Left Of Greg 063 FEAR Part 1

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All right, recording. All right, Greg, we'll go ahead and get started here for the day. I need to tell you that I am terrified, I'm horribly scared. Apparently, you're scared all the time though. Apparently, the world is coming to an end. All that we are now in the age of, "Oh my God, don't start the coronavirus, COVID-19." Do not refer to it as any other name, because you got to help me with this. Because you know I'm a village idiot when it comes to specific quotes, but I can get you close and then you're smart enough that you understand pop culture.

You know the quote, do you remember? I believe it was Men in Black, I believe it was the first one, and there's a scene where the two protagonists of the film are standing there with the person in the office. It's the same guy that played — I think it's Rip Torn, who played in Dodgeball, "I drink my own urine," right? And Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones are coming up with the thing where, "Hey, there's a trillion battle cruisers circling the world or something like that." And he goes, "Timeout. There's always one. There's always one that's circling the world and we're on a countdown and things are going to die."

Brian, you and I were discussing this on The Human Behavior Podcast not too long ago about the Mayan calendar and then before that about this and that. Listen, this is horrific. People are going to die, but people die from car wrecks and people die from alcoholism and suicide. This is no worse than anything else. It does do one thing: it exposed seams and gaps, a lack of support. Maybe, in the long run, that'll be helpful, Brian.

Right, right. So I think, let's start with fear, right? And we'll start with, you know, we fear things we don't understand.

Yep.

We fear things we cannot see.

Oh yeah.

Such like this, which — and something that can't be killed. Because remember, it's not alive, it's a virus, but it's not alive. So it's not that we can attack and kill it, which is how we look at problems, isn't it? So, I think let's start there. So why is there so much hype and hysteria and fear surrounding this, which yes, some of it is warranted in the sense that, "Hey, we don't have a cure for this disease, right? It's killing, we're susceptible to it." So it's not trying to say, "Don't worry," you know, "everything's fine." But what it is, is overreaction or overly emotional. So I think there's a good place to start.

I thought of the scene in Animal House where Bluto was leading them into Food King and the guy's going, "Slow down!" and they've trampled him. You know, that's where we are. So, you'll indulge me, let me give you two very brief stories that I'm going to cover in greater detail in a "Lessons Learned" down the road, of my fear. And then I'd like you to talk about your fear, and then what we'll do is we'll wind that up and say what's going on with fear.

So when I was a kid, I won't get into specifics here, I'll get closer in print. But I had a situation with an uncle. And so, every once in a while, I had to stay at the uncle's place. My uncle and my aunt lived in our town. Let's say that's close enough for rock and roll. And so my uncle had worked for this company. And back in the day, people who work for companies had to wear uniforms, not just cops, but everybody. Everybody and their stuff was always dry-cleaned. So even if you worked at the gas station, the checkout person at your local store.

I so feared the type of behavior that was going on on these sleepovers that I would take the cardboard insert out of my uncle's shirts that were pressed and ironed for this company that he worked for, and it was to keep the shirts square and flat. And I would use them for little projects that I would do. So I would take my crayons and I would take my scissors, and instead of doing all the things that I could do, I made weapons. So I made guns and I made knives out of these pieces of cardboard. I drew them, just draw today on a dry erase board. That's why I had that skill in class. And I would hide them around the house: grenades, full-size grenades that looked like a Sergeant Rock grenade. Remember these are out of cardboard, two-dimensional cardboard. And I made them and I hid them all around my room: under my pillow, under my mattress, because I wanted to be able to fight off anybody that came when I was susceptible. So how scared do you have to be to do that? To put these talismans around, these things, the crucifix, from the evil getting to me.

And then I'll give you the second one. So, I played in a lot of different areas and had some experiences. I'm nobody, I'm nothing, but I've been scared before. I mean, scared for my life. But here, now I'm on vacation. I got the kids with me. There's a cop that lived outside of Sanibel Island, Florida. Gave us a great deal to go down and stay between Sanibel and Captiva, at a place that he owned. We couldn't afford it, and he said, "Come down for a weekend." We went down and we are going to frolic, horseshoe crab, and doing all this other stuff. Makaylee would swim out to the— there was a pool at the hotel and there's a bar in the center of the pool. Now they were swimming out just to order a bag of chips. You know, the nine-dollar bag of chips, and coming back to the room.

And so I had no idea how to surf fish, so I had all my gear with me and I went down to surf fish. So back in the day I had this pipe, you know, my calabash that I would wear in my hat. I didn't want to smoke, but the pipe seemed cool. And in the water, it was a lot easier having a pipe above. I had my old, you remember the old Air Force vest with all the pockets on it, the para-rescue/helo crews. And they had the pistol thing here. Well, I took the pistol thing off and I turned it into a fishing vest. So I'm out there in the surf and I'm fishing, and I got out to the point where my feet are getting lifted up by the water and I'm just touching the sand with my Tevas. You know, I go, "Okay, fat guy, too far. Time to head back for sure."

And Shelley's on the shore with the kids, horseshoe crabbing. And there's a bunch of old people and they're all looking and they're waving, so I'm waving back. So as I'm fishing, a dorsal fin comes in front of me, and I need you to imagine that it's the size of a car hood. And it goes right in front of me and I can feel my feet get swept out below me. I am getting chills right now thinking of the size of the shark that moves my 300-pound ass, even in the water, a foot. You know what I'm saying? Everything moves. So now I turn and here comes another one, and it's almost hitting me, Brian. I got to tell you, it's so close! And boom, that comes by and the water's moving. I drop my rod, I drop my pipe, and now I'm panicking. So I'm looking for a way out. You ever try to run in water? You ever try to find water that's up to your chest? Absolutely.

And I'm looking back and the people are screaming on shore and they're just yelling like, "Please come out of the water! Oh my God, look at all the sharks!" The sharks are now swarming, they're moving in around me. And I run until I'm on the beach, prostate it down in front of a group of people that are still looking at the surf and go, "Look at the dolphins! Look how many dolphins!"

