Ep. 01: "Keep Moving and Get Out of the Way"
John: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, how are you?
John: Hello, Merlin.
Merlin: I'm late again.
John: It's all right.
John: I'm usually late to everything, so this is my just desserts.
John: Are you?
Merlin: You don't seem like a late person.
John: It's not that I'm late.
John: It's that I don't get there on time.
Merlin: Okay.
John: And that's because I don't leave the house with enough time to get where I'm going.
John: And I don't think that's the same as being late.
John: I think that is a question that has more to do with how you perceive space and time.
John: So it's more of a science problem.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Yeah, I mean, the thing I was, in order for you to be late, you would have to have some interest in other people.
Merlin: I think.
Merlin: What would that be like?
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I mean, there's books probably, Wikipedia.
Merlin: But like, if you were late, you would be kind of conscious of the fact that there were other people that had things they needed to do.
Merlin: And I don't think you and I suffer from that.
Merlin: I think it's something that holds a lot of people back.
Merlin: They're constantly thinking like, how will this affect other people?
John: Right.
John: Who cares is my first thought.
Merlin: I mean, I assume that they think that.
Merlin: I wouldn't know.
John: Yeah, right.
John: Well, other people, right?
John: They're the problem.
Merlin: Oh, clearly.
Merlin: Yeah, I mean, you know, this would be a breeze, you know, if it weren't for all those other people.
John: Well, this is the thing.
John: I leave the house.
John: If I have somewhere to go, I leave the house in plenty of time to get there.
John: If there weren't other people clogging the roads, necessitating stoplights,
John: If there were not other people clogging the roads, there would not need to be stoplights.
Merlin: Clogging your roads.
John: My roads.
John: I have a sense of how long it takes for me to get from here, say, to the University of Washington.
John: And that takes nine minutes.
John: But if there are other people on the roads, which there so often are, then it takes anywhere from 15 to 20 minutes.
John: which is infuriating.
John: So I usually leave here with nine minutes to spare, sometimes 10 if I feel like I want to take a stroll between my car and the building.
John: It's never enough time.
Merlin: People-related delays.
Merlin: I struggle with it.
Merlin: I used to be a terminally late person, and I spent many years of my life with a, God bless her, a partner who was terminally late.
Merlin: Like, just crazy, like, you're supposed to be there at dinner for six people, and you arrive, like, as dessert is being served.
Merlin: Like, offensively late.
Merlin: And I became sensitive about it because I felt badly, and it's nothing against her, but that's just, that was, like, that was, you know, her flaw.
Merlin: It was a flaw that I shared, and together it was terrible.
Merlin: That's how a lot of relationships get weird, right?
Merlin: You're both terrible at the same thing.
Merlin: And now I'm really sensitive about it, but I haven't gotten that great at it.
Merlin: I feel like I do what you do, I think.
Merlin: In my head, I've got an idea of the greatest conceivable time I have ever made
Merlin: to do this thing.
John: Yeah, right.
Merlin: You must do this a lot.
Merlin: You're in your big blue van.
Merlin: You're driving around.
Merlin: You've got to go from place to place, show to show.
Merlin: You must have some idea in your head.
Merlin: Well, it would never take more than five hours to get to Austin.
Merlin: One time I made it in two hours, so therefore I'll probably be there in about an hour and a half.
Merlin: You may not do that because you've got to do it for your job, but I feel like I do that all the time.
Merlin: I think, oh, I've got time to get a coffee or I've got time to go stop by the office and do this thing.
Merlin: Right.
John: Or in my case, I have time to sleep for 20 more minutes.
Merlin: And take a stroll.
John: I'm very curious about something you said a moment ago, which is that two people that do the same things badly, that's how relationships get weird.
John: That resonated with me.
Merlin: Is that antithetical to your experience?
John: I'm not sure.
Merlin: I think, I mean, I haven't thought about it, but I would guess... Up until just this moment, it's never occurred to me that I did anything bad in any of my relationships.
John: No.
Merlin: Well, I think that's a core competency for you.
Merlin: Yeah, exactly.
John: And now I'm wondering, wow, I always thought it was that she did everything bad.
John: Now I'm starting to consider the possibility that maybe...
Merlin: Yeah, well, I mean, Coke's not making sailboats, right?
Merlin: They say, look, we were the Coke people.
Merlin: We make the Coke.
Merlin: Let other people make the sailboats.
Merlin: Why would you cook sailboats?
Merlin: You're talking about Coca-Cola?
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: Oh.
Merlin: I'm just saying.
John: I think the cocaine people do make sailboats.
Merlin: Oh, sure.
Merlin: And like prop planes.
John: Yeah, well, or at least they re-engineer sailboats.
Merlin: I should think about this more, but there's probably something to it.
Merlin: I always felt like if you could...
Merlin: Well, the good thing to say would be be terrible at different things is a good idea.
Merlin: But I've always believed that you should both be able to mostly put up with the same stuff.
Merlin: I think that's helpful.
Merlin: But the problem is, like, for example, if you're both messy, then there's never any countervailing force to make the house stop being messy.
Merlin: It becomes synergistically messy.
John: Right, but the problem with that is if one person's messy and one person's clean, then you're at war in a different way.
John: I mean, I've felt this about introversion and extroversion because, I think you and I have talked about this, but I'm a very introverted person despite being an entertainer.
John: And for many years, I thought about an entertainer.
John: Did you snicker at entertainer?
Merlin: I find you extremely entertaining, especially when you're off stage.
Merlin: But no, it's the introvert part.
John: No, no, no.
John: I think I am an introvert.
John: And the definition I use, the description I use of that is that
John: if you if you find a room full of people no matter how much you're enjoying the experience or enjoying their company if you find a room full of people ultimately draining and you want to and you need to get away and get alone in order to recharge okay
John: then you're an introvert compared to somebody who finds a room full of people invigorating and they hate to be alone and they want to be in other people's company and they find that's how they charge their batteries.
John: That's my definition of it.
John: It's a little self-serving.
Merlin: No, I mean, I would want to hear a little how you contrast that with a psychotic loner.
Merlin: Or sociopathic loner.
John: I'd say that that person was an introvert also.
John: Sure.
