Drew I feel like I have this like chronic inability to do
what people tell me to do. Like I just anytime somebody
suggests something for me to do, especially if they're like an
authority figure, my immediate reaction is to do the opposite.
Yeah, Yeah. You are a little bit of a a
rebel. Would you call yourself a rebel?
I don't know. A compulsive contrarian is
actually something that I've I've actually come to terms with
and communicated with some people in my life.
How's that going for you, Mark? I'll say it's OK, baby.
Yeah, it's like, you know that when it pays off, it really pays
off, right? Because it's, it's if you, if
you're contrarian and correct, that's when the huge pay offs
go. But if you're contrarian and
incorrect, you just look like an asshole.
Right, right. And that happens quite a bit and
that. Happens just as much as.
Yeah, probably more so probably. More so, yeah, yeah, yeah.
What about you? Do you I?
I hate being told what to do too.
I get. I've noticed.
Yeah, you. Go well.
Oh, no, sorry, sorry, Mark. I love, I love taking your
direction and you're always so logical and you're always you're
like, you have the best ideas ever.
And so I don't question anything you told me to do.
Drew, I'm detecting a hint of inauthenticity in your voice.
Well, trust your instincts on that one.
It's the Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck podcast with your
host Mark Manson, are you? But do you feel contrarian?
Are you? I don't know if I feel
contrarian so much. It's just like when somebody
tells me to do something like, oh fuck you, I'm not doing that.
So I guess that is contrarian in a way.
But I. Don't know.
There is just something about that though.
You're just like, it could be the best advice ever and
somebody tells you to do it and I'm just.
Like what is the situation where you got really good advice and
you didn't take it and why didn't you take it?
Oh man, I feel like that's. Your whole life, My whole life.
The story of your life. That has to up to this very
moment, actually. Because I did that around health
stuff all the time. All the time.
Yeah. I mean, people for years people
told me they're like, you know, if you, I don't know, if you
didn't order a drink at the beginning of dinner, then you
wouldn't eat as much later. You know, like all this shit.
And I'm just like, I'm fine. I'm fine.
And sure enough, they were right about everything.
Yeah, health stuff is a big one. I think that a lot of us money
to, you know, the big ones like that money, relationships,
taking people, taking relationships for granted or
anything like that. Yeah, Yeah.
Those are common. I, it's funny because I, I think
this is, this is a weird thing. You know, in the self help
industry, it is pretty much standard to include actionable
advice in, in everything you do, right?
Like I remember when I was writing both of my books, one of
the first notes that came back from the publisher when I
submitted my drafts, they were like, oh, you should put
exercises and like bullet points for things to go do, people to
go do. I remember this after each
chapter. And I was like, fuck no, no,
absolutely not. And I, I had the butt heads with
them about it. And my argument was always no,
the whole point of the book is that they're supposed to figure
it out themselves, right? Like the book helps them ask
better questions, but then ultimately they have to go
figure out what the answer is. But I do notice there is a
endless insatiable demand for basically just like tell me what
to do right type of type of advice and.
It's kind of, it's a little bit of a weird paradox that we're
talking about. A lot of people don't like being
told what to do, and then they seek out advice being like, just
tell me what to do, right? So that's a weird kind of place
that people wind up in. And also, yeah, then there's
just this huge BLOB of advice and people just don't even know
where to start. Yeah, So that's the fuck of the
week this week is. Actionable advice.
How much should we give a fuck
about actionable advice in our lives?
You are not one to get dole out a lot of like super specific,
you know, do this morning routine.
You should especially don't like morning routine.
Do this, don't do that. You're not like that at all.
Why? What is that all about?
A few reasons. One is is our audience is so
broad and diverse. They come from all over the
world. They're all ages, both, both
every gender and I. I've always just felt really
strange. I mean, there's so much
conventional life advice that I tried and didn't work for me
that I'm very aware of the fact of how individual each person is
and how you really can't make a good suggestion to somebody
without like really getting to know them and understanding
their situation and their personality and their childhood
and all this other stuff. So that's the the main reason,
truthfully. But I also do think there's like
a deeper philosophical reason, which is I personally find that
a lot of people who struggle a lot in their lives emotionally
and socially and, and otherwise, the fundamental issue is that
they don't know how to take responsibility for themselves.
They have spent their entire lives waiting for other people
to tell them what to do, waiting for other people to tell them
that they did a good job or a bad job or they're a good person
or a bad person. And when they come to personal
development, they bring that same attitude of like, well, I,
I'm going to buy this guy's book and pay him a bunch of money and
he'll tell me what to do. And it's like, well, that's the
mindset that got you here in the first place.