And I will tell you, in here, Brian, and in here, I was petrified for my life. I was so ice-cold, I knew what was coming next. I had envisioned, "I can live with losing a limb, it's okay, because if the arm, I can still use the other arm to put on a tourniquet." I had gone through all these. So as a kid, I had the fear of the unknown and the fear of something I knew very well that petrified me to the point that I put out these little cardboard landmines. And as an adult, I had a fear of something that has an unblinking eye and doesn't have warm blood and I can't negotiate with that's going to take me off the grid while I'm fishing. You get my point?

Yeah, but to stick with that, I mean, there's a lot to unpack there. We don't have the time to unpack all of it, it's in this general area. But what it brings back to fear and what we're seeing a lot now, with people overreacting, or "I'm going to buy 47 rolls of toilet paper," which, okay, so that brings to mind something right there. But first of all, folks, this is Brian deflecting because he doesn't want to talk about his own fear.

Well, no, I go back to what you were talking about. It's like, "But let's talk about the toilet paper. Who is the first person that said, 'I don't want to crap outside anymore. Let's in my house?'"

Well, that's what I don't understand, is it like, suddenly you're wiring all the things and the way this situation is affecting my life personally, to where our work is going to, where we got a lot that all of a sudden everything stopped and then having to homeschool the hamster here every day and get him a lesson plan and go over all that stuff. But not just that, but like, how do all the different ways it's affected me? No point did I think it was going to suddenly affect my bowel movement significantly enough to where I need to go...

...Stock up!

Exactly. "Okay, baby, I'm going to be pooping a lot more, we better stock up."

You know, from how tiny Gunnison is, so in The Gunnison Paper, the local Gunnison paper, which by the way, folks, in the insider section has a great picture of our CEO. Picture so, look it up, it's great! And she's running things, folks, she's like this, ready to go, saying, "Bring me the COVID!" And I'm joking on that. But she is in her— there's an article from the Gunnison Wastewater Treatment Facility that says, "Listen, with all the run on toilet paper, now if you're going to be flushing, make sure that you don't flush socks, paper towels, all this other stuff that you're using to wipe your ass."

And I go, "Timeout! Who in our community has resorted to using a dishcloth to wipe themselves?" So what is it, Brian? Hoarding mentality, in-stock calling mentality? The very first thing that we think about are things that we're not going to get. Listen, has Amazon stopped delivering to your house? You still ordered from Walmart and go down there. So the stores are empty because it shows the primal fear that I'm not going to be protected in some manner. So why did the cop last night blow his brains out in the lobby of his own police station? That's where he felt comfortable. Because where do we feel comfortable? We feel comfortable when we're taking a dump and we're reading the paper and it's inside, not outside, whoever that guy is. And so we think, "Well, I have to have some toilet paper." You know, the other thing is our run on ramen. What do you have to have to cook ramen?

Well, the third thing, there's a run on water. The shelves are empty. We're not going to be out of water. We got plenty of water, we're doing fine.

We got oil reserves.

Yeah, so this goes into that unnatural fear of things we don't understand and that we don't know, that we can't see. So the even buying up the water, it's like, there's nothing wrong with our water, so it's not affected by this. There's, in some cases, I don't know, like, we suddenly water is the biggest issue or toilet paper. And it goes back to, I think, what you said. So comfort, and I would even say, because we cannot control this— I mean, that can no longer have control over our lives like our work or where we go. Humans don't like that. We necessarily— because I'll give you the, we all like being ordered around.

You're exactly right.

Well, I look at over the weekend, so we go for a walk like we always do with the dog. And now because everything is staying at home, "Don't go anywhere, Greg." There are now by me, two, three times as many people out now than there ever were doing it. And we're going, "Wait a minute!" I saw— because you can't have it both ways. But I saw people are out running, Greg, who looked like they've never run a day in their life and they're spending their first fitness program. Good for them! But you now that where there was no one out before and you could do the social distancing, now every place is starting to get busier. It's the opposite. But I think it goes down to a lot of control. If I fear things, I need to control my life. So one of those ways, I need to bring control back. I can feel control if I go buy and I have this massive supply of bottled water and toilet paper, and I can stack it around me and I can feel it.

Yeah, and that's not different, as far as I'm concerned psychologically, than your talismans, your little things that you cut up, your knives, protected yourself with.

I can see that. I think you're exactly right. Just going, "Hey, I don't know. I know these weapons are used to protect people, and I need protection, so I'm going to do this." It's the same exact thing that you need, the ability to go out and buy a real gun or a weapon.

So that's what you did in that situation to survive. You had a mechanism. And when I say survive, it's that's a way of mental survival.

Okay.

Well, your physical and mental survival specifically during times of stress are crucial, they're critical. Because if not, what are you living for? Do you know what I'm trying to say? If you're just existing, that's a pretty horrible way of living, huh?

Well, and that's why you get these unnatural reactions to items that you wouldn't think necessary. Because if you're like one of the preppers, or you're someone who always has this, or you live in someone an austere environment like up in Gunnison during the winter, you have to have certain supplies on hand at all times that I don't ever need to have, because where I live, in your environment, I'm never going to face those challenges. But for you specifically, you need that. So because of the environment you live in, you have to prepare certain things. So you naturally do this. But have you ever gone, "Shelley, hey, we got to triple up or quadruple up on toilet paper, I'm pooping so much."

No, no. So let's go back to that. Because your broadcast gives us the ability to talk to humans, and because of Brian's vision, more people are watching than ever before in a podcast. Thank you, Brian, and thank you, folks, that are listening in. From minute one, let's disabuse ourselves, let's rid ourselves of the term "social distance" and get back to what it really is: it's proxemic distance, physical distance. Physical distance of six feet will stop you from having people expel their long drop Sonia, which could get you sick.