John: But in any case, I tried for a long time to only date other introverted people because I didn't like extroverts making demands on my time and space.
John: But I found that when you're in a relationship, even with another introvert, the person who is most introverted...
John: becomes the introvert in the relationship.
John: And even another introvert will exhibit extroverted tendencies in relationship to the other person, right?
John: So this person who would normally be like, oh, leave me alone.
John: I kind of just want to be by myself is suddenly in the posture of like, why don't you ever want to do anything?
John: Or why don't you ever want to just hang out?
John: And why don't we ever...
Merlin: It seems like on a molecular level, it seems like there should be some kind of canceling out going on where if you've got a very messy person who's with a very clean person, I think a molecular scientist would say that therefore you would have an average clean house on the face of it.
Merlin: But I think that in practice that's not the case.
John: Yeah, relationship and human beings consistently fail to be scientific.
John: You know, like, and that's the problem with psychology.
John: Psychology keeps, for 50 years, has presented itself as a science.
John: And there's really no, there's no demonstrable proof that any of it is working.
John: It's just, it's just a lot of, it's just a lot of jabber jaws.
Merlin: You think it's a lot of, you think it's a make-believe science?
John: I don't know if it's a science as much as it is like, so where's the line between a psychologist and a minister?
Merlin: Or you'd have to ask the secretary.
John: Yeah, the psychologist is using the same techniques of talking and listening, but they're undergirding it with some sense that they have a scientific toolbox that
John: They're listening, but they're listening with a scientific toolbox rather than listening with compassion or something.
Merlin: Oh, I see what you mean.
Merlin: But you're talking about like a clinical or like a practicing psychologist as opposed to like a scholarly psychologist.
Merlin: You're saying, how's that different from a minister?
Merlin: A minister is somebody who comes in and is a student of the mind and the heart to try and give people comfort.
Merlin: And so you're talking psychologists more in terms of a therapist, like somebody who would help you feel better.
John: Well, but what is an academic psychologist if not just someone teaching practical psychologists?
Merlin: I guess.
Merlin: I don't know.
John: It seems to me that for many, many years, the whole premise of the mental health industry was based on a reading of Freud.
John: Freud.
John: And people spent decades saying that a lot of women's insecurity was based on the fact that they had penis envy.
John: And then one day we decided that that was not true.
John: In fact, it was silly.
John: But we didn't throw the Freud out with the bathwater.
John: No.
John: And now we think that everybody has...
John: that people's insecurity is based on, I don't know, my God, the bookstores are full of... There are shelves of books talking about your insecurity and the root causes of it.
Merlin: What's funny, though, is if you go back, you look at Aristotle or Descartes or a lot of those heavy hitters back in the day, people who laid the groundwork for, obviously, philosophy, but really also for science.
Merlin: I mean, it's not what we would call science today, but back then, philosophy was, I think, seen as part of science.
Merlin: It was a way of understanding...
Merlin: you know, how the mind worked, how the universe worked.
Merlin: And it seems like a lot of it was based on these physicalities, things like eventually would come to me, things like humors and stuff like that.
Merlin: But there were all of these like Theodoric of York kind of ways to explain based on the physical things, like why the mental things happen.
Merlin: And then the funny thing with the Freud stuff is it seemed to more and more, yeah, you could say, well, this woman's, the reason this woman is hysterical from the Greek is because she has a uterus.
Merlin: So clearly she's crazy.
John: If I had a uterus, I would be hysterical too.
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: And she wants a weanus on top of it.
Merlin: That's awkward.
Merlin: But then it's funny because now we're back around to the body stuff where it is very much, it seems to me, much more about pipes and wires.
John: Yeah, it's just her black bile is rising up in her craw.
Merlin: What about bucolic?
Merlin: Now, I get confused because I think I've read too many reviews of REM albums, early REM albums.
Merlin: There's some words where I'm not sure if they mean bodily humors or ways of describing a meadow.
Merlin: Now, quick pop quiz.
Merlin: Bucolic.
Merlin: What is bucolic?
Merlin: Is bucolic one of the humors?
John: No, bucolic is like a pastoral setting.
John: Okay, that was my second one.
Merlin: Pastoral.
Merlin: Pastoral is not a humor.
John: No.
Merlin: Okay, what about phlegmatic?
Merlin: Phlegmatic is, yes.
John: That's the phlegm.
Merlin: What about birds-esque?
John: Birds-esque.
Merlin: Yeah, like playing in the style of the birds.
John: No, I think that's in the same family as bucolic.
John: Okay.
John: It's birds-esque.
Merlin: You know, that's the thing.
Merlin: I understand why everybody wants to explain everything.
Merlin: I think you could argue that you and I would also like to try and explain everything.
Merlin: But you know what it is with the science?
Merlin: It's all the certainty.
Merlin: I'm troubled by the certainty.
Merlin: To me, good science should always be going, but, you know, I could be wrong.
John: Yeah.
John: See, I'm guilty of that.
John: I'm guilty of using psychology to explain myself and other people
John: With a fair degree of certainty.
John: And I think I keep in the back of my mind the constant idea that I'm just guessing.
John: But I don't always let the other person know that I think that what I'm saying is just a theory.
John: I say it as though I really believe that it's true.
Merlin: What's the point?
Merlin: That's good writing.
Merlin: Good writing.
John: Exactly.
Merlin: Good writing is, you know.
John: I inhabit the viewpoint.
John: That's correct.
Merlin: That's correct.
John: But when I'm sitting across from somebody saying, you know what your fucking problem is?
John: Yes.
John: It's a little bit harder for them to see that I'm just playing a character.
John: And in this case, it's the character of somebody who knows what their fucking problem is.
Merlin: That's a good point.
Merlin: It's a good point in the sense of that is a really big problem with you.
John: But I think it's a problem with the world.
John: I mean, like I say, I'm still irritated.
Merlin: That's the second one, just if you're curious.
Merlin: That's the other problem with you.
Merlin: But then when I say problem, I really mean opportunity steak.
Merlin: Yeah, opportunity steak.
Merlin: I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you, John.
Merlin: How is that a problem with the rest of the world?
John: The problem with the rest of the world is that the rest of the world is not listening carefully to me.