So you have to let go of that mindset to get out of this
place. So I, I, I just honestly feel
that like if I ever gave very rigid, directed, actionable
advice of like, go out and do these three things and your life
will change forever. Even if it works, which is
doubtful in a lot of cases, it kind of robs the people of the,
the agency and the, the identification of, of the
success. Because then then if it works,
it's like, oh, Mark Manson did it for me.
Or like I listen to Mark Manson and he fixed my life.
They don't get to feel I fixed my life, which is what they
should feel. Right, right.
It's very patronizing. A lot of times when you're
telling somebody this is what you should do.
I think the, the larger point you're making though, is that
everybody's at a different place.
Life of what works for me won't work for them.
And we've seen that you, you have this idea of like people
going from good or bad to OK and OK to great.
We've talked about that before too.
Those are two different completely types of so like some
things aren't somebody who is like in a pretty good spot, just
trying to get a little bit better.
They're going to be like, that's fucking stupid.
Why would I do that? Hopefully they do say that.
That's great that they say that. So just a review for the
audience really quick the the two categories of people who
look for life advice. There is the good, the great
people, which is like people who have their life together and
they feel pretty good about things, but it could be better
and they they could get better. You know, maybe their
relationships could be a little bit better, or maybe they're,
they could be doing better at their job or, or be more
productive or whatever that. And that's a huge percentage of
the market and the audience. But then there's this other
segment, which I think of as the bad.
OK. And so these are the people that
are depressed, they're severely anxious, their life is falling
apart, they're grieving, they've gone through some sort of
trauma. And they're frankly, they're
kind of a mess. And they're just, they just want
to feel OK again. They just want things to be
fine. And what you find is that a lot
of advice will be good for one of those groups and not the
other, right? So I could easily tell somebody,
you know, you should be more honest with the people in your
life and that will improve your relationships and like maybe a
person who's looking to go from good to great, that's a really
useful piece of advice. But if you have somebody who is
just dealt with a bunch of trauma and abuse and is
surrounded by like just really, really horrible people and needs
to get away from those people, that actually might be terrible
advice and you potentially put that person in danger by giving
them that advice, right? So I just try to be aware of
like all the potential counterfactuals of ways that
this could be taken wrong and and not just in like the good
the grade or OK to good spectrum or bad the OK spectrum, but like
also the just cross culturally right.
Like the there's there's advice, like dating advice, right?
Like I get, I get emails from people from like Pakistan and
India and Syria and they're like, well, you said this in
this article. Should I go out and try that?
And I'm like, I don't fucking know, right?
I've never dated in Pakistan before.
So, you know, take it with a grain of salt.
So I just, I'm very wary of it. And I to, to your point as well,
I do find it a little bit of patronizing and I, I think
there's, there's probably too much specific advice in this
industry. I I look at other people in the
industry, I think they overdo it and I think they're a little bit
overconfident in a lot of things they prescribe for people.
It is a bit egotistical, yeah, yeah.
And so I I I try to counterbalance.
That OK yeah, I I heard the saying one time a few years back
and I thought it was great. Is that all a device is
autobiographical. So whenever you do hear advice
from somebody else, obviously they're they're telling it to
you through the lens of their own experience obviously, but
that's not always super obvious in the moment.
They they think they understand the situation where they might
not you and other people. I think in the space that I I've
really come to kind of respect in this realm anyway have this
kind of first draft is for me approach like the advice you
come up with is like this is yeah.
And you're very open about it. This is for me.
This is first for me. This is how I fucked.
Up this is how I. And this is what works.
See if it works for you, which if you think about it, right,
like let let's say you've got a problem in your life and you sit
down with like your siblings or an old friend and you're like, I
got this thing going on in my life.
Or imagine it's the other way around.
They sit down with you and they're like, Drew, I got this
thing going on in my life and they're looking for advice.
How do you go about giving that advice to like say your brother
or your high school buddy or a cousin or something?
You don't sit there and you're like, well, I've got a four step
method and it solves it solves your marital problems every
single time. You never say that to people.
What you say to people is like, well, I remember with my last
relationship, I had a similar like I kind of felt similarly
and this went wrong and that went wrong and I tried this and
that was really helpful. So maybe you should try that,
but it might not work for you. Like that's how most people in
the real world give advice to each other.
And so I don't understand why that doesn't apply commercially
and professionally in this industry.