Now, if you say "social distance," there's people out there that need mental health. They need the ability to talk to you and hear that everything is going to be okay. Specifically your kids, your loved ones, the elderly, a person in a nursing home that would love a card or a letter. Are you calling them? But by saying "social distance," there's a stigma with it that we can't be social. And Brian, you and I saw that firsthand on, I believe it was Thursday of last week, where a person was exhibiting very antisocial behavior and ordering people around, "Social distance!" That's what everybody bristled at and it was almost a homicide. The defendant, will the defendant please rise?

But listen, I am not making fun of this issue. "Those distance" is the wrong way of thinking. It's a physical distance. And it's a difference with a distinction that you and I can help. Because listen, folks, this is the last time you want to socially distance yourself, because the people around you, your neighbors, love you and they need you. They might even not know you, but they need you. You need to show solidarity, you need to show that you can get up and go out in the sun and do normal stuff, and work in the backyard, and play with your kids. Because if you don't, this will crush you. And it's not that bad.

So it's not one of the things that feed into the fear and uncertainty. I think you just brought up a great point of how we articulate the situation and what we need to do. So, you know, early on you had— and this isn't, I don't, you know my political view of all—

Exactly. And it's anarchy, a political view, I don't know. I believe, what is it? I'm a nihilist, I believe in nothing, right?

No, no, no. But that was the thing, is like, early on when you had administration officials trying to say, "Calm down, let's not..." They weren't saying that this isn't a big deal, they were trying to calm people down. That got twisted around into like a "there's." But and so I would look at that as like, "Well, look, this isn't— that was just a bad communication." We see that all the time. Companies of PRs, there's whole massive organizations that are designed specifically to help you with PR stuff because it's so incredibly important. And I do public information for doing that. And so some of this stuff can get taken out of context or people overreact from it. And I like the, you know, understanding how you manage things and what control feels like and what you can and can't do. Because if you're not used to that— so if you don't have a background or— I mean, how many times have we been in horrible situations where things fall through or plans go this way?

You want to make sure listeners and readers and viewers, most that befall us happen because of Brian. "Oh, I wasn't supposed to kill that guy." We didn't leave it immediately. But he's trying, he's trying. But listen, Brian, you brought up a great point, and let's use this as an example. You know that when we had rental sleds and we're out at different places conducting practical exercises and experiments, that we had to have a pioneer kit. Well, the pioneer kit comes from the pioneers in the old days, and you know, nobody wants to be the Donner Pass party where they're dining on the agent of a scream or of Jim.

So the idea here is that in Colorado and every place we go— because you know that every time that we MTT'd, mobile training team did, we would create a pioneer for the sled that we're in. Brian, you and I just did it last week at Liberty, two weeks ago at [unintelligible]. The idea behind it is that in your sled, you have to have a couple of things. One, you have to have a PFAK, a personal first-aid kit that has your basic stuff. And you always got to have your door wedge and you're going to have your tourniquet. I mean, that's just one-on-one. But what are the other kinds of things? Get yourself a tow strap, doesn't have to be very long, it can be very strong, and you can use the tow strap for a whole bunch of stuff including what it's designed for, the tow strap. You throw that in this jump bag, this little to-go bag, the bug-out bag that you're going to have. You might need tire chains in the environment you're in, you might need a small shovel. So yes, it's regional, it's temporal. It's what, though?

That goes into normal preparation stuff for any event. But where I think the issue now is, there's a lot of people that have never done something like that before. You don't have that right? Is that? So, you know, you need to tell them to calm down. This is where you're getting, "Why would you rather say, 'Why calm down'?" Because you brought up a good point we were discussing earlier, about kids and how they learn. And how they learn from their parents and their social situations. So for the effect, you're creating an environment of fear. What does that do to that kid? So let's decide that, Brian.

First, do me a favor. Take me back to Chicago, take me back to the wooden or plastic spoon in your mouth upbringing that you had, not to platinum spoon like clearly I had Detroit. But take me to how you knew Mom was serious and it was time to get your ass in the kitchen.

Yeah, so that's, well, that's basic how humans learn, right? Our boundaries. But that was so me, you know, we can all remember when you're a kid and it's like, "Hey, bye, Mom." "Go, Nate!" "Brian! Brian, come here." "Mom, busy! I'm doing the thing!" I hear it but I don't, because I'm focused on whatever it is that I'm doing, I'm a kid. But you know that escalates, and once you hear that, "Brian John Marren, get your butt over here!" Well, that's serious because I know that there's going to be consequences after that's what I hear my full name being addressed.

So you have an amygdala. Everybody's got a limbic system. At the center, your amygdala are pumping out messages. And remember, folks, that they're sending out ten thousands of messages to the ones that they're receiving to make sure that you have homeostasis in your environment. The number one thing is your personal survival, not the tribe, not your team. Your personal starts with you, as if you can't— you can't contribute and become the coral reef.

So now you got a kid. A kid doesn't have that amygdalic response to fear and danger and stress, so they've got to borrow yours. So like a lamprey, a little kid will watch the environment. And if you're going, "Hey, little [unintelligible] you," and some kid right now is being freaked out at all. Hold that up to him. When you rewind the tape, they're going to smile and they're going to mimic, and then the mirror neurons are going to come in. The kid's going to be happy, so the oxytocin, the drugs, will flow and everything's fine. Now if you come up and you go, "Hey, little bastard, stop crapping in that diaper!" you're going to get a different response. You're going to get that fear response. And guess what? The catecholamine group is going to work in a different, and your dopamine is going to be kicking, and your cortisol, it's going to make you poop a little bit, and you're going to recoil in fear.

So just like your mom understood that if she called you, and just like your brain understood, "I still got time," fear works the same way. So little kid is now in his environment, not completely in control of his amygdala. A father figure or a parental unit number one comes in—

Not fully in control of their amygdala.

