https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=RyiL7B_9ygo
Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Unfolding the Soul. Today my guest is Joe. I met him on the Discord server, Bridges of Meaning. And we were there in the early days. We met a lot. And recently we met up in person in the Bridges of Meaning Festival and in Utrecht, where we had a Dutch meetup. And Joe is going to talk about somberness and how that has persisted throughout his life. So, yeah, Joe, what do you think somberness means? It’s such a nice subject to talk about, isn’t it? The thing about somberness is that in my own experience, I try to move away from it by making jokes. That’s kind of an automatic response. And I always kind of feel it coming. So I try to do that right now so I don’t have to talk about the thing. So I think somberness is a thing that’s a bit sticky, maybe. It kind of sticks to everything. It’s this kind of morose outlook, I’d say. A morose outlook. So how does that affect you? Like, how does it change your behavior? You tend to expect the worst things to happen out of a set of possible outcomes in general. And as creatures with bias, then if your expectation is a bit somber, in general, when you see things happen, you expect bad things to happen. And when they do, it confirms your worldview. And the selection bias tends to ensure that if there is something that’s generally positive, well, that’s probably a misfire or a fluke or, let’s say, an exception to the norm. Yeah, I think that would cover it. So you see it as a reciprocal narrowing towards the negative? I’m not very familiar with Feveiki’s terminology. So reciprocal narrowing, can you give me a quick one now? It’s like a vicious cycle, right? Like there’s… Oh, yeah, yeah, feedback loop. Okay, yeah, it’s a filter. Yeah, in that sense, if things happen well, that’s no surprise. And if something good happens, well, that is a surprise, but it probably won’t last. It’s that sort of stuff, I’d say. So that kind of sounds like pessimism. Yeah, I don’t think that’s inaccurate. But those things go together quite well, I would think. Okay, so yeah, what’s the first memory that you have of being like that? Yeah. Probably around eight, nine, maybe. Just a more of a somber look at the world. You know, often the kids, they can feel like they don’t fit in and they feel like they don’t understand the world. They kind of feel like, you know, that you’re just a side-digger might perhaps say you’re thrown into this existence and you don’t understand it, but you have to contend with it. And you can either see it as a challenge and content with it or see it as absurd or you can see it as a horror. But I think if I try to think back about that, of course, it’s, you know, difficult because I was so young, but I think it has to do with the world is difficult to understand. Things seem to happen for not really a reason. People don’t seem to behave for any real rational reason. And well, what am I supposed to do here? And why are things in general pretty shitty? Which they were for, you know, a large amount of my youth. So yeah, before I ramble on, I think that’s kind of the earliest place that I can place this. So it sounds like you’re talking about gaining a type of self-awareness and I think it’s like a social self-awareness. Yeah, definitely that. You know, you see this a lot in I think nowadays we’d call it when it develops impurity, we tend to call it teenage angst, like killer chronic, oh, you know, now this makes sense. And, you know, people are, you know, behaving in ways they shouldn’t. But I think that’s more of a response to development impurity. And I think what happens before that age, it’s more of a I don’t know. That’s actually a very good question. I find it hard to answer. I mean, first off, I’m not a child’s account. Well, you can just go from personal experience. Can you repeat the question back? Well, I was seeing it as sort of a developmental stage or something where you gain a certain self-awareness, right? And now you need to place yourself in the social content, right? Like, oh, I’m a social creature. I have to deal with this. And what does that mean? And it seems like you gave a negative connotation to that. Yeah, part of that is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, trying to figure out the social game and trying to figure out how to deal with, with, with others. Now, I mean, honestly, as a kid, I wasn’t all that great at this. I think that, that might very well have influenced this, the sense of not belonging and the sense of not understanding the social rules I play. It’s not like I did have friends though, but they were, there were a few and, and they were probably more like me than like the general population. So if you, if you’re a social outcast, the world seems strange to you. There’s a, there’s a song by the doors where they sing people are strange when you’re a stranger. I think that captures it quite well. So I also get a sense that you, you got to that awareness too early in some sense, right? While you weren’t ready. I don’t know where you are supposed to do that. Maybe you are supposed to only do that later. I don’t know. Well, it depends on whether you’re ready or not. Right? Like you, I feel like you definitely weren’t ready for it. Well, I was a somber, shut-in kid. So my parents took me trying to figure out why I was that way. They took me to psychiatry. So in which the psychiatrist basically diagnosed me with a form of mood disorder called dysthymia, which tends to, I mean, that’s a diagnosis. I’ve no way of that’s accurate, but they figured out that was, that was the deal. But apparently I would say stuff on the way to the hospital. Like, you know, I have no, why, why are we alive anyway? And I must have wondered about it, I guess, as a kid. And I had no memory. I mean, I was told later that I would say those things, but I don’t recall them. I mean, I recall going to the hospital, but that’s it. You know, and I remember some of the therapy sessions, which were mostly just talk therapy and surveys and, you know, where these questionnaires where they tried to give to place you personality wise. And they’re looking at it now. There were probably some big five tests in there. I mean, I don’t, a lot of this is reconstructed from old psychiatry reports, because I don’t remember a lot of it. I just remember that it was, it was there early and it kind of stuck around because, you know, it was kind of just stable around, around puberty as well. Although it became more of a depression thing there because of the, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the social problems that I encountered in, in high school, let’s say 12 years old and up from there. But they, so that, let’s see that the attempts to confirm the worldview already developed very early, right? Like life is just absurd. And we’re all kind of just going through the motions. I don’t know how that experience has been for you as, as, as a young man. Well, I had, I had similar issues. But, but yeah, like, I feel like you, you go to a place where you, you had this social problem and then you went to an existential solution. So, so you didn’t want to handle it at the place where it occurred. You said, wow, like if that’s the case, like why is there all this other stuff? But like, I, I have a vague memory of, of walking home from a friend’s house. I must have been in my early teens where I just kind of came to the realization that, well, you know, this is just the way it is. It’s, it’s, this is who you are. The world’s the way it is. And you just, either you give up or you just kind of try to, to, to, you know, how do I say that in English? You, go? Well, yeah, but there’s, there’s an expression. You’re going to meet the human, the earth. You, you, yeah, you, you, you