John: No, the problem is that there are a lot of people who put their dumb theories down, advance their dumb theories in their dumb books, but they don't, in order to sell a book, you don't say on the last page, but maybe everything I just wrote is just a dumb theory that I thought up.
John: So think for yourself, love the author.
Merlin: There's not that much money in saying, but I could be wrong.
John: Right.
John: So these books go out and gullible people read them and they think, oh, now I know.
John: And they don't know anything.
John: Yeah.
John: Or, you know, or what it is, again, it's a toolbox and it's only as good as The Carpenter.
John: Your toolbox is only as good as your carpentry.
Merlin: This is the same toolbox that psychologists are listening with.
Merlin: I have a little piece of paper here.
Merlin: I want to make sure I'm keeping all these straight.
Merlin: I think it's problematic.
Merlin: I think all of this is problematic.
Merlin: I think more people should be like John Roderick and just say that a thing is a thing.
Merlin: But on the other hand, I'm also... That's my motto.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: Service work.
Merlin: The thing that troubles me, I think, with a lot of this science stuff is not science.
Merlin: I mean, anybody who's out there doing straight science, a lot of them, well, first of all, they're probably working on boner drugs, a lot of them.
Merlin: God bless them.
Merlin: Thank God.
Merlin: But I mean, if you're doing straight science, you really are doing a kind of existential improv where you're trying stuff, you're seeing what happens, you're saying, well, here's what we know.
Merlin: And part of being a good scientist, it seems to me, is to be able to go, well, yeah, yeah, yeah, but here's the thing we said, but it doesn't mean all these other things.
Merlin: There's not...
Merlin: This ergo thing that I, because I said that, then necessarily all these other things are that way.
Merlin: That seems, feels like good science says a very specific thing based on evidence in context.
Merlin: And I feel like that context gets left out, you know, and this is why so much of the quote unquote research that you hear on, you know, in newspapers and NPR is so goofy a lot of the time.
Merlin: First of all, it's been strained and drained through all these different sources.
Merlin: And a lot of times, I bet the people who conducted the primary research would go, how in the hell did this ever become, like, don't use aluminum pans anymore?
Merlin: Yeah, right.
Merlin: I don't know if that's true.
Merlin: But, like, I don't know what the psychology stuff, it's hard.
Merlin: And it seems like it's almost like, what, like optometrists and dentists and stuff.
Merlin: It's like, or chiropodists, like you...
Merlin: The further you are from serious science, the more serious you become, the more you demand.
Merlin: Of course, with the height of this being PhDs, demanding that they be called doctor, right?
Merlin: Yeah, right.
Merlin: God forbid you don't call somebody with a PhD doctor.
John: Arrogant bastards.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: It says it right on the diploma.
John: I feel like real scientists are people who are combining baking powder and vinegar and making volcanoes.
John: And as you stray from that core science, the original science of volcano manufacturing...
John: It just gets into fruity pebbles out there in every direction.
John: And in all honesty, I think that adulthood is a process of becoming comfortable with ambiguity.
John: And I know this about you, that you are comfortable with a certain amount of ambiguity.
John: Hmm.
John: Yeah, I know.
John: I was trying to be nice.
John: You're drawing that out.
John: I know you're not comfortable with ambiguity, but I aspire to be comfortable with a certain amount of ambiguity because I know that the life that I perceive is really a television show that I've been living in since I was a little kid.
John: And so I don't want to get caught masturbating.
Merlin: Because you're an introvert.
John: Well...
John: Being an introvert is not easy.
John: It's really not.
John: And I know a lot of the people listening to this podcast are introverts because that is by definition who listens to podcasts.
John: People who like to hear other people's voices only through their car stereo speakers rather than having people sitting in the car with them talking to them.
Merlin: where you come up with this stuff but it's just a theory I think in some ways the people who are most loudly saying things like in our case we're not we are scientists of a kind I imagine you know scientists not in the sense of science but in the sense of you know social intercourse
John: Yeah, we're skyentists.
Merlin: That's good.
Merlin: That is good.
Merlin: We're blue skyentists.
Merlin: We understand how things should be.
Merlin: We understand how people should behave.
Merlin: We understand the Leibnizian best of possible worlds that should exist.
John: Yeah, and we're just here to help.
Merlin: We're the pan glossovers.
Merlin: I got nothing.
Merlin: So the problem is, though, that sometimes we're the people who will put things most strongly.
Merlin: But you know what?
Merlin: It's part of – I think you got your copy.
Merlin: This is The Contrarian's Creed.
John: I wrote it.
Merlin: Where if you can find—you know, I invented sarcasm.
Merlin: If you can find any hole in any of it, it doesn't matter whether you agree with it or not, you've just got to go explore the hole, if you don't mind my saying.
Merlin: And I think that's a big part of it, is you or I might say the most ridiculous, bombastic thing in the world just to say that thing, but then you're okay arguing about it and eventually going, hmm, maybe it is this other thing.
Merlin: And what bugs me is the personal brand stuff where you're not allowed to – if you're going to be on brand and you're going to be that guy who put out that useless book or you're going to be this person who's putting out this useless study, you're going to be harmed if anything about it is shown to be incomplete, inconsistent, or untrue.
Merlin: And then your whole world falls apart because – you know what I mean?
Merlin: And that's the thing is now you're dug in.
Merlin: Now you're that guy who's got to defend that until he's dead.
John: I feel like, in a way, that's true.
John: That's true of liberalism now.
John: Or that's true of the whole liberal half of this country who are so on brand.
John: And over the years, the brand has changed.
John: And every new addition to it
John: The liberals feel like they need to embrace it and canonize it.
John: And after a while, the brand is so ungainly, it's so rife with internal contradictions that liberalism has become meaningless, or if not meaningless, at least it's a multi-headed hydra that can't possibly live, it can't possibly subsist.
John: And you contrast it against
Merlin: conservatism which is just as balkanized but this isn't just so i'm clear this is not going to become about the tea party right oh you don't want to talk about the tea party is this a bridge to the tea party
John: No, I wasn't trying to bridge.
Merlin: I don't want to interrupt you.
John: But this is, you know, this stuff is on my mind.
John: Liberalism is on my mind.
John: I don't really give a fuck about the Tea Party.