I've got an idea why it's for why they've tried to do it that
way anyway. And it's because they're, it's
they're trying to market. And so they're trying like
they're trying to get everybody into their little silos.
Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, you know.
That strips us of our individuality at some point,
right? It's not a sexy it's not a sexy
ad campaign to say like my four step method that may or may not
work some of the time depending on what culture, background and
gender you are. Yeah, right, right.
That doesn't fit on a book cover.
Yeah. That's not that.
That ad's not going to perform very well.
Yeah, yeah. Do you think we should be doing
more actionable advice? No.
Should we finish every podcast with?
I've always no, no, I mean, maybe we finished the podcast
with a recap, sure, like this is what we went over.
But if if we're going to sit here and say, OK, go out, try
this, this and this, now there's there's sometimes that's that's
fine. And like in the newsletter you
put out, you're like, go out and try this and see what happens.
You're not saying this is going. To you know, it's, this isn't
going to solve all your problems.
It's like, hey, we just talked about this thing.
Here's the thing to try this week, Yeah?
But no, I don't, I one of the things I've always that one of
the things that drew me to you initially was these are the
principles under which I'm operating, not the, this is the
hyper specific tactic. Because every time I've gone
down that rabbit hole, especially like in the
productivity realm, it's like, try this, you need to do it this
way. And it just doesn't work for me.
You know, we've talked before like you like to do this, which
I think you're crazy. I like time boxing.
It works for me great. And but what happened was I had
to try buy a lot of different things on my own.
So maybe maybe there is some value out there to yeah, there's
some people who do it this way and they have very actionable
advice. Sure.
Yeah, absolutely. Another, another way I've heard
this, but though before is like, if you know, you sign up for,
say you sign up for a business course of some kind and we're
going to, you're going to, they're going to lead you
through how to start this business and you're going to be
a bajillionaire at some point. If they have a, a method and a
recipe for this, it cannot be that original.
It just cannot be. Well, by definition, if there's
a method or a recipe, then it's not unique or differentiated.
And if it's not unique or differentiated, then it's not
going to be a sustainable business.
Same goes with any kind of advice.
I think it's like, well, if this, this is this worked for
this segment of the population or whatever it is.
Which I I've also found that the, so like generally the only
actionable advice I will ever give, it's stuff that is so
there's like the, the scientific evidence is just so
overwhelming. Yeah, that it, it's strike and
it ends up striking people is like banal and obvious, right?
So it's like get 8 hours of sleep.
Like, you want to know what actually works?
People get 8 hours of sleep every night.
Go outside occasionally, don't eat shit and, you know, surround
yourself with people who treat you well like that.
That's actually kind of that's like the you're.
Like 90. Percent, 90% of it.
But that's not sexy. It's not exciting.
It's not people. People are always looking for
the secret or the hack or the the shortcut.
They don't really exist. Like it's psychological
well-being and personal growth and stuff.
It's it's generally boring things done very consistently.
And that's not an exciting marketing headline, right?
A lot of people, what they do is they find like very fancy ways
to package stuff. I should mention that I think a
lot of kind of fancy actionable advice, quote UN quote works for
people mainly just because of a placebo effect, right?
So I think I've talked before on the podcast that like, my
personal opinion is that most self help seminars, the oh, the
perception of the the perception that people get that the seminar
quote, UN quote worked is actually just the fact that they
spent five days having very vulnerable conversations with
the other attendees. Five days and $5000.
Yeah, yeah, that's, yeah, that too.
But seriously, I mean, if you take somebody who is socially
isolated, somewhat depressed, feeling very lost in life, maybe
isn't completely aware of their emotions, and you just put them
in a room with some strangers who are in a similar position
and give them a a context and excuse to talk about their
problems for five days. Yeah, of course they're going to
walk out of that room feeling much better and feeling like
they had some sort of profound breakthrough or whatever.
That that's just human nature when you sit down with people
who are in a similar situation as you and you share yourself
and you're vulnerable with them is very therapeutic.
But the packaging and the context that gets people into
that situation is, you know, it's all about the guru and the
method. And here's our like special five
star upgraded premium seminar for VI PS only and blah, blah,
blah. And it kind of tricks people
into thinking that, Oh yeah, the guru and his five star VIP
method fixed me. You know, I got, I was, I was
saved. I was solved by whatever.
And it's like, no, actually, you just needed to sit in a room and
talk about your problems with five sympathetic people for five
days or. Whatever which there's value to.
That there's a ton of value to that.