use the tools you’ve been given, let’s say you wrote about using the, I don’t know how to translate the ors that it has. Yeah. So, so there’s a sense of acceptance in that. Did you feel acceptance or was that resignation? It was more, it’s so difficult because it’s so old, but I think it was more of a resignation than anything else. Yeah. And I mean, I would have pretty frequent suicidal ideation. That was quite usual, but I was also so terrified of death that I would not act on it. So, and that’s kind of odd, right? You could say, well, it’s just biological self-preservation. But like, it never, it never got stronger that it would, it would override that. Like, you know, I basically, no friends in high school was bullied relentlessly. I get that straight up at some point, which just refused to go to school. I had no idea why, what I was supposed to do there because it was just, it’s just awful. Like, it did not seem worth it. And, you know, for anyone who would listen to this video, who’s been bullied at school, that might sound familiar. It’s kind of a, it’s kind of a problem you can’t dig yourself out of, right? Because when I was that age, I was socially awkward enough that, well, have fun trying to develop friendships, which, which you still desire knowing full well that it’s difficult. But then, well, since you’re socially awkward, you’re digging your own grave and you can’t get out of it because, well, in order to get better, you need friends. So you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re basically screwed. So you didn’t have any friends? I had, I had friends. I had one friend in high school, Wesky stabbed me in the back at some point. I had one friend at some point who I stabbed in the back and I still regret that. And I don’t know, some of this, like one bully eventually even apologized to me when, when I met him years later. And I’m trying to see if my, my memories are accurate. I think they mostly are. Now, the interesting thing is eventually I switched schools and I developed some friendships there. And after high school, I went to college. And the nice thing is I went to college in IT. So you meet a whole bunch of people who are more like you than the ones you, you for some reason met in high school. So the friendships there were easy to develop because you kind of, you kind of, there was somebody who wrote a blog post once who says nerds don’t optimize for, they don’t optimize for this sort of social glue. They optimize for different things. So it’s more of like, Hey, how can we relate on this level of technology? And how can we share things about our common interests? So going into a basic trade school and learning basic tech trade worked out pretty well. And I have, I have one really good friend who I met in that school. So, but you also, I mean, it’s not like there weren’t bullies there, but I had also gotten older. So you kind of, first off you have friends yourself, so you can also deal with it a bit better. Yeah. And after that, I entered the workforce must’ve been somewhere in my early twenties. So I want to go back to the backstabbing. So did you get stabbed before you backstabbed the other guy or was it the other way? Yeah. So no excuse though for my behavior. Well, yeah, but I want to, I want to get the connection. So is the backstabbing something that you, you found reasonable in some sense at that point? My own. Yeah. No, no. And I remember, remember really disliking myself when I did that, like I knew it was wrong. So, and how does that connect to your, your somberness? Like, like what was the reason that you kind of flipped to, to still acting that out? You mean despite my summers, why I would stab somebody in the back knowing full well what that was like? Right. Well, not despite, maybe it actually encouraged it. Like, I don’t know. Oh boy. I don’t know. That’s it. I don’t know whether I encourage it to be precise. Let me think. I think it was a desire to belong, to be accepted by the people who bullied me. So you thought imitating their behavior in some sense would gain you acceptance? Or at least, or at least they would no longer be looking at me as a target. I mean, none of this excuses it. I still don’t like, you know, it’s good to talk about it. It’s also a type of, you know, confession in that sense. I’m trying to remember if I ever apologized to them. I might have, but I’m not entirely sure if I mean, because I did talk to them, but I don’t know, like either I returned something to them that I had, like we exchanged something, or I apologized to them. I don’t, I don’t know anymore. But it wasn’t an apology that restored the relationship. I don’t know. I don’t know what happened. I think he left school. Eventually. He was bullied by a number of people at school. And I think we were semi-friends. I had been to his place once. I don’t know if he ever visited my place. But there was just this point, I don’t know, he reached a tipping point and he basically grabbed one of his bullies and, you know, just beat the shit out of him. And I remember, you know, feeling awful because I felt I was, you know, I had to contribute it to him feeling like that, you know, again, despite knowing very well what it was like to be bullied daily. So yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know if this is particularly related to the interest of somberness, but it’s certainly something that was part of the whole existence within this somewhat absurd frame in which still clear moral rules applied. So yeah, I wonder, I don’t know. I have no idea what happened to that guy. I think I’ve tried to look him up since, but I don’t know if he’s doing all right. So if you’re thinking about this event, right, like I can imagine that when you say, well, I still lived in this moral frame, like it did shift a moral boundary for you. Yeah, definitely. It kind of shows you what you’re capable of, right? So did it actually have a positive effect that you got scared of yourself and that you got more restrained or was it more like you kind of let some water into a floodgate and was less? That’s so difficult to answer. I mean, I think it’s a very, very, very, very, very, very, very was, was less. That’s so difficult to say. I mean, I am sure that I’ve thought I’ll never do this again, right? But that’s an easy thought to have because that’s a responsive mechanism. Look, where you kind of get older, at least in my experience, I don’t know how it is for others, but look, at later age, I joined the fire department when I moved to a town and I wanted to kind of become a part of the community there. So I joined the fire department. I’m still a member there. So in the volunteer firefighter for about 15 years. What you know, this there is that the guys, they continuously riff on each other. It’s part of the dynamic. And there’s sort of this subtle social code that you don’t cross. Like, because you’re expected to poke back and you’re expected to take the jokes in good charge. So, you know, for any, for any Peterson listeners here, Peterson aficionados, probably not the right word, but let’s say fans. Okay, he has a story about lunch bucket, right? The guy who we worked with that with the railway crew talks about it, how they would make fun of lunch bucket, you know, and he couldn’t take the jokes very much like that in a fire department. Like you take the joke because if you can’t joke with each other, what can we trust you if we’re dealing with a structure fire, right? So in that sense, that was a huge educational experience. Because even though at first it might have increased my somberness, like, you know, clearly I don’t belong here, right? You know, I’m just a nerd, what am I doing in the fire department? It’s probably a mistake that they let me in. You kind of learn that they’re trying to actually pick you up by