L.O.G. 206 Culture Is Merely Context

Alright, well, good morning, Greg. For those listeners, we are recording this actually on the morning of April 20th, so 4/20, which has a lot of significance for a lot of folks. So, always that feeling in the background of obviously, the anniversary of Columbine and a few other major events. And then it has gained other cultural significance, which actually, I guess, we're going to be talking about today. But today, we want to get into what we talk about—we've said this before on podcasts and we say it a lot in our different training courses when we're talking about culture—and we say, "Culture is merely context," meaning, when I'm trying to understand human behavior, a lot of people really get into, "Well, what's the culture that they're a part of?" or, "What does this mean?" or, "What is their motive?" A lot of this builds into it. We don't pay as much attention to that because it's there for context.

I'll give a quick example, maybe let you define it. Everyone talks about these different cultural differences, and you have to learn them, and that's great. But a lot of them are pretty self-evident. A perfect example: When we go to Japan, if you've ever been on a subway train in Tokyo, they have guys who work there that wear white gloves, and they pack everyone into the train to get it super as full as possible. In the United States, would that work here? No. No one's going to stand for that, right? In our culture here, we don't like that. But it's very different in Japan, where culturally, that's acceptable there to be packed in that tightly with people.

The reason we stay away from a lot of the culture is because there are a lot of—and I'm using air quotes—"experts" out there that talk about these different pundits. My favorite example: Do you remember when George W. Bush visited the troops in Iraq that one time? He's up there, they're speaking with Nouri al-Maliki, and the one guy they let in—a local reporter—took a shoe off and threw it at him. He dodged the shoe and threw another one. But, on every news station, they have their Middle East expert going, "Well, in that part of the world, that's extremely insulting." And you're like, "Okay, if at any time someone's standing up, speaking at a podium, no matter where you're at in the world, someone takes their shoe off and throws it at you, I'm guessing it's an insult." They're not saying, "Hey, have my pair of shoes." They're not giving it to you as a gift. So, we overcomplicate certain things. Those are just quick examples, but since we say "culture is context," I want to throw it to you, Greg, to kind of define some of these terms—what we mean by culture—because I think we should probably start with that.

So, this is an episode where you bring out your yellow pad, pull over for a minute, make sure that you rehearse it a couple of times. I'll make that deal with you, Brian. I'll frame it from my point of view, but then I would ask you, I'll do the culture part, you do the context part. So, you're going to be my connected fiber on. Does that make sense? Okay. And the reason is because I'm going to circle the drain one time before we go in. Last night, sleep is overrated in the Williams house because Shelley got sick, and she's been shooting at me. So, I've got my body bunker on, and I'm hiding right now. She went to work today, but I don't know how long that's going to last. So, last night, in the middle of the night, Dune was on. Chapter one. Never seen it. Put it on. It was letterbox, which I like, so I got to see it. Read the old Frank Herbert series; thought it was great. But there's a part where the House Atreides are entertaining one of the native Arrakis personnel. They come up during that meeting, and the very first thing the guy does, without saying a word or anything else, is spit in front of the new commander of Arrakis. Then everybody jumps in, and they're about to take offense to that, and the one guy steps in because, "Hey, thank you for sharing your bodily fluid," and he spits back. That's a thing because it's a dry planet and all this other stuff, and you're supposed to... because they have to remember, they have to bring the audience in a step at a time. They assume we're all, you know, sheep or idiots, and everybody goes, "Wow, that was cool. Look at how they value..." Well, the whole theme of the books would have gotten you there, but that was a great way for celluloid to get you right in a moment. So, right.

I always categorize culture in a bunch of different ways. And people go, "You can't," and I can, because it's me and the way I think about it. The very first culture I always think of, Brian, is in the petri dish. So, the things you put into the petri dish to cultivate, to come out, what comes out at the end is a culture. Do you get what I'm saying? It's the simplest biological example of what we're talking about. The next thing is, people overuse "culture" in business. They say, "Oh, the culture, the culture, the culture." Look, there are two types we'll talk about in a minute. But then, in addition to a culture of a business, you've got the culture of a people, a tribe, a group of people, an extended family that hangs together. Then you've got the culture you adopt, because I can adopt a culture. This is a free world, you get what I'm trying to say? I don't have to be in a culture to adopt that. We've seen that happen many times. We've seen people do it for nefarious intent and claim that they have a royal background or a decree of some kind when they don't. And we've seen other people just say, "Hey, I'd like the Mohawk hairstyle." No pun intended there for Native Americans, but it's what you adopt. And then the final one, the fifth way to look at it, is how do people categorize you? They're saying, "Oh, they're with this culture." Now, that can be completely misinterpreted. Then I would add just two quick ones, and then we can break it down in any way we want. I would add to that five, I would add an A and B that go with each one. So, there's an inward culture which defines us in those roles, and then there's the outward—that which we choose to project to the rest of the world or how the rest of the world is reading us. You see, so with something that complicated, because you know what people do, they go, "Oh, heritage, art, music, that defines a culture." Well, on the surface, it can. No, it can. It does. It's not that what defines it; it's that that can define a description. Putting those things together will define maybe a period of that timeframe in art or music, or that country, or that neighborhood. And that's the beauty of it. There's a lot of complexity in it.