It's just, it's funny because it's almost, you know, my
opinion on seminars like that is, is is actually swung around.
It's almost like a horseshoe theory.
Like I used to hate them so much because I'm like, this is, it's
such bullshit. None of it's true.
And now I'm like, that's all bullshit.
None of it's true, but it gets people to do the thing they need
to do. It's almost, you know, it's like
a, it's like a Trojan horse. Yeah.
Well, maybe. Maybe there's maybe.
Maybe there's value to it? Maybe there's some value to.
Yeah. I mean, there is obviously, but
hey. Tony Robbins wouldn't still be
doing what he's doing if there wasn't.
But just the, I mean, if you sat down and just the sheer amount
of, you know, the advice industry, which you know, we're
a part of, I get it. If you just tried everything
though, there, there can't be, somebody can't be sitting and
listening to some of these podcasts that drone on and on
for hours and hours about with very, very specific actionable
advice and trying all of that. What is like, is that just the,
is it an entertainment value in it?
I know that's part of it, I'm sure.
There's definitely, there's definitely a entertainment.
Value. It probably makes you feel like
you're getting doing something even too.
Personal development, I have, I have found that personal
development is a hobby for a lot of people.
Yeah, yeah. And, and I think a lot of them
don't realize it's their hobby. I feel attacked now.
Which is fine, there's nothing wrong with it.
It's like it's actually a very good.
Is there worse things to do? Yeah.
They're the other much, much worse things to, to have as a
hobby. But I, I do think for a lot of
people it's a hobby. Like they, to them, it is fun
and exciting to discover like new Productivity Tools or hacks
or figure out a new meditation and, and get that sensation of
discovering something new, trying it, feeling slightly
different, you know, telling themselves that they just had an
epiphany and, and moving on to the next thing.
Like that's a very fun, that is fun, exciting experience.
And it's, it's harmless. There's nothing wrong with that.
But like some hobbies, I do think it can become a little bit
compulsive or, or even an addiction.
Like I, I have absolutely run into people who are there's,
there's almost like this desperation for the next thing,
the next, the next method, the next seminar, the next, you
know, whatever profound experience.
And that, that becomes a yeah, that that becomes treacherous,
in my opinion, Yeah. Yeah, you see this a lot in the
like the the productivity space, especially there's, I remember I
was trying to like come up with some sort of personal
productivity system of mine and found came across someone and
they were like they were three or four, I don't know, 10
iterations in and they're like, this is my most advanced system
yet. And it dawned on me, I was like,
I don't want an advance, I want something simple that I need to.
Just yeah, right. I don't want to think about
this. Yeah.
But there's some people, there's some people who are in like,
I've got a friend out here in LA and he, he loves optimization.
Like, loves it. It is.
Yeah, clearly it's, it is his hobby.
Like he, he got so excited once he like figured out a way to
program the light switches in his house to like basically like
he could, he could like gesture to his phone and it would like
turn them on and off depending on what room.
He was so excited about it. And he's like explaining this to
me and he's like, yeah, I don't have to walk across the room and
turn the light switch off. And you know, I, I don't have to
like open an app and wait for it to, and I'm like, that's great,
dude. Like you just spent a week
working. Like what do you do with those
extra 10 seconds every day? You just save yourself 5 seconds
a day, but it's clearly like, it just makes them happy, Like it
makes them really, really happy. And that's, that's cool.
There's nothing, there's nothing wrong with that.
I, I, I think it's, it's, it's fine to recognize that it, it
can be kind of a glorified hobby.
And then it's also fine to recognize that there's nothing
wrong with that. I, I think where I worry about
people's when they, they kind of drink the kool-aid, so to speak,
they get religious about it. They're like, well, I shouldn't
have to walk across the room and turn my light switch off.
That's fucked up. We need to fix this.
I'm like, all right. And it can definitely get there
very, very quickly. Yeah, yeah.
Cool. All right, we'll be right back
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All right, we're back. Brilliant or bullshit this week,
Drew. Yes, I'm excited about this one.
You. Are you, you came to me with
this one very excited Mark. We're talking brilliant or
bullshit. There's this idea of going to
therapy versus engaging in therapy culture.
Yes. So this was a piece, there's a,
a writer, great writer on Sub Stack named Freddie de Boer.
I'm probably pronouncing that wrong.
He had a piece called Selfishness and Therapy culture.
We'll link it in the description and the notes.
I love this because as long time regular listeners of the pod
know, this is a this is a topic that has come up periodically
over the past year. Has therapy gone too far?