So when the people come into the room and you got the parent figure one and the parent figure two— even if they're parents are the weak parent of the day, whatever relationship they are— they come in and they start a fight. "You've always been a [unintelligible]!" "I'm the king of the [unintelligible]!" Now they're cooking blows and now they're screaming and they're going back and forth and then they break somebody and something. The kid is looking and trying to model this behavior. And it makes absolutely no sense to him. One, they have no file folders for it. The second thing is their amygdala is supposed to warn them and prevent danger, yet the people that are taking care of them, feeding them the lessons, are now completely out of control, screaming and crying. So how are you going to give me an emotional register to create a file folder without corruption when my amygdala isn't fully formed yet and I'm borrowing yours and yours is out of control because you're fighting and arguing? So now every time that I get in a similar situation, I'm going to have a blip in the radar and go, "Well, this person disagreed with me. I think I need to call them a [unintelligible]."

That's good.

The problem is that it's not one thing. It's one thing on this ball, and the ball is constantly turning and the ball is picking up a piece of gum and some sand and a shoeprint. So inside that kid's mind, the kid has to model behavior for events. And so when you go, "Timmy, don't be afraid, it's just a storm. Come on into bed," they're crying because of thunder and lightning and everything else. And now what you do is you either have the kid in bed and you're breastfeeding until they're 19, or you talk about them and say, "Hey, it's the angels bowling again," or whatever it is, it's an atmospheric. It doesn't matter what you tell them as long as you give them not only what's going to happen, but what the consequences are, Brian. So now we're back to Chicago again. "Josephine Marin, get your ass in here, though!"

So your brain runs on a series of if-then propositions. And the chemical and electrical signals just help us carry those out. That's where fear comes from. Fear, when I smell fear from my olfactory says, "Wow, there's something decomposing over there. I don't want to decompose. I'm bugging out!" Fear from my digestion says, "No smells. Wow, that's probably not good for me." "Better. I'm hungry. I eat it anyway." I immediately start vomiting it up because my body's gone, "Not sure what that is, but it's not simpatico. We got to get rid of it before it kills us." So how can we not have fewer responses to something like this? Well, specifically when the news media is using red color and going, "Danger!" That's the point.

So, you know, you talked about it from how we learn fear and how our amygdala gets formed and it's all for like, I guess matures over time like a ripening fruit. You tell people like, you know, whether you think you're teaching your kid or not, you are, right? Whether you're being proactive about it or doing nothing about it, you're teaching them everything, because they just model your behavior. But they can understand how to act, how to respond, socially. That continues throughout life, we do that as adults. So it's not about just learning meaning to fully form the amygdala and you know, hopefully by now—

Oh, timeout. We're not sure, Brian, but that's things we still learn from our environment.

So now what happens if you've got that, you know, the— I don't know how to— the Troggs who are going in and, "As soon as this occurs, I'm going up and for drugs!" Everybody knows that, right? Look that up, folks, troglodyte. But, you know, so what happens is now they're going and buying everything up. Now you get that next level of someone who might be more rational starts going, "What? Well, crap! They're buying everything up. I need to go and get in there before it runs out for my family, because there won't be any next week." And now you know people—

They never would have had that thought until what? It all takes that one person. We always go, "Well, call it the tipping point." Sell another million bucks, right? And don't give anything back to your community or password. Have a nice podcast event. He's never done anything, but the people he's written about are incredibly he's actually so—

So, but on that, I'm still going to learn that. You're right, environment. So if I see that happening, now I have a fear, a natural reaction, "Go, wait a minute, we are going to run out of supplies! I'm not going to have anything." So now I feel like I don't have control of my life, where five minutes ago I did. And I understood the threat, I mean, meaning enough to know that I don't understand it, I'm ignorant of it. So I should heed advice from someone who does and get it. Okay, well the warnings are clearly for a certain group of people who are premium, have pre-existing conditions, or older. Well, now I'm worried about my parents and grandparents, but not about myself and in keeping this rational. But then I see all this other behavior going on, I can't not react to that. I can't not do something, because then I'm going to miss out on something, right?

You're exactly right. You call it snowball, I call it trickle-down, we call it spiral. Doesn't matter what you call it. If everybody did a knee-jerk reaction to everything that was coming all the time, how good would we be? So historically, here are some people who do that, who have all the time and emotional maturity or whatever you want to tell. But wouldn't you see that, wouldn't you agree with me, Brian, because you're a subject matter expert on life, wouldn't you agree with me that it's exacerbated many times by what we see here and read? And then one, for example, somebody responded this morning to whatever social media thing and the person said, "Hey, it looks like so-and-so is getting a handle on it." Then the next thing comes in, "Oh, it's the damn Chinese! The virus got out of the thing, the monkey escaped, hit a human, and now the flowers are dying! And it's all related to the beast!" People are taking these ridiculous and insane connections and they're throwing them through.

Look, every time that you wear a mask and you don't know why you're wearing a mask, because the only reason to wear a mask for this, you're taking it out of Renee Clemons' face, working back in Detroit in the emergency. What I'm trying to say, so the same thing with the gloves. It was a guy at Walmart over the weekend. Oh God, he had all the gloves that were packed up and everything else. And I'm looking at the gloves and I'm looking at the cleaning solutions and I'm looking at bleach being empty, and I'm like, "What were you filthy bastards doing a month ago when in December? Were you not cleaning? Were you not washing up? Were you not wearing gloves when you were prepping your meat and everything?" So it's ridiculous because there is no change from then to now. It should be the same hygienic practices.

So part of everyone's human reaction to this is going to, so I think, is because my thing is, how do I get around this? How do I understand it better? Or do not have that? What do we do about it? Because if you, basically we're saying is that some of our natural reaction is to be scared and is to be different. So now I have to go into, how do I get my information? Who do I listen to? Where does it come from? Because you got, just go on any social media, everyone's an expert now. I love that, that, you know, I learned something five minutes ago and now I'm going to go post something very serious about it out of mind when I just learned it five minutes ago. I think that's a strange standard that most folks—

We're just using a useless platitude, "Don't worry folks, everything will be okay."