poking a bit at you and see if you poke back. And that kind of helps, you know, because you could see that within the somber frame as a, oh, see, people hate me, but that’s not it. It’s showing you’re also part of the group. It’s worse to be ignored. If you’re in the fire truck and you’re on your way to a call, you know, it’s better that somebody, you know, makes a joke at you, you know, and you make a joke back or on the way back from the fire than that. You know, you’re just sitting there and everybody’s talking. So it’s not bullying in that sense, because it’s meant to include you. But you have to realize that, at least I had to realize that. And I mean, I’m pretty sure that at the German Festival that we had recently with British meaning, I must have made some jokes to people. But you got to be careful because you’re not sure if that other person understands that you’re trying to communicate with them instead of putting them down. So there’s always sort of a balance in trying to do that. You got to kind of know each other. So it kind of feels like a matter to put skin in the game, right? Because in some sense, you’re reaching out and you’re becoming vulnerable, right? Because if someone doesn’t accept the joke, right, they reject you in that same instance. Yeah, or they change their view of you like, Oh, this guy’s pretty dick, you know, I’m not going to hang out near him. But yeah, somebody you’ve kind of been talking to and had a bit of conversation with you, I can probably make a joke, you know, still have to pick your jokes. But this kind of this kind of dance of the back and forth riffing. Yeah, that’s once you can understand it, it can be fun. And it’s kind of just part of the conversation. But if you’re if you have a history of bullying, it’s everything that’s negative feels like bullying. So yeah, so I feel like you were describing an arc. So you’re, you’re at primary school, and it’s like, you don’t get what’s going on. And then you go to high school. And then in the high school, you kind of kind of get well, a little bit settled, right? But you, you’re, you’re getting this one person that you relate to. And then you go, you go to this work school effectively, right? Where you were, where you can commune around your work effectively, right? Pretty much. And then you end up in this fire department, which, which actually is, is trying to drag you in some sense into the social dynamics. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that it happens in a lot of spaces where, excuse me, shouldn’t have shouldn’t have bought myself fizzy water as a drink. It happens in a lot of spaces that are, are, I would say male dominated. I worked for a metal engineering company for a while, kind of as a summer job. It was constant like that. But I remember not being able to deal very well with it, because I should have just responded with, you know, that sort of riffing, but, but yeah, so instead, you just kind of withdraw and try to ignore it. And that doesn’t help because then you’re like, you know, the weirdo at work who doesn’t talk, you know, or who doesn’t understand the jokes or who tries to approach everything in a serious manner, instead of, oh, you know, there’s Joe, you know, I was a hanging jackass, you know, right. So yeah, that’s, I think that’s an important thing that, that, I don’t know, you kind of need to learn, I think you need to learn that early because it’s part of those fundamental social skills that I think if you have those early, it’s going to really help you later in life, the sooner you have it, the better. So what do you think changed in you that you grew into that? That took years. That took years. I think it was just a. Just hammering at the wall. I don’t know. The reason I say I don’t know is because I think confidence has a huge impact on this, on this in general, because if you’re confident, you feel you can take on the world, if you can take on the world, you feel you can, you know, challenge it a bit and see if it pushes back. And that kind of shows you that, well, you know, maybe you’re not this terrified rat, but maybe you’re actually able to, I don’t know, kind of carve out a bit of space and establish yourself a bit. And maybe you can say, say no, a bit. And that’s when I, when I, when, when I noticed to get back to the main subject, what the somberness does. So when I go through it to a cycle, which I’m not immune to, but they happen far less now is that you start to do withdraw, you know, like, OK, I’m going to not talk to anybody. I’m going to kind of just put my nose down and try to push through this. Well, what you actually need is social interaction, in my experience. So it’s sort of this paradox. If you don’t want social interaction, it’s exactly what you need to get out of the somber cycle. And, you know, because the cycle tends to come sort of semi with a semi warning. And I, in my experience, I get, I get this anxiousness, like I need to get away from something, something’s going to happen. It’s terrible. It’s going to be there any day now. And I go, I know what this is. I know what’s coming. So having people close to you is essential. So I’m married. I’ve been married for about 15 years. That’s a huge, huge factor, like having somebody close who you can at least confide in that, hey, I’m going to go through it to a some negative, you know, let’s say a week, at least maybe longer. I’m deferring a bit from the question, I think. Let’s see, you asked me, what’s the question again? Well, I was thinking I asked what changed, right? So I, I think, I think it’s growing up. Getting into what does that mean? Yeah, that’s, that’s a good pushback. Getting older is just the physical part of it. You kind of establish yourself. I’m still an extremely neurotic person, like in my bones. But I can kind of work with it because I know, I know it’s that way. So what changed? So you mentioned confidence, right? Yeah. And I think, I think, in some sense, you see that as your antidote to the neuroticism or something. But I assume that you have confidence and had I assume that you have confidence and had confidence in the past as well in, in certain aspects of your life. Well, that’s the point. Because what the, what the salmonism and the neuroticism does is it sees confidence as an error. Okay. Because, well, one, it’s temporary, and two, it’s probably wrong. And you’re probably going to get found out anyway, or something like something’s going to happen that is going to, you know, make sure that people understand who you really are. It’s kind of related to what’s in it, we call the imposter syndrome, where you think, well, you know, you’re not supposed to be who you are, and you’re going to get found out any moment now. That’s what I had in my mind. It is it is right within it, for some weird reason. I think that’s because the field is so extremely broad that you always feel like you don’t know anything. It’s kind of like philosophy. As soon as you really start to get in the field, you just, you know, notice how little you really know. But I am reluctant to say stuff like this, but I do, I had a religious conversion in 2018, 2019. And that just, that just turned stuff 180 degrees. Like I’ve had very few somberness since then. And if it’s there, I tend to have it under control pretty quickly. But the real, the real, you know, constant real negativity in my head of kill yourself and it kill yourself. That’s just, that’s hardly ever there anymore. And that used to be fairly common. And I’ve always seen that as a response of the neurotic mind to a world that it can’t, it doesn’t understand how to interact with it. It doesn’t understand how to place itself in it and control it. So its alternative that it proposes is to end, which that’s a solution. That’s a solution. Yeah, it’s, it’s, it tries to find a solution