And even to the business one, people do talk about that a lot. I love the definition Clark David gave to us because he—if you go back and if everybody was listening to those episodes—but he just said, "Culture is just the interaction of the players in the game." And I was like, "Wow, that was a really cool, simple definition of that." It's how we interact that defines that sort of culture. But there's a lot in there, like you said. There's the inward versus the outward. There's every different group that you belong to, and how you were raised defines the culture of that situation. And it's dependent too. I mean, it's literally almost the context of which you've used—globally, and geographically, and at a temporal state, at a moment in time. And people keep saying that culture defines... And what I meant by mine is that it helps us interpret things. Culture, it's a lens. Yeah, it is. It's a lens and it's a language, right? So, right.

Culture shapes us, but we shape culture. That's why I go back to that biological example in the petri dish—or Petri dish, however you say my name is Rob Petri, he still likes The Dick Van Dyke Show, I suck at chemistry, but the people that know what I'm talking about know. But when you put those items in there, look, so what was the historical necessity of culture? And I want you to give the definition of contact. The idea was that a group of people had to interact with another group of people, and there were probably things that we could learn from them, buy from them, breed with them, form a defensive pact with them. So, it was important for growth, and for that suitable growth, we had to understand so we weren't constantly pissing people off. No, I only wear one shoe. No, that's how my hair always looks. I'm going white belt, Brian, but you get what I'm trying to say. So, we have to define that. So, context is an additional lens.

Well, you have to define it within that. So, perfect example, I guess: He operated in different Middle Eastern countries, and then all of a sudden, it's like Thursday night, and there are all these people out, but it's mostly men. It's like, "Okay, they're all hanging out Thursday night because Friday is their holy day." But it's only the men that do that because culturally, it's different. They don't include women in everything over there. And then, so what does everyone do, though? They all jump to these different unreasonable conclusions about that culture because, though you say, "Okay, well, they don't treat women the same way." It's like, "Okay, well, socially, it's a little bit different, but who runs every household you've ever been in?" When you go into the Middle East, it's usually the wife or the grandma, whoever is there, is kind of overall in charge in that situation. And no matter where you're at. And then, when, especially like Saudi Arabia, you see the same thing, but then more women have secondary, post-secondary degrees in that country than men do. So, technically, the women at a higher level are more educated than the men in terms of a formal education. But so, it can become, we can throw things in the wrong bucket or come to an unreasonable conclusion based on that, and it's just really just to define the moment or the context that you're in to go, "Oh, okay, I see why this is different than what I'm used to." But I can't always go past that, right? We can't go past that.

Because, Brian, if you look back to Mesopotamia, look back to early Egypt, women have been venerated in every historical perspective. Look at the Bible, look at every war or song or anything that's ever been written—it's about love. Then, let's take a look at Italy, and if you go to an Italian household, who's going to tell you to take your shoes off and smack you in the back of the head and tell you to go help with the dishes, right? And that's not just Italy because that happens in Germany. And Shelley's family has a Polish background; I saw that in Hamtramck in Detroit all the time. My brother Jeff is still at the beck and call of Marcy and their mom. So, listen, what we have to do sometimes is go back to Prebs' comment a long time ago: that we dwell on the similarities rather than the differences. And I think that really helps define what you and I do in human behavior as well.

Well, and here's the other thing about culture: Now, especially with social media, I can belong to whatever group I want, but whether or not I actually go along with that group. So, every area or every place I've lived, every situation I've been in, has a different culture to it. Like, I grew up in Chicago. Well, Chicago has its own culture as a city, as a whole city. But I grew up in an Irish Catholic neighborhood on the South Side that has a very unique and its own culture. And then that also makes me, I'm a White Sox fan, which that culture is different than the Cubs fans. Exactly. Different than I was in the Marine Corps; that has its own culture. Then, I mean, so you can be... and then now I'm on social media, so guess what? I get to belong to whatever group I want, and I get to be a part of that culture, right? And subculture that goes on in there. And so, although it's interesting, it's novel, but to me, it's all the same, right? Meaning, there are cultures, there are subcultures. I get to be part of one and part of the other, and I get to identify with another one even though they've never met me, don't know me over there. I feel related to it, so I identify with that. And so, the point of it is, if I'm trying to make decisions off of that, it's not very good, right? It's not a very good way to arrive at a reasonable conclusion about that. So, you know why. And you just illustrated nine different ways why.

So, let me add the idea that 50 years ago, we would call you a "renaissance man." That was okay to say "man" and "woman" in differentiations then too. But now, we would accuse you of cultural appropriation, right? And in the same breath that I would come out using cultural appropriation, somebody would come off the top rope and say, "You have a DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion). We want to include everybody. Inclusion is important and equitable treatment of people." Listen, those all exist. They've always been around a long time. There's an [expletive] that didn't believe it and enslaved somebody. There's a group of people that didn't believe it and interred the Japanese during World War II, because they thought they were a threat. But there was also Pol Pot and Khmer Rouge and other groups that killed millions. So, stop for a minute and take a look at the big picture. What we do, Brian, is we're looking at culture through a straw many times when we need to throw that straw away and actually open our eyes. But what does that do? That reveals some of our own faults and weaknesses, and that's what people are afraid of.