Yes, I'll shine another kiss my ass.

Yeah, it's that too.

Because there's with any type of uncertainty, there is fear. So we are going to, I have to have some control in my life. So I can, you know, my thing is, you know, I group my friend Jess right up there. She's like, "Hey, I was told as a kid, my parents taught me that sometimes your feelings can lie to you." I'm like, "Oh, that's genius!" Because meaning, I don't have to get emotionally overwhelmed by everything and feel that, but feel that scare. But when it's going on around us, obviously that becomes a lot more difficult and we are kind of biologically primed for that, right? For surviving.

So not diminish our real survival responses. What happens is this situation mimics our cyber survival response, and it's an unhealthy way. Because the more it mimics it, the more it's going to be able to take away when a real incident happens. And we know this is historically significant because we know about parables of the boy who cried wolf. We've heard those things before. So there's going to be another virus. Now we hope there to plot every couple years, like that's exactly pejorative. But Brian, what we have to hope is that we'll learn a lesson from this to go forward.

So look at Never Fight a Clown (referencing Scotty Witt's book). Our dear friend from Australia, Scottie Witt. Look at Andy Reiss McCaskill, genius. Michelle Paletine. All the people that you and I play with that we like, that are resilient people, all share the same behaviors because they understand how to self-soothe. They understand how to take some time for them, how to ground themselves, and take a look and put things in compartments and say, "Okay, my physical health through this emergency, which it is, it's a pandemic, and my mental health through this, are both on par equally." And guess what? If my physical health goes away, I'm probably going to succumb to something bad. And if my mental health goes away—

I'm smart.

Yeah, but we can't have that.

What you just brought up, I think, is a great way to approach some of the information or people that we follow. This gets into a number of areas. And you just mentioned all people that we've had on. And why do we like them? It's because their message has been consistent. And it's been capsule about whatever else is going on in the environment. Their message still applies in that scenario, in that situation. Like us, we say the same things all the time. It might be in a new domain, it might be in a new area, it might be a new person, but it's us, it's the same consistent message. And just like if you're doing long-distance shooting, consistency is accuracy.

Oh yeah, absolutely.

When I go to adjust my shot, well, maybe my body position is off, maybe the gun was up, maybe the [unintelligible] was here, maybe that if I took a different point of aim, that's that. If I don't do it the same way every time, I'm never going to have a baseline from which to chase that shot group.

The rest of your life. So all of those folks that you just mentioned, because I look at social media as they're still posting the exact same message, the exact same thing of what to do and how to. Not everybody is. So these people over here that are going, "I'm going to use this to make money," these sensationalized. These people that are fearmongers, these are just the that love turmoil. This scientific or legal term, I guess I should say, that I learned from my old man, is called "bandwagon jumper honor." And that's— so we go back to the fear thing. For me, I'll in a second. But I think that that consistency is what you should look for. Someone's consistent message the whole time, they likely have a lot more artifacts and evidence to back it up. They likely have—

If you're the perfect charlatan.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They're either the most likely or the most dangerous.

You're exactly right, because it's actually consistent. Now you may not agree with it, it's like that's what everyone would say about Bernie Sanders. Okay, he's got some crazy ideas, he's a little out there on the political scale, but he's been saying the same thing for four decades, forty years. So you know what's going to happen.

And hasn't done anything.

But you know what their message is, right? It's never going to go, "Hey, you know what?" Why are you surprised by Trump? Trump's [unintelligible]. So this is a way to frame the exact argument you're making. So I'm the Colorado rogue man, from up in little Gunnison down to Denver, which is Flatlanders Front. And Governor Polis just comes out and he goes, "Shelter-in-place, do this, do all that other stuff." Folks, timeout. Now trying to geek anybody up, look at your local news media. But how serious is the problem to Governor Jared Polis? The liquor stores and pot shops are exempt from the warning, but he suggests that you should probably still keep your physical distance of six feet. So you're closing schools, but the marijuana dispensaries are still open. Do you see what I'm saying?

I would— I would back that message for a number of reasons. But you do see that, and we make exceptions. We say, "Hey, this is what it is, this is who." But we make exceptions. And I will tell you this, that might— that's a fiscal exception, I bet, for the state because everybody— they get their money from liquor taxes, from marijuana taxes. And so they were like, "We got to stay afloat." I guarantee that's what it is.

But I want to talk fear, Brian. Oh God, I'm afraid of the internet. You know, I'm afraid of social media. You've been my guide and my mentor and yet been helping me to find Grindr and all those wonderful things. That was just educational stuff, right? So how those meetings been going? My arm is killing me. But the idea I want you to think of, Brian, is I came from a world where marijuana was bad. Yeah, badness. And it was zero tolerance policy. Now it's anything goes. So wait a minute, in Corona, in COVID-19, I don't fully understand it, but for the first time in my life, they're saying, "Don't go to the emergency room." "Don't go to the hospital." For the first time in my life, and I'm almost sixty, they're saying, "Don't go to church. Stay home." That message, Brian, the difference in the community, than calling it social distancing, that's enough to get the hackles raised. I'm a little bit nervous, I don't know what to do next. So controlling the message and your communications going out, the transmission, are so important because people don't look. The kids went to spring break and now they got the coronavirus. What did you expect was going to happen?

Kids, yeah, their implicit message was wrong. That's Florida, and I think Florida can survive anything. But you brought up a great point right there, and I think that this goes to show, so we've become so reliant on technology so much. There's an internet, we're all on social media, people are staring at their phones. Now something like this that happens where we say, "You can't go meet other people, go do that." And what's everyone doing? They're climbing at the walls, going, "Wait a minute!" I don't know whether I will, but I think it's a, it's, you know, when we get through this and look back, "Oh, look, that's the takeaway." As humans, you need other humans. We need human connection. Even I, who I like staying in this cardboard box down on the railroad tracks—

His mirror is just a white blank piece of paper so he can look back at the soleus stretch that he had. And I love him, here's the thing, I love this guy and I know there's nothing there. So he still needs to go link up with my other bum friends and, you know, skin pop heroin and all that stuff.