to the problem of existence. It can’t find one apart from one that says, well, existence is an error and must be ended. Mm hmm. Now religious conversion is in itself, I’ve for a long while treated as also an error, an escape, an irrational method to find a solution to the problem. But that doesn’t seem to be the case. It seems to be genuine, having, having looked at it for about three years now to see where it has gone. So for some reason that has come to a huge amount of confidence. I still don’t know why, I still don’t know why, but I’ve told people this, but I, you know, what the someoneism, the neuroticism does is to make, it makes you live in your head. Again, people who recognize a bunch of what I said will probably also recognize this. You live in your head and then, you know, you’re stuck with yourself, whatever negative deal also lives there, right? And, you know, with your old memories of all the mistakes you’ve made and, you know, the person you stabbed in the back and the persons who stabbed you in the back and all the ways that you could have maybe fixed yourself if you weren’t so incompetent. Because you had those. What? You had ways to fix yourself for you. No, no, no. But, but, but your neurotic mind still feels like you should. So you’re just, you’re stuck with yourself, which hates you. And so, I was going somewhere with this. The nice thing about that is that when you start pointing outward, and I’m trying to be sure how that happened, but I mean, it happened, you notice that, oh, huh, being a really outward pointing relation, relational person is way better than anything else I’ve ever experienced. And you, I mean, in my experience, I found out that the world is way different than it is from when you’re in within the somber view. The best, the most accurate description I have of when I had a religious experience is that that things turn brighter, not just not mentally, but physically, like visually. And the next day, you know, things were brighter, you know, how people say in love, say, oh, everything was like this, this and that, you know, and birds were singing and the sun was shining and blah, blah, blah. I guess it could be like that. So that whole somberness was gone. And the thing of the veil into the sacred, the holy of hope. Yeah, maybe the, now, the neurotic mind is still going to try to put the brakes on it, you know, where it can like, we’re not going to, we’re not going to deal with this, right? Because the somberness is also kind of a nice space. You at least, you know what that is. You don’t know what the new thing is. And so let’s just, you know, hold it together, right? But the more I’ve read about this and the more I’ve tried to figure this out, and I’ve read about psychology and social psychology. I’ve done a college program on and with, you know, from which I think I’ve learned a bunch of stuff about this. I’m always going to be careful on the claims I try to make because so much of this is really vague when you try to think about it and try to explain it from a very old and filtered. But that said. Can you repeat that for a second? Because you got out of it. Oh, sorry. I said, I’m always going to be careful in the sense of, I don’t know how much of this is entirely accurate because they’re old memories and they’re sometimes colored memories and whatever, you know, this, but disclaimer aside, it seems to me that that relating to others and trying to only live that way. By which, you know, you might want to include the relationship to God as a primary relationship is better, is so much better than the alternative. Now, I don’t know why that is. I mean, I could have explanations from, you know, evolutionary psychology, but let’s not go there because I don’t think it’s constructive. But when I compare that to the discord and the people I’ve talked to there, I see this pattern over and over again. Like, particularly people who through Peterson, start pointing themselves outwards and notice extreme shift in how they perceive the world and how they think and what they want. If you talk to Peter, to DeFenicley, you know, he’ll have loads of conversations with folks like that. I don’t know if some of this is recognizable to you. So, yeah, yeah, I think I’ve come to an end of this ramble here. Okay. So there’s a couple things. I’ll just go into the last thing you said, right? Because for me, Peterson and Caillou started to give me an interface, right? Like, so you started off with, oh, I don’t understand the social game. And then getting these handles, right, where you might still not be able to manipulate it or participate in it because it’s too much for you in some sense. There’s still the intelligibility that removes the scariness or the awkwardness or maybe more importantly, the dissociation, right? Like the fact that you’re not participating in what’s happening. Yeah, I think that’s accurate. Yeah, that’s also, yeah, you’re dead on right. That’s what the living here had absolutely prevents you from doing. And that doesn’t mean you can’t have your quiet time and read your book and go for a long walk, you know, but yeah, I don’t have anything else to add to that. Okay. So you mentioned the word error a bunch of times, right? And you were always like, oh, A is happening and therefore B is an error. But I kind of was missing in your story. This idea that A was incorrect, right? Like the fact that you have a problem formulation, which results in an error is, yeah, that’s true, right? But maybe the error isn’t the error. Maybe the problem formulation is the error. Is that a thing that you’ve been thinking about or dealt with? Whether the underlying issue was a worldview. Well, yeah, or just the framing problem, right? Because you when, for example, you were talking about, well, I don’t know the exact example, but just say this guy makes a joke to you, right? And then it’s like, well, like the joke or whatever, and it’s a fact upon me, right? Like it’s negative and therefore there’s an error in our relationship, right? But you can also say, well, the joke affected me negatively. So my receptivity was an error, right? Like many ways that you can frame that situation. I think that’s correct. And I tried to point out that if most of your experience is that a joke is always made at your expense, then you’re going to have a lot of trouble seeing that in any other way. Even if somebody says, I’m just joking, you’re going to think, no, no, you weren’t. Now you’re lying because, well, first it confirms my worldview is that I am too, because if you’re feeling depressed or somber, you already feel like you need to be, like your existence is an error. It’s no surprise that people hate you because you should be hated. So it confirms what she says. And if somebody says, nah, I’m just making fun of you. You know, I’m glad to see you. Like, no, no, that’s probably a lie because your entire weighing, your entire system of weights is pointing towards the world being against you. So to be able to get out of that requires a fundamental worldview shift in which the world’s actually a positive thing to engage with. I mean, yeah. And yeah, I think that’s right. That being is preferable over non-being. Yeah. That being is preferable over non-being. Yeah. And I mean, part of my story is fundamentally incoherent, right? And I’ve talked about this before where somebody who I describe, sorry, the person I described by talking about this, why would they join a fire department? Why would they get married? Why would they do anything? So I think there was always this, well, you need to make the best of it. And you should try doing things that improve you or improve the life of others around you. So I’ve had a number of psychological evaluations in my life. And one of them particularly said, well, Job should probably do something, work