John: Right.
John: What I care about is liberalism and how to find some kind of liberalism that's livable.
John: And I feel like the liberals that I know, there are so many things, so many tenants of liberalism that are off the table for talking about anymore because they're part of the brand.
John: You can't.
Merlin: It becomes a little bit religious.
Merlin: It's absolutely religious.
Merlin: All that's holding the family together right now is our belief in the wizard.
Merlin: And there's these things that if we start trying to take out all the inessential parts of this or figure out what's debatable about it, what we'll discover is that everything that's left of liberalism today is a reaction to conservatives.
Merlin: There's very little, we're basically, we, whoever considers themselves liberals, I just, I'm so not interested in politics, I can't articulate it.
Merlin: And yet, and yet, I think it's very true that basically, Muslims are basically like slightly advanced children.
Merlin: They're like proto-teenagers in the sense that they know everything they don't like.
Merlin: They don't know that much about what they like.
Merlin: And they know mostly about when they don't want to sit at the lunch table with somebody who doesn't know
Merlin: you know, what the cool liberal thing to do is.
John: Yeah, I think that's true of the mass of all people.
Merlin: And that's made liberals more conservative than conservatives.
Merlin: That kind of—and you need to look no further than the city that I live in to see how conservative can mean a lot more than your feelings on the gold standard.
Merlin: What it can really mean is how didactic or how—what's the word?
Merlin: How canonical, as you like to say, you can become about saying, no, no, no, here's the thing.
No.
Merlin: reactionary, if you like.
Merlin: Like, no, this is how we do these things.
Merlin: And deferring from that is taking us off-brand, as you would say.
Merlin: And it's, you know what I mean?
Merlin: And it starts really becoming more about defending your little house of hay from the big bad wolf.
Merlin: It's less about building the thing you want to make and more about just reacting to what the rest of the world does.
John: Yeah.
John: I'm now, as I hear you talk, inclined to agree with you that we shouldn't talk about politics.
Merlin: That's awful.
Merlin: It's awful.
Merlin: Well, it must be what it's like for you to listen to people talking about anything.
Merlin: It's very hard for me to listen to other people talk about anything.
Merlin: Can I just say I'm really glad I don't have to do the books for you on this, but I'm just guessing that many, potentially most people have not consulted you on whether they are even qualified to discuss many issues.
Merlin: Driving, I'm going to guess driving.
Merlin: I know you feel very strongly about driving.
John: I do, and there are a lot of terrible drivers out there.
John: Too many drivers.
Merlin: Can I – I was going to try and get back to the relationship thing, but that's too late now.
Merlin: Now, the driving thing.
Merlin: You seem to feel very strongly about driving.
Merlin: I know several friends that – and I've gotten the feeling from you that it has to do with your Alaskan background.
Merlin: I think at one time you said you offered to, I think, put a broomstick up my ass because I wanted to drive.
Merlin: I don't remember the exact context.
Merlin: It's probably a phrase you – is in parlance with your types.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: Well, you grew up in Florida where, I mean, the highest elevation in Florida is like three phone books stacked on top of one another.
John: Yeah.
John: So how would you even know?
Merlin: We don't even have rulers, so we don't even know what that is in inches or whatever you call it.
John: How would you know how to drive?
John: You just, you point the car and then, and then start, I don't know, giving yourself a manicure and then you're at the, you're at the, you've arrived.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Let's eat oranges.
Merlin: I'm in Florida.
Merlin: Look at me.
Yeah.
Merlin: Wow, I'm in Florida.
Merlin: Is that baked into the culture there?
Merlin: You got the gas?
Merlin: You got the gas?
Merlin: You got the oil?
John: I mean, Alaska is a part of it, but there are some terrible drivers in Alaska, too.
John: No, I feel like driving is much more... It's very easy to be a driver.
John: It's very hard to be a good driver.
John: You have to understand...
John: You have to understand a lot of things.
John: You have to be able to bring a lot of things to bear and you have to have peripheral vision and you have to be looking 20 seconds ahead and all these things that get in the way of people jamming out to Bananarama or whatever it is that people do in their cars.
Merlin: People still jam out to Bananarama.
Merlin: Let's just tease out the implication that almost nobody but you is able to do well.
Merlin: Is that...
John: No, I see good drivers sometimes.
John: I'll be driving along and a guy will drive by or sometimes a gal.
Merlin: Do you have a wave or a handshake or something?
John: It's much more of a like, hmm.
John: And then he looks over and goes, hmm.
Merlin: It's like being a tough guy where you could just look at somebody and go, that guy's wiry.
Merlin: He could be an ultimate fighter.
Merlin: Like you see somebody driving, you might see a lady in a store and just go, I can just tell she's a good driver.
John: Yeah, you watch a person navigate through their environment.
John: Grocery store.
Merlin: Can I just guess?
Merlin: Grocery store, you could probably tell.
Merlin: Well, at least I can just say, and I don't want to go into the things we go into sometimes, but in my neighborhood, it's very clear who's not a good driver.
Merlin: Just go to the grocery store.
John: Right.
Merlin: Right?
John: Well, it's very clear who's not a good person.
John: Wow.
John: If you can't navigate your way through a grocery store without inconveniencing other people.
John: No.
John: Without making yourself an obstacle.
Merlin: There should be a tribunal.
Merlin: Then you're a bad person.
Merlin: There should be people that are just taking you out of there.
No.
John: The Soylent Green people, right?
Merlin: I taught my daughter this.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: Well, I don't even know if I want to eat that.
Merlin: But the thing I said to my daughter, I've taught her this is the most important thing we must teach our children, is the two rules of the grocery store.
Merlin: You keep moving and you get out of the way.
Merlin: If you're not going to keep moving, get out of the way.
John: If you can't get out of the way, keep moving.
Merlin: Keep moving and get out of the way.
Merlin: This is ape law.
Merlin: Everything you must know about the grocery store, keep moving and get out of the way.
Merlin: If you can't do one, do the other.
Merlin: Always, always.
John: That should be that should be a T-shirt and get out of the way should be, I think, what most people think of all the time.
John: And even though I present as a fairly like as a fairly alpha personality, let's say.
Hmm.
John: I am always thinking to myself, do I need to get out of somebody's way?