Yeah, but I think this, that whole and that goes to the point it's, you know, when in when times get tough or they're uncertain or unsure, we look to those institutions that have stood the test of time. So, like you brought up religion, people, "Well, I can go to church, I can be my community." And now we can't do that anymore. It's like, that's all how it's part of my life.

Allow you to do it. Yep.

And I think that's one important part to address versus all the chaos and all the fear and all the, "Hey, this needs to happen and that needs to happen." And I'm suddenly a board-certified epidemiologist who's been studying contagious diseases for my whole life.

We're all those experts because we hear something. But not to get into that crap, that junk that, you know, one should just don't be a part of it. Non-science, only clickbait. I tell everyone, "Don't be clickbait. Don't post clickbait. Be these other kind of 'bait' that you could be." If you're going to be a bleeder, they don't feel clickbait. There's stuff that's going on, a business card merits going on. It's going on the business card right there. Don't be a Bator, what was it? Be a— there's another kind of Bator. Don't be a click-Baitor. Plenty of Baiters that you want to be out there. So anyway, that'll be a good Instagram post right there.

But it's because what you just said, you said a couple of things. One, this gets back to the real problem here, is our lack of human connection, interaction during a stressful time when we would need it more than we typically do. So that's important. I think that's a good metric to understand why you're acting the way they are.

That's a great explanation, and you wrote it down. I like how you worded this, "It's the situation our mimics our survival response in an unhealthy way." So let's kind of elaborate on that a little bit, because I like what you're saying. Because it does. Because that's what I do when I see people going out and buying up stuff. I go, "Crap! Like, I know I'm good. I'm good on food, we have stuff that we need. But like, is it going to be gone?" But then what do I do? All right, I get online, I start researching people that I know or that I follow. Guess what they're saying? "Supply chains are good. We just lifted a restriction on truck drivers so they can actually drive more hours, and then we can all supply every farming, every supplier, every month." "We got plenty of stuff. Good, it's all good." So it might sell out a little faster than it normally does, but it's still going to get refilled. So okay, well, that kind of soothes my mind, it gives me a little relief in terms of fears like that. But you said, "It mimics our survival response in an unhealthy way." Why would it this be an unhealthy way?

Because it's unhealthy.

So I'll show you why. I can't go straight at it. So have you ever been in your adult life— I don't care what you did as a kid in the bathroom— but in your adult life, have you ever gone through because we spend a lot of time at airports, folks, into the bathroom? Gone to the bathroom, been washing your own hands and you come out and you see somebody that bypasses the hand-washing, goes right back up?

Absolutely. This day, at this age, I still see it. And you know me, I say something now. I like that. "Hey, I forgot to wash your dick! Skin is there, man," or something, you know, just to get everybody to look at him.

No problem playing a footsie game in the stalls. You don't want to wash your hands? You know me, I'll be in my sarcastic, boisterous self because I want to make a point of that person. Now you see that happen all the time, where a person will touch their face or mouth. Listen, we're humans. There's a certain bandwidth of stuff that that's neural responses that we can't control and they're going to continue. So telling a person not to touch their mouth, their eyes, or their nose, it's one of the hardest things in the world. What do we do when we tell a kid, "Don't suck your thumb"? We got to go through all of these voodoo rituals and put Tabasco sauce on there to [unintelligible] so they don't suck it.

So what happens is this is a real response, but it's not the Spanish Flu that wiped out a bunch of kids and killed pregnant women and did all this other stuff. It does have targets. If you're already sick and you got respiratory disease and you're old, sorry to tell you that you're more at risk than someone else, okay? But everything has certain risks like that. Driving when you're getting older is a risk, okay? So what happens is your startle response and your fear response and the gradually building electrochemical neurotransmitters warning you that, "I don't think I should go in that haunted house," all of those things are there to protect you. And guess what? If we use them over and over and we're constantly getting scared by our environment right now, the news media is meaningless.

And I want to take you back to Wolf Blitzer during the invasion, during the shock and awe period and everything else. Nobody knew what was going on. But the next thing that you know, we had 24-hour news, and then we had pundits, and then we had six people screaming at you, then we had twelve. Now there's nine-foot. And people now in that, the thing are going, "Look at the screen! Watch what's going on there!" These talking heads need to go away because what they're doing is fomenting fear. And the fear is at a level where now we're not going to be able to trace the peaks and valleys. Those peaks and valleys are essential to our long-term existence. So by mimicking this, "Look out behind that tree!" How many times can you do that? You just don't give a damn anymore, and then you're going to get a Wolverine bite.

That's like anytime you get the stress hormones involved, overreacting over anything all the time, that's where what would the long-term health effects that are huge. But that leads to depression, that's a business. And all that stuff is that over over-stimulus, overstimulating that amygdala constantly, constantly.

Worry about the real things, Brian. Your child is in the room coloring while you're on this call. Shelley is at work, working her ass off in extra hours because you and I have a couple of gigs that were canceled because we can't travel. She's working for the county though, she's helping in this process, she's actually out there. Which I love that, that we're sitting here, we have the luxury of sitting here talking about this. So think about that. If she's on the frontline, so like if you're not on the front lines, shut your mouth. My neighbor Lani, my dear friend Lani, I put him in a "Lessons Learned." I put [unintelligible]. And he never responded. So clearly he can't read, the bastard. Lani's wife, they came in and closed her shop. She's got a hair and nail salon. Lani just informed me that the airport wants a minimum manpower, so it's opening and closing personnel. And so money is going to be tight. Now there's plans and things are going to get better. And don't worry, for the most part, all of us. But there are going to be people that are going to have these problems. That's a problem. Look at not this this nebulous crap that's on the news every day with, we can't handle. So why are they giving it to us? Because it's selling.