There is a lot of new research coming out saying that
particularly among young people, therapeutic interventions are
starting to backfire a little bit.
We're definitely seeing a lot of issues around schools and just
kind of an over medicalizing, over like diagnosing of any
small issue that goes on with a young person.
Abigail Schrier came on the podcast.
She wrote a book called Bad Therapy, which very aggressively
made the argument that therapy is backfiring and causing more
problems than it's solving. She was a bit controversial.
Yeah, that triggered some people.
Yeah, you know, it's, it's funny because when she was on I, I, I
really do wish I pushed back a little bit more when she was
here because my sense then and my sense since then was that
like she's on the something, there's clearly something here,
but I don't know what it is. And it does seem, it did seem a
little bit like she was throwing the baby out with the bathwater
because it's like we at this point, we do have 100 plus years
of empirical data showing that therapy is good for people, like
therapy is helpful. Then I found this piece by
Freddy de Gore and, and to me, he like explained it perfectly
with a very simple dichotomy. He essentially what he says is
he says there's therapy, which is the classic, you go sit down
in a, in a small room with a therapist in private and it's
all confidential and you get to share your issues and talk
through them and etcetera, etcetera.
And that is, that is a very beneficial thing.
But then there's therapy culture, which is when the
language and the ethos of therapy starts to pervade social
spaces, particularly schools, work organizations, politics.
And that can actually be extremely toxic and backfire
quite a bit. And as soon as I saw him explain
that I'm like, that makes sense because when it's just you in
private, one-on-one with a therapist, it's great.
Be vulnerable, you know, consider yourself a victim,
think about your shortcomings, really push yourself, like lean
into your fragility and think about your emotions and express
your fears and all these things. That's great because it is in a,
it's a cordon off environment. It's a safe space.
It's, it's designed for that. When you put that in public, you
start creating all sorts of twisted social incentives, like
when you start socially rewarding people for identifying
themselves as victims or feeling victimized.
When you build into educational systems or workplace systems,
the protection of people's feelings, preventative measures
of anybody being offended at any time, this stuff backfires
horribly. Like it, it just, it creates an
even more toxic environment and seems to diminish people's
mental health even further. And so I think the key
distinction here is individuals in private versus social groups
in public. And the same concepts, the same
therapeutic concepts, the same, the exact same principles that
make therapy so effective in private are the same principles
that make it toxic in public. And anyway, I love this.
I thought it was brilliant. I put it on the docket 'cause I
was like this. This just solved so many, so
many questions for me. Yeah, I'm curious what you
think. But yeah, I think what you're
saying therapy doesn't scale well, right?
That's a That's a good way to. That is a perfect way to
condense it into a single. Sentence and the the I mean the
thing that you and I are old enough to remember when nobody
talked about going to therapy. Yeah, right.
It was a when we were kids. It was weird.
And yeah. Especially where we grew up.
Yes, yes. That's right.
Yeah. That that should be acknowledged
too. And now I think it's better the
the goal was to destigmatize that right.
And which I think was a very noble and good goal and should
still be a goal. And there has been a lot of I
think we've made great strides along those lines.
The problem is, is that like, and when every conversation
starts with all my therapist says, that's when the therapy
culture starts creeping in. And now one point that Abigail
Shire did make that I thought was pretty, it was insightful is
when you're starting to insert a therapist into into between you
and somebody else or between you and society or between you and
any other group or person, that's kind of when it becomes a
little bit more of a problem. If we keep it small scale, like
I said, it doesn't scale well. And so, yeah, the whole thing
around these stigmats, these stigmatization is important, but
what we're finding is that there's a lot of unintended
consequences about that too, 100% when we try to scale it.
And, and to your point of like what Abigail brought up, like I,
I do think what she points to, which is accurate is that within
therapy culture, there's a tendency to overestimate the
powers of therapists, like to kind of almost assume they're
superhuman of like, well, this kids having trouble at school.
Let's bring his therapist to school and have his therapist
sit in with all the parent teacher conferences and check in
with him after class. Well, it's like a therapist is
just a person right there. There's like there's no, there's
nothing magical about a clinical psychology degree that like
makes you able to like snap your fingers and and resolve people's
problems. Most of the value, and we've
talked about this before, but if you look at the meta analysis
around therapy, the 8020 of therapy is just the fact that
you're in a quiet safe space talking to a person who's
listening something a bad way to right.
And it's there's nothing. There's no magical method.
This actually ties in very well with the self help thing.