And because you can't... most people can't be defined by one, even if they try to. You cannot define by one single culture. I mean, that's... unless you're just, those very devout Buddhist monks that never leave the temple, that are only there, like, that's the one and only thing.

Yeah, down in Ed. Right, I always want to try it.

That was just... that was a stretch on your normal Maslow bashing.

I don't know how you went from Buddhist monk because it's a closed system, but you're specifically right on, you're right back. I loosely get what you're saying.

But yeah, exactly. No, no, but you... so we can be any one of those things. And so, you can be all of them, that's your point, and I want to make sure...

Yeah, if you can be any of them, you can be none of them and still be a part of them, okay? You can say that I'm a part of this community. Like, for example, if you live in a tenement because that's all you can afford, and you happen to be in one of those places that people say, "Hey, 50 years ago, 80 years ago, they designed this as low income because they knew that they were going to put the freeway right next door and it was going to be an airport." People still live there even though we know that people choose to live there because it's the only place that they can live. But that doesn't mean that they don't have a culture because inside of their house, and the music in their car or in their earbuds when they're listening on the bus on the way to work—that's what defines us. Each of us is so different because we're so multifaceted. And anybody that's going to be guilty of cultural appropriation or racism or some other argument word that people bring up now is because of your view. You can't define me with your right. I have to define me with what I think I am.

And yeah, exactly. And the reason why we're taking our time to discuss this and talk about it is because we can use it as a context. But everything we focus on are, of course, demonstrations of intent. And whether you're trying to do some sort of threat prediction or whatever you're trying to do, or whether it's a threat or opportunity, I can look to make that signal more pure. We focus on certain elements that are going to be there, regardless of what culture you are a part of or claim to be a part of, or any of those things that may, like you said, add context to the situation of why I'm seeing something. But it doesn't always help me determine... I can't rely on that alone to determine what someone's likely intent is. And we talked about it, and I brought it up because we were involved in a project where part of this started to come into account, which is why we ended up saying, "This isn't going to go anywhere." And I like what you wrote when we had to do the after-action review and what we put it together. And I think I can read part of that without getting into anything on the podcast. But you said, "The Arcadia Cognorati human behavior principles rely on human behavior characteristics which demonstrate intent. Culture can create idiosyncratic displays, rites, and rituals that have no or nominal bearing on threat prediction and hostile intent determination. We feel that culture only matters as context, providing increased granularity with which to support one's evidence-based conclusions. Measuring culture is laboriously slow, especially when the decisions to use deadly force are generally measured in nanoseconds to seconds." So, that was, whoever wrote that knows what the [expletive] they're talking about.

My dear friend, I know. Next time, I've just got to tell you, "I wrote this," because we wrote that because it was such a philosophical underpinning of the new team that was coming in. That they were like, "But yeah, should somebody be watched? And can somebody be defined? And can we...?" And you know what? You're watching all the time; you're human, so you're judging all the time. All of us judge other humans all the time. That's why we make communication errors, Brian. That's because when another person's talking, instead of looking at them and listening, we're looking at them and saying, "God, I hope they stop so I can interject my viewpoint." And that's what I'm going back to there, is that, listen, just because you're an Arab American doesn't mean that you are how many more likely to destroy a mosque or more likely to get an AK and take a shot at a U.S. Marine. I mean, the whole Lebanon thing, we could go all the way through history. So, why do people keep bringing those up? Because they're convenient. It's an easy thing. It's a simple heuristic. It's a stereotype that we think. The problem I have with this is that that ends up screwing up our analysis of situations. Because why? Because we weigh things that don't need to be weighed. We give value to things that there are no value to. And what it does is it makes it easier for bad guys to operate, is what it does. And when you lump everyone together like this, it just makes it easier for people who want to do harm to operate in that environment because you're not seeing clearly. And if you're not seeing clearly, you're definitely not going to see them.

So that kind of ties into, as well, the saying—we had one of our listeners wrote in about it, which is why I'm bringing it up—that "perception is reality," which is, yeah, good point. They brought up a good point too, which is true. I get what people mean when they say that. It's what you perceive is what you're going to think. And that was a big thing. In this example, our listener wrote up, "Oh, it was like in a boot camp, I had a drill instructor tell me that perception is reality." And what they're trying to get across is, you have to look and act professional, you have to get a haircut, you have to press your uniform and stuff. Why? Because when someone sees you, they go, "Okay, you're squared away, you're professional," and they start thinking that about you, which it can technically be true. But it doesn't mean you're any good at your job. It just means you look good in the moment, right? And so, it's funny, we all know those people that look like crap, they always seem to be like a slob, but they're the best people at whatever it is that they do. They're really, really good at it. And we judge them on these indicators that don't always make sense if we don't put them into context, right?

