn't mean any of them are good sometimes, by the way, there's not always a best case scenario, so you need to stop thinking that way. Sometimes as well, that's both. These options unfortunately suck, but we need to decide together which way we're going into that. That's a hard one when you realize that there's not always a good option. There's just meh and meh, meh.
Brad:Yeah, and also realize that if there aren't good, easy options, maybe the two people having that conversation don't really need to have that conversation.
Dylan:Yeah, I mean, there's times though, it's medical emergencies, etc. There's always.
Brad:But I was just talking about. If you're talking about something that's so complex that even if you two were experts, you wouldn't get very far.
Dylan:Yeah, that's true.
Brad:It's not worth blowing up relationships over. Yeah.
Dylan:So all right, 80% solid, unless you're Dylan.
Brad:What you love blowing stuff up. It's been a long time Never convicted Of blowing up a relationship.
Dylan:Physical objects Not intangibles. Previous guilty as charged. Exactly, I've never, I've never self sabotaged my life so very longer. Obviously a third episode. Thank you for joining our three part series. This one was really fun for me. I don't know about you, no, miserable. Okay, I'm happy to hear that, but I'm glad we shared the pain together. I had a great time Like that. Yeah, you're an idiot. All right, thanks for listening. Thanks, guys, you're still here.
Brad:It's over, go home.
Dylan:Thanks.