John: You know, I'm always looking in the rearview mirror.
John: I'm always walking around the grocery store.
Merlin: The answer is not always yes on a variety of levels, but the question is always there.
John: Some people I don't get out of their way because they need to feel me in their way.
John: Right.
Merlin: In ways they don't realize.
John: That's right.
John: They don't understand it, but it's good for them ultimately that I'm in their way.
John: But for instance, I went to a movie at an art house theater the other night.
John: And, you know, it's an art house.
John: It's a place called the Seven Gables in Seattle.
John: Average age of the people in this movie theater is 55 years old.
John: Everyone is wearing some kind of Patagonia garment or some kind of thing from REI.
John: You know, it's a very university audience of people.
Merlin: A lot of carabiners.
John: Some carabiners on people's key chains.
John: And they're there to watch, you know, a smaller film, not a widely released film.
John: And I swear to you, there was more audience noise during this film, which was a film about the Holocaust, right?
John: I mean, it's not a film that, it's not like...
John: It's not an ice cube movie.
Merlin: Oh, no, you didn't.
John: Are you yelling at the screen?
John: You know, and I'm thinking to myself, this audience is louder than the audience at a Queen Latifah film.
John: And it's because every person in the audience feels like they need to make some kind of audible response to every plot twist, to every, you know, shocking moment.
John: Everybody in the place has to go, oh, mm.
John: And I felt like standing up in front of the screen and saying, you people shut the fuck up.
John: This is not an audience participation film.
John: And the fact that you are grokking the plot twist doesn't need to be punctuated with a little groan from you.
Merlin: It's not different from your grandparents yelling the answer on Wheel of Fortune.
John: Well, that's in the privacy of their own home.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: I mean, that's the thing.
Merlin: I mean, you take a combination of the kind of like everybody gets to comment on everything aspects of the internet combined with the NPR-ness of owning a lot of things from REI and being used to being able to write letters to the New York Times.
Merlin: You go into a theater with that, that's a deadly cocktail, my friend.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And the Holocaust?
Merlin: Was it the X-Men movie?
Merlin: What was it?
Merlin: It was a Holocaust movie?
John: Wait a minute.
John: Does the X-Men movie have the Holocaust in it?
John: Oh, you betcha.
John: Anything that has the Holocaust, I'll go see.
John: Is that right?
John: No, it was that one about the Israeli.
John: It's kind of like Munich, except not as good.
John: About the Mossad agents who go to kidnap the Mengele-type doctor, and they...
John: I won't give the ending.
Merlin: Yeah, no spoilers, no spoilers.
Merlin: But see, this gets us to a deeper problem, John, and it's a much broader problem, and it's ultimately why I fear a true depression, which is that nobody knows how to stand in line.
Merlin: If you had to bring it down to one thing, well, the one thing is we don't really know how to act around people anymore.
Merlin: But the theater, it all comes together in the theater.
Merlin: The theater is the worst of humanity jammed into a room with sticky floors.
Merlin: And it's everything, oh, I don't know, the grocery store might be worst.
Merlin: If there was a grocery store that had a movie theater, that would be the worst, the absolute worst of humanity.
Merlin: Because you wouldn't be able to get to your seat and people would be yelling.
John: This is a hell of a business model, I think, this grocery store movie theater thing.
Merlin: As a punitive thing?
John: It's like a beer pub, pizza parlor movie theater, except you're actually getting shopping done, too.
Merlin: Oh, so you could have like artisanal beers.
Merlin: You come in, you get, if you can find your table, first of all, you're going to have to find your table.
Merlin: You get to get past this lady here who's really diligent about getting her free sample.
Merlin: Madam, can I just explain something to you?
Merlin: Hi, this is my daughter.
Merlin: I hope she sees the age of four.
Merlin: My concern is that if you and the rest of the sand people do not move away from the tiny bits of sausage on toothpicks, I will literally die in a dirty safe way standing behind somebody cheap.
Merlin: And that's just not how I see this ending.
Merlin: While Ghostbusters 3 is playing on the... That would be good.
Merlin: I took my daughter to one movie, and it was excruciating.
Merlin: I can't believe what has happened.
Merlin: This is a dumb, like, cliche, but it's unbearable to go to the movies.
Merlin: Setting aside the $80 that it cost the two of us to see Winnie the Pooh.
Merlin: It was awful.
Merlin: Everything about it was awful.
Merlin: The commercials before the trailers were awful.
Merlin: The trailers were awful.
Merlin: It was all awful.
Yeah.
Merlin: And like you say, it's like a Queen Latifah thing.
Merlin: Like everybody's just yelling, yelling and yelling stuff and talking and playing with their phones.
John: Yeah.
John: Well, you know, I think what it is is that sometime when we were kids, the school curriculum was still based on the premise that we were trying to beat the Russians to the moon.
John: Even though we we'd already beat the Russians to the moon, we were still reading those same math books.
Merlin: We wanted to get to the moon, and we wanted them not to get to the moon.
Merlin: Yeah, right.
Merlin: We wanted to get to the moon.
John: That's a lot of work.
John: In your face!
John: But then somewhere there in the 70s, the Alan Alda-fication of America happened, and suddenly everybody was an artist.
John: Nobody had a slide rule anymore.
John: Nobody was trying to get us to the moon.
John: Now everybody...
John: Now everybody was free to be and we were all, our little hearts needed to be set free and we needed to talk about our feelings and everybody needed to share.
John: And now we live in a nation of 350 million of the most important people who had ever lived.
John: Nobody can wait in line.
John: Nobody can admit for a second that maybe in the grand scheme of things, they are a peon.
John: And they need to shut the fuck up and get in line and do their jobs and get out of the way of better drivers who are on their way to someplace and only have nine minutes to get there.
Merlin: I think I finally understand it.
Merlin: Okay, it's a problem with at least two levels.
Merlin: The second level is that the people are in your way.
Merlin: They're making it take way more than nine minutes.
Merlin: You're not going to get the chance to have a walk or a nap.
Merlin: They're in John's way.
Merlin: If I understand correctly, the first much more broad problem, we're never going to get to problem two until we get through problem one, is that people are literally not being forced to literally listen to you.