There's no magical method. There's no magical advice that
they're going to give. There's no like actionable steps
that they're going to like they're people.
They're people who are trained to listen, sympathize and offer,
you know, a useful word of advice or two.
And and that's it. Like they're very, they're
limited. And I think within therapy
culture, they get a little bit, I don't want to say deified, but
they're, they're almost like they're looked at as authority
figures of like, you know, well, Timmy's having trouble at
school, you know, let's get his therapist involved and let's
listen to what the therapist thing should happen.
And well, the therapist says he shouldn't be talking to his
parents anymore. Like now, now you're getting
fucked up, right? And I've seen personally in my
life, like I, I've had people in my life who perhaps put, gave
their therapist way too much credit and power and their
therapist steered them in some pretty fucked up directions and
they went that way, right? And it's like it comes back to
the actionable advice thing. I think any good therapist
understands their own limitations and isn't going to
stick their neck out very often with actual advice.
The other thing I loved about the the Freddie de Boer piece
and this part. It might be bullshit, but it was
fun for me to think about. He made the suggestion that
therapy culture. For many people, therapy culture
is filling the void that the lack of religiosity.
Yeah, it's going to ask. Me about that, yeah.
And he he went so far as to make the argument that it that
therapy culture presents a fully formed morality that replaces
kind of the classic Western Christian morality and
essentially exalts 1's feelings and feeling protected and safe
at all times over every other consideration no matter what.
And he points out that the the logical conclusion of this is
that you basically turn everybody into like little
narcissist who think that the world should rearrange itself to
please them all the time. And he's probably overstating
the case. But as somebody who really loves
to think about just the craving for meaning and purpose and some
coherent worldview for people to latch onto, I found it very
fascinating to think about. He could be overstating it.
Sure. There's this fantastic book.
It's one of it's, it's this book that just blew my fucking mind
when I read it. It's called Soul Self in
Society. It's by Edward.
It's either Edward Rubin or Edwin Rubin I'm forgetting.
I remember you you recommended that to me like 3 times and I
bought it and I never. Read it, you never read it.
OK. So, so he talked about somewhere
in, in Western civilization, there's been three big
moralities that have occurred throughout Western civilization.
The first one was a morality of honor, a culture of honor.
Basically this is when you have kind of smaller scale societies
and you kind of that's honor is kind of what regulates behavior
between groups. Then came Christianity and
religion and philosophy in general actually, and we had
this moral code and it was the the moral code of salvation.
What do you call it? So your life was basically set
up around getting salvation, getting into heaven, that sort
of thing. Over the last 150 to 200 years,
it's now become the morality of self fulfilment and I think this
is the latest kind of iteration of this morality of self
fulfillment. Interesting.
And self, you can call it self actualization self basically
the, the the underlying tenet of this morality though, is that
everyone deserves to live to their fullest potential, or at
least have the opportunity to live to their fullest potential.
And I think therapy culture is kind of like an almost an, an
aberration of that, taking it so far as to put up everybody's,
you know, everybody's feelings are valid, everybody's, your
experience is valid no matter what, always will be, never.
There's no exceptions to that whatsoever.
And nobody can tell you different.
And everybody who tries to is an abuser of some kind and they're
trying to rob you of power. And you know, throughout history
there has been, you know, people have tried to rob people of
their their social fulfilment, Sure, but this is like the
latest kind of iteration of it. And every moral code has
contradictions and problems and everything like that, but.
Well, it's, yeah, it's one of the I, I actually.
It's a fantastic book you should read, I wrote.
About this and everything is fucked.
How you know no matter what you put as the most important thing,
kind of philosophically, you'll pay the price for it.
Like everything has a dark side to it.
Everything has a cost. Everything.
Everything has just that. Like a flaw or or as you said, a
contradiction to it. This is a bit of a harebrain
theory. There's probably a book.
That's what we come for. Yeah, I know.
This is what the podcast has become, Mark's harebrain
theories. There's probably a book about
this somewhere, but it, it's just something that I've
observed, you know, and I think the board talks about this a
little bit like the, the baby boomer generation had this
really brought this ethos of, of if it feels good, yes, do it
right. What feels good is right.
And previous to that, if you look at kind of the silent
generation and in the early 20th century and the 19th century,
you, you kind of had this Victorian period of, of self
denial of, you know, don't show your emotions, you know, sit up
straight, shut up, don't talk, don't complain, you know, just
get your job done. You go back a couple more
generations before that, like late 18th century and you read
about like the courts before the French Revolution and all the
intrigues that were going on in Europe.