And we're right back to context, Brian. Everybody listening to this podcast understands what "Sunday clothes" mean. Everybody understands that when I grew up for 11 years straight, every Saturday morning, we went down to the garage, and we sat on wooden boxes, and we shined the one pair of shoes that we needed for Sunday morning. And they were the oldest, crappiest shoes, but you had to be able to see yourself in them. That's why the boot camp didn't bother me because it was back when they still had to have the high gloss shine on your Cochran's boots and stuff. And the idea was that, "Hey, I've been doing this my whole life." Now, anytime that we asked what the reason was for, we got the [expletive] knocked out of us. Nobody explained to us that this is how we define ourselves when we go into other social members of our group, and that setting "Sunday" is more important than Monday or Saturday, right? And so, those little differentiations are distinctions that become a heritage to that group. And that's wonderful to hang on to. Why? Because it offers me security. There may be no economic benefit to it, but the bigger picture is that it does benefit you because people make knee-jerk reactions. And if you come up smelling of alcohol, or you come up, and you're more well-dressed with your hat in your hand and shiny shoes, you're going to project an image. And the idea is that the brain is constantly looking for danger. So, as you're coming up, danger is the first thing on your primitive mind. I hear this "lizard brain" and these analogies all the time, and it's like, stop quoting what you read and start understanding the [expletive] that you've studied. The idea is that your sensing mechanism and your amygdala are constantly trying to make order out of chaos around you. So, here's a new player: they come up, they're kind of dressed like you, they kind of look like you, things are kind of normal in that environment. So, what are we doing? We're sense-making. Is the person's hands visible? Are they waist aware? Does a person have a bulge under their coat? All those other things. So, one of the cool things about culture, Brian, is it forms a society within a society where we can make judgments, value judgments, based on historical perspective: "These people have always come into the village, kicked their [expletive], and stolen our women." "These people, however, have always come in and traded tangelos for our butter." So, those things are what our brain has accepted over 175,000 years. But guess what it hasn't done? It hasn't taken "Danger, warning Will Robinson!" off the plate. So, your culture is a way that you project your image around, and the perception of reality is what the other person sees. Now, if they draw their conclusion early, even if it's wrong, do you know how long it's going to take to break that? Break it. That's what they need to understand.

The longer that continues to hold true in my brain, my perception of you, the harder it is for me to break that. I mean, and confirmation bias jumps in, and you say something or you do it a certain way, and I go, "There you go, there it is." It falls right under the bucket. And what everyone wants too is, "How do you change that? What can you do about it?" And there's... thankfully, a lot of that stuff is going away. Different... "Well, we're going to teach you how to not have different biases," which is absolutely impossible. You can... that is... well, it is. I love the one, right? How not to have a bias you don't even know you have. Yeah, well, there we go. I mean, maybe if we work at it for the next few hundred thousand years, maybe we could... that'll happen. By then, maybe a half-million years from now, we could get rid of that. But the idea is, it's always there. So, there's recognition of it going, "Okay, am I falling into this cognitive trap that humans were designed to fall into?" Is a good way to look at it. But knowing how to do this, and the other way too, is what we're talking about: sense-making and problem-solving, right? And looking at its core, and looking for those similarities, not the differences. Because if I'm looking for similarities and I'm not finding any, well, then this is truly different and novel, right? And so, otherwise, if... because if I focus on the similarities, it allows me to simulate that situation much faster. I learn and go, "Oh, okay, I see why this person is behaving this way. It's because they don't understand what I'm saying because they don't speak my language, and they're confused—not because they have any ill intent behind their behavior or whatever the situation is." And so, by doing that, I have to understand that this is how all of us see the world at all times. And what can happen is, I can get really good at maybe defeating this in a certain area, but that doesn't mean I'm good at it everywhere else, right? So, maybe I'm good at it, Greg, from a security standpoint. You can drop me in with a team or security team or whatever. I can go, "Well, I'll spin you up real quick. Okay, this is what that means, this is what it is, and see how they're doing this." And they go, "Oh, wow, yeah, I've seen that before, got it!" Just like we do during training. But that doesn't mean I'm going to be just that good when I walk into the house, dealing with my own family and getting into arguments. So, conceptualizing that across multiple domains is the hard part, right?

Exactly. But it's the same process. You don't have onboard oxytocin in your mouth that when you go by a person you can blow it on them and make them like you more. Okay, for Hypnol, I think.

Yeah, exactly. Roofies.

So, no, but because we don't have to, we can use first impressions and culture to help us better understand and communicate with somebody else. So, art can help us communicate with somebody. Oh, yeah, that's a language. And help us communicate with somebody, music. But what you can't do is, I'll give you two perfect examples: I know, from paying attention to you, that you listen to Trent Reznor, Nine Inch Nails, and you turn it up, and you love it on headphones, and you love it on vinyl. Okay, now I'm starting to create a characterization—atypical things about Brian that I can draw a reasonable conclusion on. Well, Brian likes music. Okay, now if you start acting out or manifesting or dressing in a certain way, those are things. Now, what if somebody uses that as an extreme message and puts it on the bottom of their message when they bomb a church or a mosque or do a drive-by? Do you see how many different spirals that we've got there? So, which one of those can I use? Well, I can use that to define the attacker because that extremist uses this message each time that they go into this environment. So now that becomes a gating mechanism for me to help profile or define that person. You see, so I can use it to gain information, but I cannot use it to classify you. I cannot use that music and go, "Well, because that's heavy metal music, that's why he went to extremism." No, that's what I'm trying to say.