in healthcare or something, because he always wants to help people, despite this very negative outlook on life, apparently. That’s a wounded healer archetype. Yeah, maybe. But I work in digital accessibility. I make sure that things are accessible for people with disabilities. There’s always been this sort of, well, if I’m alive, and too cowardly to put an end to it, I might as well put it to good use, whatever that means. And as I constructed after religious conversion, I see how that is floating on these religious piece of positions. But yeah, I guess I’ve always had this at least idea that if I am to be alive, then I should at least put it to good use. In that sense, I never had the idea of, well, then I should be killing other people. The closest I got was by being a bully myself to a person and realizing how wrong that was and never forgetting it. So yeah. I keep forgetting what you’ve asked because I go on these tangents. No, it’s fine. It’s fine. So yeah, so I got this idea, and you’re going to have to tell me whether it resonates with you, but there’s an element where you update your participation in the moment. And I think the somberness is maybe a lack of updating of your relationship, right? Like the holding on to your current relationship is somehow more important than trying to adapt to what the situation requires of you. And then connecting that to the pointing outward. If the pointing outward is the thing that allows you to receive that update, but allows you to conform to the expectation. Yeah, and accepting that it comes with a certain amount of risk. I mean, and that’s fundamentally what Peterson says, right? Stand up straight, shoulders back, point yourself outward, be the best you can be and all that jazz. But I won’t go into that, but I think it’s that. And like going on your podcast, not something I would have done when I was younger, like really sharing about yourself. Well, that’s risky. It is risky. Of course it is. And what do you share? Yeah, I mean, and that’s always the trade off. But what I found, and I try to point that out, during the panel discussion, is that it tends to, if you show people that you are just another person and that you’ve made mistakes and that you’ve tried to learn from them, well, I’ve only heard positive things about conversation I’ve had with Vennigle, for instance, from people I would meet in the States and they say, oh, this was so helpful. Yeah, people I met in Germany told me similar things. So if you keep operating from within the perspective that you’re going to be stabbed in the back, then you’re not going to get far. Now, of course, I introduced the concept of getting far here, but I do think you get stagnated if you it’s a whole chaos order thing, right? If you stay where you are, yeah, that’s where you are. You know what that’s like, but you’re never going to get me further. Like I’m becoming an elder in my church this Sunday. I’m terrified. Like me? I mean, if something is forcing you to point yourself outward, it’s being an elder, because I’m going to have to deal with it, and I’m going to have to deal with it. And I’m going to have to deal with it. And I’m going to have to deal with it. And I’m going to have to deal with it. And I’m going to have to deal with these kids because they’re mostly 20 to 30 years old. And they’re going to maybe look at me and wonder what advice I have for them. Well, don’t stab people in the back. How about that? I mean, I’m making a joke, but it’s because it’s not some big cross I carry with me. It’s something I’m aware I’m capable of. But it’s also, you know, well, try not to sit in your head too much. You know, think about what you could be for somebody else. Maybe they don’t have any questions for me at all, but then, hey, you know, maybe I have questions for them. But I think that’s also, you know, joining a church, joining a community, joining a fire department. I think that’s necessary. That’s essential. Yeah. So how is becoming or being religious, that’s better, right? Related to your someone is like, like, how do you relate to it differently? It is it is not entirely gone. Sometimes it is there. Like I had one a while ago. They tend to last for a good week. That’s not answering your question. I think fundamentally, as cliched as it sounds, it’s about not being alone. Like you can, the least you can do is tell somebody. That’s the absolute least you can do, because otherwise you’re stuck with it. And you know, you know, you’re already stuck with it. So. So. Straight up example, like if I’m going through a really shitty cycle, I have basically, I have instructed my wife, like, when you know this, this, and I haven’t told you, like, what I probably need is a hug. But I won’t want one. So you got to make sure I got one, even though I don’t want one, because, you know, at that point, you’re not the type of person, you know, you should probably you should be dead. The last thing you should be is be hugged because you’re not valuable. Right. It’s all that sort of stuff. Your mind tells you that, you know, it’s incorrect, but you also know you can’t refute it. I don’t know. It’s. Depression is. Has that happened? Like, yeah. Oh, yes. So what happens within you when you get hugged? Oh, it just it helps. It just it just helps. It’s hard to describe the point with depression and with and with problems with self image is that they’re incoherent. But when you’re in the frame, you can’t see that. I mean, in my case, like, you know, when you’re depressed, like, she died. Why are you here? You know, you shouldn’t exist. You’ve done all these things, et cetera, et cetera. Well, yeah, you’re married, right? Yeah. Well, your wife, you know, she’s with you, right? Yeah. How long? Well, 15 years. Well, she loves you, right? Yeah, I guess. Well, something about you must be good enough to love, right? I guess. Oh, now you get a hug. Well, you know, I guess life isn’t that bad. Doesn’t mean it’s suddenly roses and butterflies. But it allows you to to make the shift. Yeah. That that’s that. And it is very attractive to to to bucket the easier. I translate this to make light of it. Yeah. But. You know, even if it’s not your significant other, if it’s a friend or somebody, you know, that you can reach out to and at least say it like, hey, I’m going through this thing. If I’m quiet, please check up on me. Please ask me how I’m doing. You know, that can make a difference. Yeah, it might not be over right away, but you’re not alone trying to push through it. You know, it’s kind of like when I think that’s a prophet Elijah, when he thinks like this person is going to send, you know, assassins after him. He’s like, God, I’m done. I don’t want to be alive anymore. I just want to die and it ended. And then an angel appears, gives him some food and some water and says, here, drink, eat, have a nap. You’ll feel better. And then he feels better. Now that’s, you know, I’m still making a bit of light of it, but there’s that’s still there, right? When you have when you have when you have a joke and he’s depressed and he’s like, curse the day I was born. You know, they should have said, curse be this day that the boy was, you know, brought into life, etc. Well, you know, he’s got his wife, even though she says you should curse God and die, but his friends show up and they’re not the most helpful friends, but he’s still not alone. He can kind of, you know, make his case to say, well, wait a second, I didn’t deserve any of this. Maybe the book of Job isn’t the best example because his friends will try to tell him that he did deserve it. But, you know, a book of Jonah where Jonah’s all depressed because, you know, people in the NFA won’t listen to him. And now he had this nice tree that he could sit under, but then God puts a worm in the tree and Jonah’s like, fuck this, you