Yeah. So there's— I love that you're working those in, scurrilous and spurious. I hear those again.

It's rotted together.

Transported back to the 1970s. I know you, I love how you use references from before you were even born. You literally talk about reefer carnage.

No, because apparently, even better when you're stoned.

But it really is. One big picture, this is when I think our country as a whole is at its best, is during times of crisis. Is that what's— that's what's made us better, and it's what actually, you know, people want to talk about, though we— what we are in the image of the rest of the world. But actually, it's during times of when we're in crisis that people outside look like, "Hey man, America is going to solve it," or, "They're going to come, they're going to figure this out. If they can do that, they can do it, anyone can." But I think and that's during times of crisis is what bonds us and brings us together. So that the net effect is I always look for, "All right, well what's us, or well, what's the long game here? What's a long term? Stop worrying about fighting battles, I'm here to win the war."

But you brought up a good thing that, and I know Andy, actually Andy Reiss talks about this a lot, Deliberate Discomfort. Everyone check that book out. But it's like the negative versus the positive. You know, like you just said, "Hey, don't suck your thumb." Well, what do I immediately want to do? "Hey, you can't go out." Why immediately want to do? Instead of turning that into, "Hey, why don't you focus on things around the house? Hey, why don't you focus on doing this? Hey, why don't you focus on some of these other things that you haven't in a while?" You know, it's literally like the same thing. You know me, I'm up at the gym every day, I can't go to a gym now, so I'm going nuts. But I've had enough stuff in the garage for Makaylee, that's where she works out. And I've got some weights and my buddy left me the nylon sandbags that I filled with a little rock so I can still do them. But instead of going like, "Hey, now my back squat's going to go down, my bench press is going to go down, I can't do now." It's like, "Well, no, let's just look at it from a completely different way that I haven't worked out like this in a long time." And I'm out there with Harper in the morning, throwing sandbags around, weighted bags, dragging stuff, carrying each other, running, doing all this other stuff that I only wouldn't do. And so now I'm going to develop that to a much higher level than it's ever been. And then that way, when I go back to this, I can change it up again. And I think so changing that narrative from, "Hey, don't look at the things you can't," to, "Start looking at the things you can do." You have the power to change the message, you have the power to read the messages you want, and assimilate those that you don't to the junk pile.

Listen, have you ever been at— well, this is the stupidest question that I've ever asked my entire life, Marren. Have you laid out at the light of a bar? That is the stupidest question. I want everybody that's listening or watching, I want you to imagine walking into a bar. It's dark, you walk up to the bar and you sit facing straight ahead. Why? Because a bar is built by people that understand drinkers. And I drink alone. And so I want to go in there with my good friend Johnny Walker Black and Red. You know all the songs, right? Because depression. And now I want to sit there. And you're going, "Well, nobody goes to the bar to be depressed, they go to have fun." I don't know what bars you've been going to, do you get what I'm trying to say? But alcohol is a depressant. So the situation that we're having right now, what do people want to do? People want to recede back to their home, turn off the lights, they want to drink, they want to pull their blanket on. I'm saying you got to do the exact opposite. I'm saying you've got to go for that run today, you got to get that stroller, put your kid in, get out there and get some vitamin D because it's good for everything. You got to go work in the yard. You got to, you know what? You got to use social media for what it was designed for, and help somebody in your community. Or you got to call the old folks home and say, "Hand this phone to any old person that doesn't get visited a lot." Have a conversation. There's a positive or a negative. And you can allow it to just beat you like a 16-ounce glove in the dark until you're laying on the ground and then kick you when you're on you. Or you can turn around and you can say, "I'm not going to let this act define me. I am not going to let, you know what, COVID may kill me, but I'm not going to be a willing participant." And I think that message alone, Brian, is saying that you can control the message. You know, you can turn off the TV. I haven't watched the television since this thing started because I refuse to play into that.

What's happening up here? That's not, you know, you'd follow a lot. Nothing's going to change from one hour to the next. If you want to catch up at the end of the day and find out what the latest is, I get that. But overwhelming yourself with that, and the same thing like we were just talking before, I got on with I'm on Twitter and all the social media, but I follow stuff that makes me laugh. There is so much humor out there, the Marines that are going around, the people making fun of it, people are on their game right now. Because what's better than that?

I want to take you back to an event, and I'm not going to do somebody ugly on the air. But we walked into an event and you and I were doing the physical distancing with the person that we both know. That person looked at us and you could see that their eyes were welling up in tears. And they said, "So this is how it ends." They got some message, something was going on, they were a little bit overwhelmed by what was going on. The news that day was they were closing places. And that's where they decided to take the conversation. And mirror neurons. I'm sad now thinking to that event, Brian. You can either surround yourself with the humor and think and have faith and do things that are going to improve your mental health and your physical health, or you can accept this as the new normal, which is a horseshit term, and whoever comes up with that should be strangled. But don't do that. Don't, folks, don't resort to violence. So strangle them metaphorically by doing this or telling another D, "An alarm," because it's horse crap too.

The other thing that comes out of these situations is what our country is really good at is, I guess the word is innovation. I use that word definitely. But we're good at coming up with new things to do or things to create. I mean, what's the net result of this? How many people are now going to have a job where they're still going to make the same amount of money they did and they don't have to go into the office anymore? Because their company realized, "Hey, you know what? We could keep like half our workforce at home, cut our costs, don't eat them the same morning." Because now there's a test, we've seen it in progress, and it works. And now they get more time with their family, they don't have to sit in the car for an hour each way every day, getting stress built up on them. Now they get up, just like my kid, Harper, gets up, gets Harper ready, takes her to school, comes in, starts her workday at home. It's the most amazing thing ever! I mean, just that's so cool that you can do that now. How many things that were more important? How many people are now reconnecting like you just said? Everyone's taking photos, they get on here on Zoom or FaceTime. I did it with some of the guys that I'm friends with out here over the weekend. You said, "Hey, you want to do a happy hour at 4:00 in the afternoon?" So we all sat down on the computer, all on FaceTime, and had a beer and just, you know, shot the for a little while, talking about, "Hey, how's the social gathering?" And we have fun with it.