Right. You do all intent, you do the opposite. You say, "Oh, it's the music that did this." It's like, "No, no, no," because that's the easy answer, right? Now, in that individual, maybe that music is helping fuel whatever it is that they're going to do, almost in a sense, right? I'm getting...

Exactly. It's part of what I... who I am. Creative thing. I created it. It shows that this wasn't thrust on me; I went to it.

Right. So, I can't do this weird justification where we say, "Well, it's the music's fault. It's TikTok's fault. It's Twitter's fault." No, it's the human interaction with it that's the problem. Exactly, right? And so, we do that because it's a low-calorie, simple way to identify a problem, point a finger at it, and say, "Now I can come up with a solution," because, Greg, I can fight against that music and say, "We shouldn't have that in here," because that...

And we'll burn it, vilify it.

You're exactly right. And listen, that shows a low level of intellect and acumen when it comes to reading fellow humans, because I'm so afraid that I'll take things that typify or classify you. And the next thing, "Well, do you remember the art..." and I don't remember the name of the art style, Brian. It's happened everywhere in the world for every war—Peloponnesian, everything—but in World War II, because that's more of the era that we're more familiar with, where the Americans created the Nazi look on the posters, and then after, these evil spiritual demons. Same thing with the Japanese. Well, then you understand, "Okay, with devil dog," that's how the Germans viewed the Marines. And so, they had the same thing. So, what we're saying at the 30,000-foot level is, both of those cultures were identical in how to process and create evil in another culture, right? So, even though our underpinnings were completely different—national socialism is different than democracy—we use the same methods. Why? Because at the core, we're all humans. We all have the same wants and needs. And so, you decided to go off the reservation. We didn't decide that for you.

And we all have to justify our actions in some way, and justify the way we understand things, and justify our opinions. So, we do that in the same manner. Now, you might use a different drawing, but it's the same thing. I mean, you might complain or have a different solution, but it's really not that different on how we do that. And that's just the psychological and sociological need, right?

And yeah, right. Well, you brought up right there too, fear. So, let's talk about that. Let's talk about how completely unrelated things can coalesce to make me afraid. Three random happenings all over the country come together. I'll talk about the white guy that's at his house—and I'm saying "white guy" just so I can remember the incident, not that it's a descriptor in any other way. The white guy heads up at the end of his house and says, "People have been dragging up and down the street and driving up and down the street," and he's on a remote area, on a dirt road, and now he's getting more and more anxious and afraid. And all of a sudden, a white female pulls up in a vehicle, and he steps out shooting and ends up killing her. Now, again, just for context, I'm throwing in the color of the two participants there to show that it is clear that you couldn't have a racist underpinning to that argument. Now, somebody couldn't make one, but they have to interject that. What this is, is fear—a fear of a human that's been fed information that he now starts to put the round peg in the square hole and go, "And I already have a gun, so I don't have to... I've got to use it." Framework there. Okay. So, Brian, that issue had nothing to do with the other one with the old man shooting the kid that went through the wrong house, or the guy shooting the people that jumped in the wrong car at the store, right? But Brian, what happened is we put them together. We put them together because the lights in the sky scared me because the bubbles under the water, and I have to... I have to put something together, and so that must be the archer trying to tell me how to live my life, and that must be the lion trying to tell me that tomorrow is going to be a better day. Our fear drives our hatred, and we have to break that cycle. And again, this is no easy task. And Brian, you made a great point of it. It's going to take us 100,000 years to evolve past this, and it's taking us 100,000 years to get to this point, just to get to this point. Don't immediately club everyone that comes in over the mountain pass, because you know that they could be killing us. But fear is where a lot of this comes from—where this sort of ends justification comes from—where these poor decisions are made, of course, where this kind of subjective reality is created. When, if I, in a completely sterile, comfortable environment, you ask me some questions and get me to draw a conclusion, it's probably, it's likely going to be reasonable. The second I put... you put some sort of fear over you, you will rationalize everything, right? You have to, because once the survival mechanism is triggered in your brain, there's no going back. You can't unring it. You can't wind that back and say, "Well, had we known this," you can't do that in the moment. So, the point is not to get to the level where you're making decisions out of fear, because fear-based decisions are never good, or they're only going to revolve around your personal survival or the survival of your group, right? But the idea that that's the only options your brain will give you. And when I become over... and this is where people, the term like "self-radicalization," comes from. That's what you're doing. "Oh my God, and here's another video!" That's what the guy did when he heard those cars for years. He was doing that, building up. And then going, "It's going to happen. I know it's going to happen. This one came closer than the last 2,000 times, so this..." And he had a strike. "I've got to draw a line in the sand." So, that goes directly to what you were talking about: is my perception becoming a reality? Because what happened is, I perceived it so many times in my mind that I allowed the situation to come together. And the Rubik's Cube wasn't orange and blue and green on either side; it still had a couple missing pieces. But it was cognitively close enough for my fear to take over and give me a jump to an unreasonable conclusion.