know, my nice tree. Just kill me already. Nothing I do works. Everything turns to ash. You know, Cain says everything I do just turns to ash. I’m just gonna, you know, hit somebody in the back. Kill them, you know, whatever, whatever reminds me of what I am. I think that’s why I found Peterson so useful because he would interpret these biblical stories in the psychological frame and I could so relate to that. So one of the things that I know now to deal with these thoughts is I don’t want to be thinking this because I’m not the person that thinks these things. Is that a thing that you kind of like became a different person after you’re converting? That I’m not a person who thinks these things? No, I don’t think so. I mean, I’ve used similar techniques to quit smoking. Like I’m not a person who smokes, right? So I am familiar with that sort of technique. But, or do I misunderstand you? Well, yeah, well, I see it as more as a technique, right? Because I actually believe it. Right? Well, I think you’re hitting on something here. I think that’s it might be a point of interest because I see it. I do see this as technique to fool my brain. Like, because that’s interesting. Okay, maybe that’s actually a point I’ve been missing. Right. Okay. Then I have more to say. So there’s this thing, right? Like, so you set a belief, right? And then you have faith, right? You participate in that belief, right? And that faith waxes and wanes. Right? So that’s what you’re describing, right? Like, so you’re living in faith and then your faith wanes for whatever reason and you clumb up in yourself, in your fetus position. Right? So what you need is you need an affirmation of your belief, right? Intentionally, to revivify your faith so that you don’t either not fall into it or you drag yourself back out. That’s a good point. Yeah, I think that’s accurate. Yeah, and I’m… And then who are you? Because we’re going to go full Christian here then, right? You’re the image of God, right? Like, that’s who you are. So you should believe that you’re that. And the image of God is not playing in some ditch waiting for the plan to grow back. Yeah, I was actually thinking about that today, probably because I was also sort of mentally preparing for the chat we were going to have. But I’m thinking, hey, this whole elder thing, I’m just going to pursue it without all these trepidations. Just I’m going to pursue it. I’m going to do this and this and this and that. I’m going to try to be the best firefighter I can be, best dad I can be, that sort of stuff, because that’s the goal. That’s also, you know, that’s Peterson’s heaven that you try to work towards. His self-authoring program was also hugely beneficial to me, that said. But yeah, I am a child of God, an image of God. I think that’s been a very… I wouldn’t surprise if that was at least subconscious already, something I realized post-conversion. So I noticed something in the way that you’re speaking. So you say, I’m going to try to be. So what are you doing? You’re making a distance between that and you. Yeah, but that’s more in the description of a goal, I would think. Right, but you can identify with the goal. Like, I am. Now I am. I’m making the statement about my identity. Now I am an elder. Yeah, but I mean, like I could say now I’m 40 years old, yeah. Am I the best possible 40 year old? I’m probably not. Well, not if you don’t believe it. Well, no, but that seems heuristic. I mean, you can have it as an aim. But I don’t think you could, at least not personally, I could not say that for myself. I could have it as an aim. But that, I mean, yeah, so I wonder where I’m missing your point. Well, there’s two things, right? So you can say I’m trying to become an athlete, right? And I’m doing my best to become an athlete. Or you can just say I’m an athlete. Like, I have the identity of athlete and I’m living it out. And when you’re trying to become, right, like you keep yourself in some sense one step removed. It’s like, but I don’t have to. I could also do something else, right? I could also curl up in a ball. Right? And that’s the giving over part, right? Like the leap of faith, I think, is between those two states and so on. Yeah, yeah. And to what you said earlier, it’s definitely a faith thing in the sense that whatever I pursue, I trust it will produce good. If it doesn’t, I’m still going to trust it produces good. And that’s the difficulty. I mean, it’s like, you know, doing the whole Paul Van Gogh, like John Condon trip and assuming that driving them around the Netherlands, you know, is going to produce good. It did. It was fun. And to me, the important part is to take that seriously. Not in the live, laugh, love type of direction, but in the, no, sin is still locked at your doorstep. You know, don’t think you can no longer, you know, stab somebody in the back if you think it would benefit you. You know, God forbid I do, but you know, you still need to, maybe you’re even more aware of all the ways in which you fall short. But that’s how you become moral. Right? Like recognizing how and that you can fall short is allows you to avoid doing that and be the person that is not doing it. Yeah, but it also, it is a, it is a more apparent thing in a world that’s not absurd. Yeah, because in the absurd world, you can just flip the switch and choose to ignore it. Yeah. Yeah. And here it’s like, well, no, we’re images of God. We’re supposed to represent a holy God. You could fuck that up in so many different ways, just by, you know, just by trying to be, make a joke to a person and it goes the wrong way. Or to, you know, snap at my wife or snap my son or. Yeah. But again, I’m going to push back a little bit on that. Right. Sure. Because sometimes you snap at your wife and that reveals something. Right. So even though the snap might be bad, like the effect might be good. And this goes back to what’s the perspective that you’re taking to looking at it. Right. Like, like the direct, the obvious implication might be bad, but sometimes the obvious implication is not where you should be pointing at. Right. And so if you believe that being is good, then you can just say, well, like whatever came to be, I’m going to see the good in it. Right. And then you can, you can lift that situation up and make the good out of it manifest. Hypothetically, I mean, I see what you mean, but I have difficulty. Believing? Well, because, because it hooks into, into free will and. Like, let’s, let’s, let’s stick with the example of me snapping at my wife. You could say that, well, maybe because I realized I snapped at my wife, I feel repentant or, you know, I actually see, huh, I normally don’t snap at my wife. I wonder if I’m, you know, going to a bad week. Sure. Yeah. I have, maybe that’s even an accurate example of what you’re trying to say. That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t. Okay. So maybe it’s an and, and, so that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t be repentant for it in the evening during the prayer. Yeah. Okay. I agree with that. And it, it, it, the fact that you’re allowed to repent also allows you to become better, which is also good. Yeah. Yeah. And it’s not a, it’s not a, you know, get out of jail free card. That’s, that’s, that’s good. Yeah. No ghetto to feel free cards for me. Yeah. So, yeah. So I guess becoming an elder. So, so in some sense, you’re taking the role of someone who has been through the journey and now is spreading around the gold. So, yeah, like, let’s point that towards the future, right? Like, how do you see your relation to, well, being an elder in five years, like where would you like to be ideally? Well, as an elder, you sign up for four years. So, which is, which, oh God, you know, I, I still am trying to comprehend the length of four years. Well, that at the end, that’s