We're just saying, so far today, I mean, it's not even noon yet and this is our second phone conference call of the day. So we're still getting work done. And you know, Brian, we're getting nut-punched on the amount of money that we're losing from the in-person training venues. But guess what? We can fix that. Taking steps to fix that. But if everybody doesn't wash their hands, going right back to that airport, the guy that's walking out that I'm trying to shame into coming back and washing his hands, you know what were you doing before? Why aren't you cleaning?

Your phone and your steering wheel. Your phone's dirtier than your toilet seat.

But we did, because there's no toilet paper in Gunnison. Pull your pants up before you tell someone to wash their hands next time. I think that's why they went running out of the bathroom, actually. I would have ran out too. And when I'm in the airport, I conduct a limited objective experiment. When I go to the urinal, I take my pants all the way to my ankles like kids do, and I stand there holding up my shirt and just let nature take its down. That's when I wobble that person and tell him to wash his hands.

Or you're saying, "So, shouldn't we be scared right now? I mean, because recently, historically, there was a thing called..." Okay, now hang on, you're going to go back to previous examples of this and say, "It's happened before."

Exactly. I take a look at everything that's happened throughout society until this exact second. There goes another one! Yes, I can tell you with a great amount of faith that humans will persevere. Nature will persevere, the world will keep on spinning. Is there some future event that may cause it? Yeah, but it's going to be so far in the future, we ain't got to worry about it. So rely on your family and on your friends and on facts and on your faith. All those things happen to be 'F' things. And I'm Frankenstein, for the love of God. But rely on those things that you know have gotten you through stressful incidents in the past to carry you through these. And if you don't, Brian, then what you're doing is you're the Titanic that's sinking and you're the people on board playing while there's still life vests that are empty. We can fix this, we can control the message, we can take care of people, we can do the right thing. That's all I'm saying. Sorry, Spike Lee, I don't have nuts, but I liked your Oscar.

Yeah, and it goes back to kind of controlling and managing our emotions.

Exactly.

But it's really hard to do that when everyone's blasting everyone off, or you see it on the news, or your friends are posting junk crap on social media that you would never have thought would resort to that. So what's this pot about? This pot isn't about Corona, this pot is about fear. It happens to be one of the things that people are afraid of. And I will tell you that the sun is going to come up tomorrow, things are going to be okay. And people are going to, you know, I know that Brian, September 11th, October 11th. Person was at Arby's just before that, they were at Starbucks, and the week after that, and a month after, it got easier. Those are horrific things. We're not making fun of this. People dying, things happen like that every day. Do you know what? A cop got whacked last night on the road and we're not worried about it because we're too busy watching the COVID.

You have to dial that down. There's been horrible last week, there was three, what was that, screening [unintelligible]? Who just got killed, run over. There's people out there, so there's real fears out there.

Sure. It spikes.

And let's make sure that we temper our enthusiasm and balance our emotional and physical homeostasis to be prepared for the real thing.

I think that's pretty good advice. Anything else you wanted to cover? I still want to go back to, who's the first person that decided it was so inconvenient to go to the bathroom outdoors that I need to in a room right next to my kitchen? I'm just saying, I found— can we, has there been any, anyone come up with a hypothesis yet for the toilet paper? Because you, we made it, you know, we always did it back to whatever it is, it's about control, it's about this, like if you brought it back to, "Hey, I'm comfortable on a toilet." People like to sit on a toilet, I can see all the things, I can hold a book. But I know what it means. But why? You know, if it would, if it had said, "You know, rice or oatmeal or canned beans," like, I get it, because you're worried about— but that's a no, nobody, anything food related that goes back to the four 'S's of going, "Hey, like I got to feed myself." So what is it? That fascinates me so much with the toilet.

I think, I think that we should ask our viewers to write in what they think it is.

Oh, that's a good one. I think part of the answer, Brian, I think part of the answer is, there's no toilet paper called, "Ouch, my ass hurts!" It's all quilted comfort. I'm just telling you, man, I think it triggers those, and we like that. There was a run on Twinkies. You couldn't get Twinkies. Why? Because it's comfort food, buddy.

Don't last forever too. But I can ask our viewers, I can just, I could see that. But if anyone wants to write in, thehumanbehaviorpodcast@gmail.com, or send us toilet paper, because you got to give out, you got to watch the video of the how to use one roll, one square of toilet paper.

Exactly. It involves tearing out a center circle and inserting your finger. And remember, don't flush your— don't use dryer sheets, don't use a bath towel, and certainly don't use your sock and flush it. Because the Gunnison Wastewater Treatment Facility asked you not to. Thanks for the card, and all the folks there. I have been on lengthy field exercises where you can gradually see how things are going. First you see a Marine with like just one of his sleeves is missing, and then the other sleeve is missing, then now it's a belly shirt because they had to use that up. And then now all it is is just like the neck part right here, so that it looks like they're wearing a shirt underneath their uniform, but they're actually not because it's all been so terrible.

It's so true, Greg.

Use your shower, folks, if you need to and you run out of toilet paper. Just jump in the shower afterwards and clean right up there.

You're not invited anymore, just so you know, you share my shower, you're gone.

Folks, this too shall pass. You're going to do great.

All right, thanks everyone for tuning in. Please also scroll down, hit the like button, subscribe, all that stuff. Share it with your friends, that would be a huge benefit to us and these hard times. As a small business, little stuff on social media of sharing all this stuff and getting out there, likes, all that, it really, really helps us along. Really those ways that you know are better than you sending us money or you got time to read Lessons Learned once in a while.

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All right, folks, I think that's it for today. We'll be putting out plenty more soon. Thank you, Andy. Don't forget, training changes behavior.