And Brian, this goes back to our taser argument. If you don't want people shooting people with the taser, stop making it look like a gun and putting it on your gun belt. Those two things are so over-looming to the human brain that when the house is on fire, you can't tell the difference. And people go, "Well, training, training, training!" Well, if Gladwell's "10,000 hours" lie would change it, how many people would that taser and that pistol have practiced which one's which, left hand, right hand, under stress, not under stress? Brian, it's ridiculous. You throw that into the mix, you throw a loaded gun into a drawer in a house, and the kid's going to find it, and the kid's going to shoot.

You have enough monkeys to a typewriter.

Yeah, exactly. And I totally agree. And so, we categorize these things in a way to get people to understand it and cut through the noise to go, "Well, what do I need to do?" I can make these shootings about whatever I wanted to make. I can make it about men killing women, I could make it about race, I could make it about guns, I could make it about whatever I want. But it's fear. So, if you stick under the broad category of fear, it goes, "How did these people involved in this situation get to the level where they were so scared that they felt that their life was threatened?" And you're going, "What would that take? And am I on that path, or someone I know on that path?" I mean, because you see a lot of these cliché quotes that used to come out that people would say, and if you really live by such a simple quote or a simple binary way of looking at things, I don't think you're fully understanding the world in general, not just the situation.

Miserable life.

I mean, just what a tabula rasa. Every day, everything is a zero or one. It's like, "Oh, okay, well, have fun with that." That sounds horribly... well, it sounds boring, honestly. But getting out of that kind of fear-based decision is when things are hanging over you, you will go down a path and not even realize you're on it. And I think a lot of these situations are those that are popping up now, because we've said it before, we talked about even during COVID and after everything, coming out of a long war. Like, people don't realize, "Yeah, but that's just like in the ether. It's just these conversations. Like, that's going on in the back of your mind." So, if you have all of these things stacking up, and eggs are expensive, and now you just... you eat all that up without ever grounding yourself in reality, saying, "Wait a minute, how is my life affected by everything I'm seeing right now?"

Precisely. So go to that, Brian. Go directly to that second shooting we were talking about, where the old, mid-80s guy—young kid that was going to pick up his sisters. So, add these factors before you make a value judgment—not you, I'm talking to everybody. Culture produces stability. Culture produces safety and security for a tribe of individuals that see themselves together. So, a community should develop that culture. But here, you had no Gladwellian talk, an outlier. This was an older guy; he'd been disenfranchised from his family. COVID really hit everything hard. He was more and more a recluse and secluded. He had all of these life views that were made in a bubble, at a grasp over time for 80-some years. And now he doesn't have a family to rely on. He doesn't have the emotional response that you and I do because he doesn't get out in public and socialize. And his tribe hasn't taken care of him. So, for every time you say that he's on his own, that's partly your fault too, if you're in that community. And nobody wants to say that. No, no one wants to say, "Well, I tried reaching out to him." No, he didn't. He sees a guy on a porch, and he hears the person shuffling around. And, Brian, this is it; this is everything. This is his fear. "I've watched a realization. I've seen this play out." That's where we have to start. So, he can fix that. Well, he created that. He created it, reinforced it. Society reinforced it. Everything in his life reinforced this inevitable pathway. Yes, and he never saw... his brain never could... couldn't at that point, at that age, after hearing all this and thinking this for so long, it couldn't create another explanatory storyline where, "Hey, maybe it's the kid lost in the neighborhood," "Maybe it's someone looking for someone," "Maybe it's someone asking for help." Never that. It was always, always fear is myopic. And fear it is. It's like we talk, Brian, our buddy Grossman, who's an expert on school shootings now too. But we talk about his first book with reverence because all of us know, "Yeah, he's on the right track." His research was trying to do, and his research was great, and also his corollaries were great. So, you can't function if you have tunnel vision, but tunnel vision is how you function. He missed that one critical point: that tunnel vision is how you're supposed to function in an emergency because your brain slows time down so you can see those factors that weigh more heavily in your survival, right? So, that's a simple thing. We could do that soundbite right now on LinkedIn, and people would buy our upcoming novel, right? But the idea is what we do is we oversimplify that, and we say, "Fear is a powerful thing. Fear changes your DNA. Fear changes how you breathe, how your heart pumps, how your capillaries interact, how the chemicals in your brain structure." And this guy that turned himself in with his gun said to everybody, "I was scared to death." That's what we can fix. We can fix that as a culture. We can fix that perception of reality. We can't fix it if we keep dumping it and going, "It's just racism. The country still lives. Is it still a Lynch Mob mentality?" Because what we do is we've painted ourselves into a goddamn corner, and now no further psychological, sociological talk can take place.