Merlin: Because that's part of the problem is people are getting, can I say, John, I think people are getting a mixed message.
Merlin: And the mixed message is there are people besides John that are giving them advice, if any advice, and that what you have to share with them is getting lost and missed all the voices and talking about feelings.
Merlin: Is that fair to say?
John: That is fair to say, except that with the caveat that I don't really care if they're listening.
John: I just want them to be quiet while I'm talking.
John: If they are just sitting there just dumbly watching... So it's not really about the movie.
Merlin: Really, the movie is you.
Merlin: The problem is they're talking during you.
John: They're talking during me, or they're fidgeting even during me.
John: They should just be content.
John: If they can't understand what I'm saying, they should just watch...
John: A dust mite floating through the air or something.
John: But I think we need to return to a sort of 1915 model of like rulers on the knuckles.
Merlin: We got a whole room full of kids that need a lot of learning.
Merlin: Please don't distract from that.
Merlin: If you cannot sit in your seat and listen to what John has to share with you, then maybe we'll move you down to the room with the helmet kids.
Merlin: Because this is for people who are serious about life.
John: There's a phrase for this, and it's not John-centric.
John: The phrase is good citizenship.
Merlin: Sure.
John: Good citizenship is listening to John.
Merlin: Yes.
And...
Merlin: I said this to lots of people when they annoy me, but I think there's a misconception also about the idea of etiquette or good manners.
Merlin: And you go pick up any good book on etiquette or good manners, and it will tell you this.
Merlin: It is not about yelling at people about where the fork is.
Merlin: Good manners and etiquette are about making other people feel at ease.
Merlin: The whole reason that we have manners and we have etiquette is so that you don't have to feel uncomfortable about knowing which fork is for the shrimp.
Merlin: It's not about browbeating people about which fork they used incorrectly, and I think that's a big part of the problem.
Merlin: I think we get hung up on what the rules part are without understanding why the rule existed.
John: And what's nice about rules is everybody agrees on what they are, and then you get on with life.
John: And unfortunately now...
John: we got so fixated on the fact that the rules were based on a bad system.
John: The rules were imposed by European colonialists or imposed by rich people.
John: And that, in principle, was bad.
John: The rules favored the colonialists.
John: They favored the rich people.
John: But more importantly, just the fact, even the rules that were good, that were neutral,
John: The fact that they had come from these bad people, these oppressive people, was enough to not only question the rule, but to assume that the rule was bad.
Merlin: And to assume that perhaps rules altogether are a bad idea because that's a phallocentric conceit of the colonialist government.
John: Well, except that everybody's got rules.
John: So it's not that rules are... No, I don't think anybody assumed, except for anarchists and people on 4chan, I don't think anybody thinks that rules are bad.
John: It's just that they want to make their own set of rules.
John: They want to make the rules... They want to cobble together some rules from the things that their parents told them that they didn't resent, some of the crackpot ideas that they read in some magazines,
John: Some things that came to them in a dream.
John: And one or two arbitrary things just to make other people...
John: You know, just to like keep people jumping.
John: And then people walk out of the door and they're like, these are my rules and everybody get out of the way, you know.
John: And it may sound like that's what I'm doing, but that's not what I'm doing at all.
Merlin: If you're doing that, you're doing it at a much deeper level.
John: My rules are ancient.
John: I'm using ancient rules.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: Yes.
John: But my rules can't compete with somebody who read the secret because Oprah told them to, and now they've got a bunch of rules based on the secret.
Merlin: It starts to really degrade the whole idea of what a rule is, you know, at the point when you introduce that much magical thinking.
Merlin: I got to tell you, buddy, I think keep moving and get out of the way.
Merlin: I mean, that's not too far off.
Merlin: Those are basic rules.
Merlin: That is, you know, it really is.
Merlin: It's like sort of one of those rules like flush.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: Flush.
Merlin: It's okay.
Merlin: Flush.
Flush.
Yeah, right.
Merlin: That's a good rule.
Merlin: If it's yellow, don't let it mellow.
Merlin: No, no, seriously.
Merlin: That's dumb.
Merlin: If it's yellow, flush.
Merlin: That's your mnemonic.
Merlin: Send it away.
Merlin: Here's your mnemonic.
Merlin: Flush.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: That's it.
Merlin: Do you live in a tree house?
Merlin: No, you don't.
Merlin: You know, these are things that we're passing on to our children.
Merlin: You know, if you make a mess, clean it up.
John: But if you read Mark Twain, all this is in there.
John: If you read Hemingway, it's all there.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Flush, right?
John: I mean, if Hemingway doesn't have a short story titled Flush, well, he doesn't.
John: But he should have.
John: And I think that message is threaded through...
John: It's thrown through all cultures.
Merlin: Right, right.
Merlin: It's difficult to not be able to get erections and you should flush.
Merlin: I think it's there.
Merlin: That's the old man in the sea.
Merlin: Right.
John: Have sympathy for men because it's sometimes hard to get an erection.
Merlin: That's right.
John: That's one of the top 10 rules.
Merlin: And then be taciturn.
John: I mean, why do you think, I mean, men get a bad rap.
Merlin: Hmm.
John: But it's hard to be a man.
Merlin: From women, you mean?
John: Well, no, from men, too.
Merlin: From, you know, these men that... You think that's an Alan Alda thing or a fleece thing?
John: I think it's an Alan Alda thing.
Merlin: Could be.
John: I mean, fleece came directly from Alan Alda.
John: Fleece... There was no fleece before Alan Alda.
Merlin: You know, I would have to Google.
Merlin: I don't want to use a rhetorical fallacy.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: Please don't use that word, fallacy.
Merlin: It's got a dick right in the middle of it.
John: Is that one of John Worcester's word hates?
Merlin: You've got to introduce me to that guy.
Merlin: I mean, I've met him.
Merlin: He won't remember meeting me.
Merlin: It sounds like you guys are pals from the Twitter.
Merlin: I need drum loops from that guy.
Merlin: I desperately need drum loops.
John: Being pals with John Worcester, it's more difficult than it looks.
Merlin: Really?
John: Yeah.
John: Well, John Worcester is a very... Kind of like a little monkey.