my advice. Yeah. It’s difficult. I, I try to tell myself that I’d like to be an elder who listens, you know, it’s easy to just talk. I’m doing it to you right now. Blah, blah, blah. Easy. Well, it’s not easy, but it’s easier than listening. For my birthday, I got a, a friend gave me a, a set of quotes by Henry Nowan and I flipped the one and says, listening is a type of spiritual hospitality. She’s a good friend and she’s a long time Christian and she helped me work through a bunch of things when I was converting. And so, yeah, I, I appreciate her immensely. But anyway, listening is a type of spiritual hospitality. The biggest mistake I can make is assuming that these, these young adults in my age related segment, 20 to 30 year olds, that they’ve got questions or that I have answers. The best thing I can do is listen. I’ll probably fail here and there. It’s, it’s, that’s the goal. And see where that goes. This Friday, we start the new year. So we have a barbecue with them and I, I’ve made sure that as a treat, I take care of the beer. And then my plan is to write everybody in the segment a letter, 125 people, where I introduce myself. And I kind of would like to know who they are. What’s going on with them? You can share this video. Yeah. Yeah. I know, right. So listening, right, like that sounded to me like creating the space, right? Like, I think the show is talking about the feminine in that way, where, where you need to have a space in which things can happen. But a space also has constraints. So it’s, it’s not a full field of potential, right? Like it’s, it’s like a soccer field with sides and goals. Well, I’m being fully well aware that a whole bunch of these young people won’t have anything to do with George, because the whole reason they’re in my segment is because they are children of their parents and they were baptized. And for what I’ve understood from the pastoral workers, maybe, you know, from that entire group, maybe there are 20 people who are remotely interested. So my goal is to contact all 125. And I want at least an answer from all of them. Even if that’s, I don’t want anything to do with the church, then I’ll still be curious why, but I respect if they’re not willing to discuss that. So now go back to this ideal five years in the future, right? So you’re doing all this and everything works out perfectly. Like what’s, what are these kids doing? Oh, I hope they’re developing lives where they are, you know, where they’re useful in their community and where they’re pointing outwards and where they feel they have something to give, you know, maybe they’ll become parents or, you know, spouses or, you know, active in their community. I hope that they, yeah, they’ll have some trust, some faith. That’d be nice. And yeah, if I’m pulling into the personal, I hope I can be somebody who they felt they could trust throughout that. And also, I guess someone who exemplifies that trust and faith so that they kind of know, right? So how would you and your relationship to Sombra look like in five years, ideally, if you exemplify that trust and faith? It wouldn’t surprise me if I’m just an elder who’s sometimes Sombra. I think I would be naive to presume that wouldn’t be the case. I hope to be an elder who can show what it’s like to be Sombra. I hope that I can be Sombra. I think I would be naive to presume that wouldn’t be the case. I hope to be an elder who can show what it’s like to be, you know, a good dad and a loving husband. And, you know, that maybe they could do something in church or whatever, you know, a lot of them are very busy, busy already with life and the church is just an extra thing. I don’t know if I could even, you know, a little bit show what it’s like to represent God in seriousness. Most of what I’m saying to my own ear sounds like, like, I don’t know how to translate that. Impostor syndrome? Disingenuousness? Disingenuity? Yeah, ingenuity. I think, I mean, I mean it genuinely, but it sounds so hollow because it sounds like it would fit in a hallmark card, right? Well, yeah, but we can make it more concrete, right? Because you’re giving us some abstract, you know, you know, you’re giving us some abstract, you know, you’re giving us some abstract, because you’re giving us some abstract description, but what would that require of you, right? Like, how would your behavior change? I need to focus on the right things. That’s come up a lot in my morning prayers that I’m not focusing on the right things. I need to be focusing on the right things. Right, that sounds like asking the right questions, right? Like having the right problem formulation. But I’m not getting a, well, I’m somewhat getting a concrete answer on what I should be focusing on, and that’s interrelational. But at the same time, I noticed that I need to be stepping away from bridges of meaning, because I know that this elder thing is already really starting to fill up my calendar. So like, okay, so I’m reducing relationship there in order to be more available in the whole elder thing. Now, it could very well be that indeed the segment is so tiny amount of people that are actually interested, is that, okay, maybe I can spend some more time with bridges of meaning. We’ll see. I don’t know. That’s trying to look into fish guts. So I’m still answering your question. I don’t know. You’re definitely avoiding it. I’m really good at that. Okay, so if I recall correctly, your question was how I would behave, right? Right, and just ignore the trajectory, right? Just assume that you can get to the place where you think you should be. That’s just primarily focusing on integrity. Right, so it’s important that you’re acting with integrity. Yes. Right, okay. So that’s one thing. So the things that you do. Hang on, let me take notes there. Yeah. Wow. So the thing that you do in the future is with integrity, right? So that’s really important to you. Right, so and then you’re doing it towards the relational. You’re acting with integrity. Like when I listen to you, I think the joking element is something that you adopted. So that sounds like a tool that you want to use in your relationship with these kids appropriately. So yeah, keep going. Right. I think it mostly flows from there. I want to be available to these people where it’s useful. So I could be equivering massive availability, right? But I don’t think that’s useful. I see that in the current way the segment is being run as I go. We’re there for you, we’re there for you. Yeah, but are you also there for the church? What do you have to offer? Let’s go clean something up, whatever. Could be anything. Let’s go. And that might be horribly naive. I have no idea. I mean, I know we’re, we’re, you know, society wise, there’s some rough stuff coming, you know, gas prices and everything. There’s loads of people who are going to have trouble making ends meet. Like, okay, maybe us as a bunch of young people in church, maybe we can do something. You know, what do we all have to offer? So is that a thing that you want to do? You want to organize people into doing something in the world? That’s my personal army. Yeah. Well, to a degree, that’s correct. What I notice is the church is kind of this thing that exists. And it puts no requirements on those members, it seems. Very little that I can tell. It’s like, yeah, we’re this, this place that’s available. But it’s not asking of particularly those young people. What have you got that we could use? And I’m not sure if that’s the right direction. So maybe that’s the thing that you can listen into being, right? It’s like. Yeah. Like, I mean, they sure know how to find me when there’s some IT trouble. So who knows, right? And it’s not like that’s not being done, right? Because there are some people like they play an instrument or, you know, they help out with something on the