And during that time, it's like people are all fucking each
other like smoking, like doing drinking all the time.
Like the the amount of alcohol consumption that was going on
was just like absolutely preposterous.
So part of me has wondered that maybe if you imagine there's a
scale and on one side of the scale of self denial and on the
other side of the scale is self indulgence, or you could call it
self self fulfillment. Perhaps our ethic as a society
kind of ping pongs back and forth across generations.
So each generation becomes a little bit more self indulgent
until it starts causing real social problems and then there's
a backlash and the ethos starts to to become more about self
denial and self-discipline and, and and more rigid.
And then that starts to cause problems.
And then it starts ping pinging back in the in the self
indulgent direction again. And I kind of feel like if you
look at all the generations going back to the boomers, like
every generation since the 60s is celebrating more self
indulgence than the previous one.
And I feel like that's just starting to change.
We've we've flipped that. Just in the last five years,
it's starting to go the other way where people are starting to
realize, especially with all the technology and social media and
everything, people are really starting to realize and
appreciate the power of of self denial.
Of self restraint. Restraint, discipline, being
conscious of what you're doing, not indulging in things you know
we're seeing. Drug use is dropping.
Drinking is dropping, even things like teen pregnancy and
and sex out of wedlock, those things are dropping.
Divorce rate is dropping in in kind of this old school
conservative ethos of of like, you know, take care of yourself,
go to bed on time, be productive, don't complain.
Like all these things are coming back with the younger
generations now. And so part of me just wonders
like, OK, maybe we hit the breaking point somewhere around
like 2010, 2015. We kind of like hit the breaking
point of like, OK, everything's way too self indulgent.
Like we need to start pushing back on this and maybe the
future generations will become more rigid again.
The way I've, I've heard it put before about like the Victorian
area, the Victorian era, they, they would talk about death all
the time, but never talked about sex.
And now we're talking about sex all the time and never about
death. That's really interesting.
Yeah. That's super interesting, yeah.
Yeah. So I don't know, I, I think
there might be something to that.
And I'm sure there is kind of a, a scale that we ping pong back
and forth between self indulgence and and
self-discipline. But I don't know, it's it's
really interesting to think about.
Yeah, I, I, I can't help, you know, when we we had Sadiya Khan
on a while back, and the, I think the way I introduced her
was I was like, she basically gives dating advice that your
grandmother would give. And somehow that feels
revolutionary. And I've started to notice that
in more places, like a lot of the productivity advice is just
stuff that grandma would have told you, right?
Like a lot of the health advice is stuff that you, like, eat
Whole Foods, don't buy stuff in packages, don't drink too much.
Like, that's shit your grandmother could have told you,
right. Yeah.
Part of me just wonders if we're just, if we're doing a little
flashback, stick with us. We'll be back.
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What questions were we asked this week, Drew?
Yeah, we're riding the advice train still too.
This one comes from YouTube. When have you fallen short of
taking your own advice? Oh my God, all the time.
Can I tell you guys like real Talk now writing a best selling
self help book? That's the.
Worst thing that ever happened to you?
Yeah, yeah. Oh God, it's never been the
same. No, one of the the downsides,
they're not many, but one of one of the few downsides is that
anytime you fuck up, one of the things you wrote about somebody
in your life is going to let you down.
Like all the time. I cannot tell you how many times
I've been talking to somebody like my wife or a friend or a
family member and they'll just kind of look at me and they're
like, maybe you shouldn't give so many fucks about this.
And I'm like damn. It why do you?
Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, no, it, it's to come
back to, to the point from earlier, like I write this stuff
'cause it's what I need. Yeah, it's, it's, it's a side
benefit that the audience finds value in it too.
But ultimately it's like it's written because I needed it.
I have a tendency to get involved in too many things and
I constantly need to be reminded, what do you actually
give a fuck about? What are you going to focus on?
What are you going to commit to? I, I have shiny object syndrome,
right? So it, it's so much of the basis
of everything I write about, everything I care about,
everything I preach, it starts 'cause I'm, I'm usually fucking
it up myself and I definitely have not mastered it and I
probably won't ever mastered. It so, so, but So what are some
of the common ones, though, that you consistently find yourself
falling short on? I'm sure there's a few of those,
yeah. I tend to be unfocused.
I, I tend to get too excited with new things.
And so I struggle with like focusing and going all in on one
thing that, that is something that recurs pretty regularly.
I definitely, you know, there's a whole section in the book
about metrics and how you measure success.