John: He's an extremely funny and extremely intelligent person who has carved out a life for himself in rock and roll, which is a world of morons.
John: And so John Worcester has done what a lot of smart people in rock and roll has done, which is he's very careful not to... He doesn't like...
John: put streamers up and balloons up just because you say something funny to him a couple of times.
John: You know, he's not like, oh my God, hi, be my friend.
Merlin: You know, he's... What did you do?
Merlin: How'd you get in there?
Merlin: Who, me?
John: Yeah.
John: Well, I wouldn't even say I was in there.
John: I mean, we did a tour together and we like each other, but it's still...
John: No, he was playing drums in the Jay Farrar, Ben Gibbard, Jack Kerouac-based side project band.
John: And I did a tour with them.
Merlin: That's right.
John: But I think John Worcester and I, even though now we've known each other, you know, known each other for a couple of years, we're still in the friendly circling stage where we say, oh, hello, you, yes.
John: Well, there you are.
Merlin: Arched eyebrow and you like sniff his chair.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
John: There's a little bit of chair sniffing and it's not, I don't, I never, I do not approach someone like John Worcester with the expectation that he is going to appreciate that.
John: that I am one of the greatest living men.
Merlin: See, this is another one of the, that's the problem again.
John: But in a case of, with somebody like John Worcester, I don't, you know, I don't, I don't consider it a problem because John Worcester
John: probably when he's lying in bed at night also suspects that he may be one of the greatest living men and there's not a lot of room in town for too many greatest living men you can't have that many of them in the same small western town or there's going to be a gunfight absolutely and the pity of it is that because of the nature of this challenge is you will never be able to have a benefit
Merlin: to help these men.
Merlin: Because first of all, all of you guys hate playing benefits.
Merlin: But second of all, the people who need it the most, the men who are asking themselves these questions, the men who are asking, am I of a caliber of somebody who would want to hang out with me?
Merlin: I think you're not always getting the help you need, let alone the audience.
Merlin: I don't know how you do that.
Merlin: You hate paying benefits.
Merlin: You don't hate paying benefits.
Merlin: I think you've been very clear about you hate the hypocrisy of not paying the band for benefits.
Merlin: And I have to imagine that John Worcester doesn't like people either.
John: Yeah.
John: I mean, I don't hate not paying the band for benefits.
John: I just hate paying everybody but the band for benefits.
John: Right.
John: I mean, I wrote that article for The Weekly just saying, hey, if it's a benefit, then everybody should work for free.
John: If it's a benefit and all the production people and the promoters are getting paid.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: No, let me just be clear.
Merlin: Just the fans giving their money away?
Merlin: This may be the third or fourth time our audience has heard it, but I would say you republished it in the weekly after having run it several times in my kitchen.
Merlin: I've read this particular article on numerous occasions before it was ever in whatever print is nowadays.
John: I think the version that I wrote in your kitchen was the best version.
Merlin: It had a lot more F-words in it.
John: I had to water it down.
Merlin: A lot of water.
Merlin: There's a movie called Rules of the Game.
Merlin: It's about sports?
Merlin: I hope not.
Merlin: It's a very old, I want to say run war, but I always get the name wrong.
Merlin: But there's a great quote from that movie.
Merlin: The awful thing about life is this.
Merlin: Everyone has his reasons.
Merlin: And for some reason, I find that quote kind of indelible.
Merlin: I had to Google it to get the exact wording right.
Merlin: But the awful thing about life is this.
Merlin: Everyone has his reasons.
Merlin: And I think that's a lot of what you're saying.
Merlin: I think everybody has their reasons.
Merlin: This is not a value judgment, but I think the person who's standing in the middle of the fucking aisle while I just want to get some fucking pasta, I can see it.
Merlin: It's right there.
Merlin: I could see it.
Merlin: I could see the brand.
Merlin: I got the kind I want.
Merlin: I want the thin.
Merlin: I don't want the vermicelli.
Merlin: I don't want the fat.
Merlin: I want the in-between.
Merlin: I could see it.
Merlin: It's right there.
Merlin: But you know what?
Merlin: You're standing there.
Merlin: You're standing there because you're having some kind of little moment.
Merlin: Now, I've got my reasons, which is that I'm correct.
Merlin: and I have a child that I need to feed, I have a limited amount of time that I would rather not spend staring at the back of your fucking head while you stand there.
Merlin: Those are valid reasons.
Merlin: I could die here behind you.
Merlin: Now, that person probably has their reasons.
Merlin: Now, their reasons are probably wrong.
John: You're catastrophizing a little bit, I think, but go on.
Merlin: Well, I don't think in a dramatic way.
John: No, no, I don't think you're being dramatic.
John: Of course not.
Merlin: I think I'm being very even keeled.
Merlin: And that person, wrong as their reasons are, probably does have their reasons.
Merlin: I doubt they have thought it through as thoroughly as I have.
Merlin: And I doubt that they feel the certainty in their black heart that I have in my very kind of off-white one.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You think your heart is off-white?
Merlin: That's a bad color for a heart, I'm afraid.
Merlin: I don't think off-white is a color you should be shooting.
Merlin: You should capture that.
Merlin: That's a pretty good name for something.
Merlin: Wrong color for a heart.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I don't know.
John: I just, the thing is, and here's the thing, John, this is... I have a version of that same idea, and it's a paraphrase.
John: I don't remember who said the original thing.
John: Probably you.
John: Or one of the great men of history.
John: One of the men like me.
John: Right.
John: And when I say men, I don't mean to exclude women.
John: No.
Merlin: But it's pretty much men.
John: I just like to include women under the overarching category of men.
John: Right.
John: Mankind, including women.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Your statements of that sort are frequently come out in the term of a dependent clause that probably could have been mostly left out.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Well, you're going to bleep all that anyway.
John: Yes.
John: But the idea that I carry around is that everybody is having a difficult day.
John: Like, if you are having a difficult day, you can pretty much rest assured that everyone else is also struggling to get through today and get home and do whatever they do.
John: And it's a kind of shorthand that keeps me in an empathetic posture, even surrounded as I am by morons and tools.
John: To know that they also are struggling and that the fact that they are a moron only makes it harder for them, it increases my sympathetic feeling so that I don't resort to murder.