Already with a chip on their shoulder. Well, if we keep looking for simple answers, then we're going to keep getting simple solutions. And if we keep looking for a fight, Brian, we're going to find a fight. And that's... I don't know, some of these are just people wanting to do that, right? They literally just want to pick a fight, or I want to go out there, or I want to be a hero, for example. You and I don't know enough about the cheerleader one yet, right? The information was really odd. "They always park here. This is the carpool lot. She just made a mistake and went to the wrong car." And then the person left that car and came over and shot him. That's interesting to me. And why would it be pushed in with these others? Well, because it's easy for us to do that, right? And it got thrown in there and got the same thing. And there's likely more to that story, even though these stories are separate and distinct. They'll always be lumped together for time immemorial, and they're wrong. That's a great point, and how we do that. Like, we lump things together; they don't seemingly belong together to show a bigger point. But you also have to be careful. You're talking about case-by-case basis on how you look at things and not fall into these traps. But I mean, I like what you said when you said, "Fear is myopic." It's a good way to look at it. And I think a lot of people don't realize there are a lot of folks walking around out there right now—people listening to this podcast, statistically speaking—there are people listening to this podcast who are operating in this mode where there's a level of fear and anxiety there. And now fear and anxiety are different, right? Fear is right now, in the moment. Anxiety is anticipation. It's kind of fear-based, but protracted, so later on. But your anxiety can turn to fear very quickly. And so, when presented with something that you have been anxious about, suddenly you might get scared. And so, a lot of people are operating at that level. And if we're not careful, every one of those interactions could go catastrophically wrong, just from misunderstanding and just being scared. I mean, that's literally what it is: being scared. And I don't think we handle things well because you look at what... what does every generation say about the previous or about the next generation? "Oh, you bunch of [expletive], you have it so easy back in my day." Every single generation. So, if you've said that right now, sorry to tell you, but your parents said that about you, and their parents said that about you.

Thanks for saying it. The Romans were saying, "Oh..."

Exactly. I mean, Plato wrote about that. Like, we are doing... Plato wrote that, "You stoic bastards don't understand life." No, exactly. And so, that's the point. But then what do we do? We continue to try and "nerf" the world. "Well, let's get rid of this. Let's get rid of that. You can't say that on social media. Maybe you need to be a certain age." It's like, "All right, so you're saying every generation is getting softer?" All right, but you're also then going to contribute to that by not developing them. You're going to "nerf" the world. You're not going to build resilience in the next generation. You're going to say, "I'm going to go out there and nerf the world. I'm going to prohibit you from doing any of these things. I'm not going to allow this, or I can do that. I can spend my whole life trying to accomplish that." Or I can turn and go with the insurgent, "Alright, man, you're going to be faced with some challenging situations in life. This is how you get better at facing them. This is how... there's nothing in life that guarantees it's going to be fair, Brian, all the time." Oh, yeah, okay. So, don't think that somebody's going to give you a free lunch. It's always going to have a club behind it.

I love that about you, is that you're not only pragmatic, but you're practical. Every time she brings up, "Well, that's not fair," I go, "You're absolutely right. You and I play by a different set of rules in this house. That's just how it is." "That's going to change." "That's going to change over time, right?" I go, "If you want to change some of those rules, here are the things you can work on when you get older that's going to change. But under these circumstances, we play by a different set of rules. You can choose to protest."

Yeah, okay, but you're going to find your [expletive] in the yard. Or there's the right way to do it, there's the wrong way to do it. I love because McKaylee does that. "Okay, you want to do that? Write out a plan on how we're going to accomplish that. Tell me how you want to do that. What are the steps involved?" And I'm like, "Oh, that's good critical thinking, man! That's promoting critical thinking right there."

Hey, Uncle Michael.

Yeah. And that's the thing, is like, we have this counter-intuitive view of how to solve these problems. The... yeah. So, just like fear can spill into rage, because when I'm afraid, I can lash out. And even if I lash out at the shadow on my porch, it's rage nonetheless. It's the same thing for me, it came from fear. Somebody lit the match too close to my fear, and it jumped. Now that chasm has become that momentary rage where I feel that I have to scream and defend myself and fire my gun. And then I recede back into the house, and I don't want to give myself up for an hour because I'm not sure what just [expletive] happened.

Well, that's because you're a human.

And these different cultural wars play on that, right? Because it's like, "Well, I don't know how to articulate what I'm upset about, so I'm going to get mad at that thing right there because I don't like it. My group doesn't." All of these... I just call these cultural wars that go, "I think they're so [expletive] boring, and I think they're so stupid." And I think a lot of it is, there are people that have contempt for other people, which is fine. You can have that; you could still live in a society with someone you have contempt for. That's okay, right? I think there are people that don't know how to articulate what it is that they're upset about, and they're angry about something, and they don't know how to describe it. So, they just lash out at whatever thing is in the news, and they can get upset about, because it's easier that way. "I can just psychologically project all of my different problems on this." And everyone does that, every human does that. It's not a "what side of the political spectrum you're on." They all do it. And I hate it because it's just one, it obfuscates everything. We don't know... we can't clearly see what the problem is. We're never going to...