And be careful how you measure success because they can come
back and bite you in the end. And they're like, no matter how
you choose to measure it, it will come back and bite you in
the ass. Ironically, that.
Bit me in the ass after the book's success because kind of
unwittingly I I think I attached a lot of my definition of
success that how that book did. And so afterwards, it left me
feeling kind of lost and aimless and not knowing what to do with
myself. So I went through a kind of a
weird period for a year or two. Like not, yeah, just feeling
lost essentially. As I've mentioned before, I
struggle a lot with commitment or early in my life, I struggled
a ton with commitment. Recently, I've gotten much
better about it, struggled with health stuff.
Like like a lot of the stuff I've been writing and talking
about the past couple years about how boring is what works.
And, you know, it's, it's about doing things consistently and
it's, it's about simplicity and, and how, how easily is something
going to be to, to, to do even when you don't feel like doing
it? Like a lot of that just comes
from my own health journey of, of my own inability to change my
behavior and stick with things and, and how I had to learn how
to like, distill things down and simplify them and make them
like, and get comfortable with how boring and mundane they
were. So, yeah, it never ends.
It never ends. It's yeah, I, I don't even know
if there's anything I feel like I've like, nailed completely.
Definitely 100% yeah, one of them.
One of them for me that I was thinking of, and this comes up
all the time for me, is like the materialism equals happiness,
like consumption and happiness. Maybe part of that.
I'm sure living in America, you know, where it's all around us.
But I so many times where I will plan out some big purchase or
even small purchases or something like that.
And I realize later I'm like, oh, I'm thinking this is going
to make me happy. Somehow and I'm.
Still disappointed when it doesn't, You know, that's a big
one for me. I find that it's pretty
pervasive in my life, and I used to be such a staunch minimalist
too. Part of it is when you like you
go buy a house or you settle that into an apartment or
whatever for a longer period of time and you start like in those
kind of comforts around you. Yeah, it's, yeah.
No, the the home thing is, is legit.
I mean, luxury is funny. It it's actually really funny.
So there was a New York magazine did a profile on me and the
journalist was actually a really interesting guy.
And he and I kind of hit it off and we've kept in touch a little
bit. And he, I forgot how it came up.
But one time I asked him, I said, like, what's what's like
the favorite piece you've ever done?
And he said that he got to do a piece once where basically he
got to try a bunch of rich people stuff, like luxury stuff.
And then he had the the article was writing whether it was worth
the money or not. So he got to go drive like a,
you know, $1,000,000 McLaren car or whatever.
And then he like slept on like $100,000 bed and ate it like all
the three star Michelin restaurants in New York.
Like did all this crazy luxurious shit.
And then and then actually wrote about the experiences like kind
of an average guy and saying, was this really 1000 times
better than the normal thing? Or is it just kind of like, you
know, an ego jerk off thing? And I always thought that was
really fascinating. And I remember I asked him, I
was like, what was worth it? And he was like, I love cars.
So the car was pretty insane. And then he said the bed.
He was like, yeah, the bed. The bed is like sleeping on a
cloud. But yeah, everything else he was
kind of like, what's the point? Yeah.
Oh, don't, don't get me wrong, there's ways to spend your money
that that can definitely. And they're out even on material
things that can definitely for sure, I can make you.
Some things, yeah, Some things are worth money.
But I, to your point of like, this is gonna change things,
right? Yeah, they don't.
Yeah, In some cases they just
cause more problems. Yeah, on that note, what's the
wisdom of the week? What is our non academic wisdom
of the week? Non academic wisdom of the week.
Yes, this comes fittingly, it comes from an 18th century
English poet and philosopher named Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
And he said advice is like snow, the softer it falls, the longer
it dwells upon, and the deeper it sinks into the mind.
Very poetic, yes? Very nice, be soft handed.
With the advice, we are very soft.
Well that's it for a show this week.
Very soft show like snow I'm feeling like.
So I hope. It sinks into your mind.
Yeah, I'm. Feeling so like wafty and and
light and lith. Is that a word lith?
Lith, I don't know. Is that a word?
Lith I feel like. LITH Yeah.
Lith Yeah, isn't that a word? Fuck if I know the lith.
We're going to check the dictionary and get back to you
next week. I'm a writer, by the way.
Be sure to like and subscribe and we will see you next week.
The Subtle Art I'm not giving a Fuck podcast is produced by Drew
Burney. It's edited by Andrew Nishimura.
Jessica Choi is our videographer and sound engineer.
Thank you for listening and we will see you next week.