Merlin: Murder or justifiable homicide.
John: Or even just steaming.
John: I mean, my biggest problem...
John: in life is steaming i spend so much time steaming and and i frankly my broccoli is limp from over steam ing ness
John: But seriously, I just... You can't turn it off.
Merlin: There's no valve.
John: Right now, Merlin, I swear to you, I am feuding with a half a dozen people.
John: And at least four of those six people don't know that we're in a feud.
John: I'm sitting here steaming about something.
John: Steaming.
John: And they're blithely going about their lives.
Merlin: Not knowing that they are the constant source of steam.
John: Yeah, yeah, I'm pissed at them for something.
John: Generally, it's that I'm pissed at them because they didn't, they owe me a phone call and now it's too late.
John: Now when they call, I won't accept the call because they screwed it up somehow.
John: And that steaming is no good.
John: You know, that's, I should go to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and talk about this.
Merlin: Oh, God, don't do that.
Merlin: Don't do that.
Merlin: I just want to point out one thing.
Merlin: I'm not saying that because we are both right, everybody has to be wrong.
Merlin: Because I'm not going to actually say that.
Merlin: That's valid.
Merlin: I think you can imply that if you have half a fucking brain.
Merlin: I don't need to say that because that's going to make us look bad.
Merlin: But you should be able to pick that up.
Merlin: That's A.
Merlin: Okay, but here's the thing.
Merlin: This is B, and this is what you and I have in common, and most people need to get in common with us, is what we're not saying that what you're doing is wrong per se, except in as much as it is wrong.
Merlin: It's just more that what we're saying is that our path that we are introducing to you, keep moving and get out of the way, it helps everybody.
Merlin: There's nothing about, I defy you as one of the people who needs our help to say, you show me one part of keep moving and get out of the way that harms people.
John: Right.
Merlin: Nothing about it.
Merlin: It's a Hippocratic.
Merlin: It does no harm.
John: The beauty of keep moving and get out of the way is that you can continue to do your stupid thinking within the context of either moving or getting out of the way.
John: Take your time.
John: You can be full of your own stupid thoughts and yet also be either moving or out of the way.
John: Yep.
John: That cart turns.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: I think we've reduced it now to the kernel.
John: Yes.
John: And I have to say, this is the thing about the grand unification theory.
John: This is the thing about Stephen Hawking.
John: If his grand unification theory or whoever comes up with that final grand unification theory that unites macro physics with microbiology and it doesn't include keep moving or get out of the way, it cannot be exclusive of keep moving or get out of the way, right?
John: Because that is a core truth.
John: And so that truth should also be present in
John: In orbiting bodies, large and small.
Merlin: It's absolutely true.
Merlin: I can't remember.
Merlin: It's a teleological argument from design.
Merlin: It's one of those arguments.
Merlin: It's one of those arguments where God must exist because he, not the ontological, but because God's cool.
Merlin: It's one of those.
Merlin: It's the Descartes thing.
Merlin: I totally agree with you.
John: God must exist because God's cool.
John: I think that is Descartes, yeah.
Merlin: It came actually from St.
Merlin: Thomas Aquinas originally, but he, I think, improved on it.
Merlin: Here's the thing, though.
Merlin: This is what the liberals need.
Merlin: The liberals don't have this.
Merlin: First of all, they lack our cocksure sense of certainty, right?
Merlin: They sometimes are sure, but they very seldom put the cock in it, and that is part of the problem.
Merlin: Okay, now here's the other thing.
John: Put the cock in it.
John: That's another core truth.
Merlin: That's true.
Merlin: Well, I don't know.
Merlin: Hocking doesn't work blue very much.
Merlin: But here's the problem, and this goes straight to the Hocking, I think it's straight to the movies and straight to the liberals, is that if you're going to have this supernal approach to things where you're basically walking around like hoping everything turns out okay and don't question anything, you could do a lot worse than to make your kind of BS political Weltanschauung.
Merlin: You could do a lot worse than making that about...
Merlin: keep moving or get out of the way.
Merlin: And in fact, if I could take it and turn it briefly, I think that is the message that most of these people in fleece need to hear, which is you, my friend, need to either keep moving or you need to get out of the way and possibly both.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: That's the message.
John: The problem with the fleece people is that they've taken it as their responsibility to speak on behalf of all the people who they believe
John: cannot either keep moving or get out of the way because of some disadvantage that these other people have or because of the fact that they simply need an advocate and the police people are the self-appointed advocates.
John: of all the great many people who either cannot keep moving or get out of the way.
John: And the problem is that there is no one who cannot either keep moving or get out of the way.
Merlin: It's not hurting anybody except you.
Merlin: Keep moving and get out of the way.
John: But the fleece people, as soon as they hear that,
John: They think, well, what about the people who can't keep moving?
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Without ever examining the fact that those people that you are supposedly, quote unquote, defending could actually benefit to begin with from both keeping moving and getting out of the way.
Merlin: But also, you know what?
Merlin: Maybe they don't need somebody who shops at Whole Foods to help explain their life to other people.
John: Well, and that's the problem we get into.
John: So now not only there's the original person who needs to either keep moving or get out of the way.
Merlin: Meaning everyone.
John: Now there's a person in there.
John: Now there's a fleecy, beardy person and his wife with the big hoop earrings and the Guatemalan purse.
Merlin: She made the earrings.
Merlin: She's thinking of doing it as a business.
John: And they're standing there.
John: Now they're standing there with the original person who should have kept moving or gotten out of the way.
John: And they're trying to argue with you about how this person, you know, how they need an extra minute or how this person shouldn't be asked to, you know, they don't understand what you mean.
Merlin: They saw something in the nation and with some statistics.
Merlin: About both getting out of the way and keeping moving.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: There's a whole European influence from back in the, you know, 1500s here.
Merlin: You got a whole Cortez the Killer thing going on.
John: Well, the presumption is that you're getting out of the way of someone who's superior.
John: I mean, it instantly becomes a Marxist problem.
Merlin: There's nothing to overthink here, John.
Merlin: There's nothing to overthink.
Merlin: This is empirical.
Merlin: It's a priori.
John: Yeah, but you say that, but you know that the fleece people would overthink.
John: I'm done.