Sunday. But those are the people who are already really for outgoing, right? And I’m sure that there are a bunch of people there who maybe they’re like how I used to be, right? Kind of inward. And maybe they think nobody has any faith in them. And that is definitely the wounded healer thing that I think you were pointing out. That’s almost something of a thing I need for myself. And I think that’s where it can warp into something bad. Well, the reason I say that is because I’ve often considered going to out of IT and then I am going to work in palliative care or some other type of care where, you know, I can help people. And I’m thinking of all the cares I could go into, why would I go into palliative care? Why would I want to be near people who are dying? Like, what is that? There’s loads other things I could do, you know? So I think that’s something where it could be, I don’t know, it’s, I don’t know how to identify that. It’s like it’s something that I require, like that sort of brokenness in somebody else. I don’t know. Yeah. But that’s why I’m sort of careful with that. Yeah, there’s an element where we need others in order to see ourselves, right? So if you’re trying to figure out what’s going on inside of you, figuring out people who are dying, you know, outside of you, figuring out people who wrestle with something that might be close to your heart, like that, for example, right? Like might be actually something where you at least perceive potential for restoring that relationship. Yeah. Yeah, that might be something. So, and yeah, right? Like there is this danger where, well, effectively, if you go into the cave with the dragon, right? Like the dragon can smack you. But, and I think this is where you need faith, right? Like you need this grounding, right? Like this integrity that allows you to not get corrupted by facing the dragon. Because if you’re facing the dragon and you get corrupted, then you’re lost, right? Like now you’re in fantasy land with the dragon and all the demonic thoughts. But if you can stand up straight and not get sucked in, then you can do it. And that’s hard, right? Like, and I think maybe that’s what you mean by confidence, right? Like the ability to remain standing up straight. Yeah, there’s this degree of self-efficacy involved there. I do you remember when PVK had this video on where he talked about somebody, some other guy’s video about the Dark Souls games and that they pull people out of depression. And there was a lot of talk about self-efficacy there. And the core thing was, oh, you’re actually able to accomplish things you didn’t know you could. I mean, that seems a huge factor in all of this. It’s no magic. It requires sacrifice and all that. But it just wouldn’t surprise me if in this whole group of 125 people, there should at least statistically be a couple of people that I should be able to relate to in certain ways. Or people I should might be able to help or give some, you know, give at least show that things might get better. Yeah, and yeah, maybe that’s an A5 dream. But no, stop talking yourself. No, no, I’m always going to be trying to look at things from that perspective. So I can’t help that. No, you can. You can be the person that doesn’t do that. Maybe that’s the person you’re going to be in five years, the person who doesn’t do that. Maybe that should be your goal. Yeah, I don’t know. I got to be careful because you also don’t want to become this person who says yes to everything, right? You know, that’s that’s that’s that’s a yes to everything. Because then I’m going to have a TED talk where I say, oh, I said yes to something for two, two years. Look how it changed my life. And I have this slick slideshow. But that yeah, that’s that’s yeah. That’s what I found with with the whole, you know, having conversations like this, profanically, there’s always going to be a bunch of people for whom they recognize it like, oh, huh, well, you could put it off. Maybe I could pull it off. Well, that’s why we’re having this for business, right? Like we’re trying to exemplify to people things that they might experience in their lives and that they can change their relationship to in some sense. Well, what a lot of this does in your young age is you often think you’re just this, you know, enigma or, you know, something fundamentally broken with you and everybody else has their stuff together. And it’s just the biggest fucking lie. And that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t mean that there’s not something that you could approve. But just everybody’s, you know, just trying to get through it. It’s like when I first time walked in church, it’s like I thought I had questions. So everybody had questions. And that’s where the fun starts. Yeah. So yeah, do you kind of feel you went through everything or did you leave out something important? No, I think this was this was very helpful. Yeah, you raised some interesting points. I think I covered. I mean, of course, it’s always going to be a condensation of 40 years of life. It’s only going to increase. Yeah, hope so. Yeah, I think this is a good assessment. I think it’s actually kind of. I’m not sure if this is true, but to a degree that the summer is not being entirely gone and those cycles still happening, you know, even though there are few or far between also kind of reminds you to not become complacent. You know, you kind of need to stick to things, you know, it’s like stopping exercise. I stopped now. Oh, man. Well, might as well go eat the type of ice cream. And yeah, well, I should probably stop exercising. And eventually hit that spot. You’re like, yeah, this is getting out of hand. She really, really start exercising again. They have to deal with being sore for two days after because you’re not used to the exercise anymore. So yeah, so. The best the best thing to do is to just kind of have that faith each morning that you you’re going to start with your prayer, at least in my case, and and go from there. Yeah. Sometimes and sometimes I don’t, you know, sometimes oversleep. So what is your takeaway from the conversation? Anything that’s not to a hallmark card, at least that’s what I’d ask for myself. Well, maybe you can make your first one as a consequence of the conversation. But have a non hallmark card. No, a hallmark card. So it’s either going to be the hang in there kitty, you know, hanging from the branch, or it’s going to be like, it gets better. That’s that’s the thing. That’s that’s the funny thing. I wasn’t expecting to become a Christian, you know, it’s just it’s just thing to happen. But this wasn’t supposed to happen isn’t a good hallmark card line. No, it is an amazing. Yeah. Look at how I got here and it wasn’t supposed to happen. No, it’s pretty great now. I mean, I’m happy it happened, but that took me a while. You can’t see it from within the process. It just seems like, oh, boy, this is all very painful, you know, and all this stuff is going on. So you got to kind of you got to not forget how you got through that process. Once you feel like you’ve come out at the other end. It’s crazy. Oh, yeah, I did this thing and it was so great. No, no, no, it wasn’t. It wasn’t fun. And I really liked being an atheist. So, yeah. So maybe the hallmark card is it’s all worth it in the end. Hang in there. So something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Look back in a couple of years or check again a couple of years, something like that. Be right back. Yeah. Right. Okay. Well, so I’m going to invite everybody else who’s been listening to the end to leave their takeaway in the comments so Joe can get some feedback and maybe he can learn something about your perspective. Yeah. And I hope to see everybody back on the next episode of unfolding the soul. Thank you, Joe. Thank you, mama. See you. See you around.