Dissonance, baby. Turbidity, baby. Yeah, that's where it comes from.

And then, people profit off that. I mean, whether that's a company or a politician, to get... either they're going to profit off of that, and that's the problem.

So, you know what you're saying? You're saying that the company that just started advertising that they're going to have a safe room that you can press the button, and it's going to pop up in a school to save your kid—they're going to say that can reduce your anxiety. And I would agree. A resource officer is nailing your daughter in that place because it shows them a place that they can hide, or the kids are using fentanyl in it. Exactly. Don't come back to me and say, "This was a bad idea." We have to think longer. Brian, your and I... my business plan when we have to go to Shelley and Martin or talk to any of our stakeholders, it's a century. It's not 15 minutes, it's not next. Where do we want to be over the next decade, right? And where do we want us to be able to be in the market in a century? Because if we're not talking about that, it's just like all we're doing is going along with everything else. We're holding... I just got off the call, we're not going to mention this morning, but same thing. It's like, "This is how you build that legacy program. This is how you make it yours." So that, and then when budget cuts happen in four years, and you can't pay me to come help you with this, it still exists. That cool Vince Vaughn movie with Google where everybody is having fun, and it's the greatest environment in the world, and now all of a sudden, they're laying off people by the thousands, and [expletive]'s changed, right? And so, when somebody says, "Well, that is inevitable," yeah, it was inevitable. But nobody told you that when you came in the first day. And that's what people have to understand. I don't care that you have a PhD, you could be out on your [expletive] tomorrow. You have to understand that turbidity is fomented by stuff like a two-party system in democracy, right? By rising or falling oil prices. And what happens is because we think that there's an app that fits all that [expletive], and it's going to be fast, that we don't look at the long-term ramifications. And that anxiety builds up, and that's why I shoot somebody that comes to my porch. Because those are that... those things that are outside of my control give me anxiety, Greg. Like, I can't control what the price of a gallon of gas is going to be at the pump, but it hits me hard. But I can control drinking at a bar tonight and wallowing in self-pity. I can control who I direct my anger towards.

Oh, you're exactly right. And whether that's outward, whether that's in your... like you're yourself. "Well, I can control this pain." That's what you just said. "If I can go cut myself, and I can control how much pain I feel," well, man, that's what you're using it for. And all of that stuff that happens out there, it often affects us less. Like, it often affects our daily life less than we really think. But we blame... we have to blame it, right? We make it affect our daily life, and we insinuate ourselves into the situation because we have to have drama. We can't just have comedy. No, we have to have drama there. You have to belong to this set and understand that that set of people rely on me for something. And even if that something is always being Eeyore—"It'll never work. We're all going to die"—they have to rely on me because that's how I feel stable in that environment.

No. And then that's how it goes from the psychological to the sociological needs that every human being in every society needs, and that we need as humans.

Well, if you're upset about this, Greg, I should probably... I'd be upset about it too. And yeah, that's right, that is messed up. And maybe we should think this way. And now it spirals wildly out of control. And control is so important for humans, and we have to have some control. We have to find that in some way. And like you just said, the comedy doesn't work unless you have drama, because everything's a comparative baseline. There can't be a hell unless you understand a heaven. Yeah, there have to be those polar opposites, right? So, you need that, right? You can't have a California if you don't have a Florida, right? We need both of those, actually.

You're exactly right. Look at the rat... the issue that we had. Okay, so perfect example, one coach: there's the "rat czar" or the other side. So what was that from? Was it somewhere in L.A., West Hollywood or something like that? The local city said, "We're no longer using glue rat traps. That's inhumane to collect these rats. We can't treat animals like that." And then, the same week, it was go to the East Coast, in New York City, they finally appointed their first ever Rat Czar. Now, imagine that on your business card, Brian. I think she... I don't know much about it, I've got to read into this person. But imagine, like, "Ham, the Rat Czar of New York City." I bet you have more pull than most. There are leaders of nation states that have less assets available to them than the rats. They'll hold the door open when you're going to the Trattoria, the Pizzeria for you, and somebody will go, "Why'd you hold the door?" "You know who that is? That's Rat Czar." I love that. Yeah, it's going to be, by the way, there's going to be a reckoning there too, because that's going to turn into a mini-series. I hope there's a documentary being filmed about it, right? How can you look... Oh my gosh, I didn't want to get into the West Coast thinking on that one, and I'm all for everybody, and I don't want anybody to be in pain or hurting, right? All right, go right back to what we were talking about. You can get an answer out of somebody by using torture. It's trying to give you the answer that it thinks you want. Exactly. Not the right one. It's so... and it's warm, and it feels convenient, and the words are in some kind of order. That's what we do. All of a sudden, we feel stability, and there's a sense of security in that. And then 10 years from now, we're going to look back and go, "What were we thinking?"

Yeah, no, that's the ultimate way to look at it, I think, right there. Yeah, if someone were looking back on this 10 years from now, "What do you want to be remembered by this?" Exactly. Fast forward this 10 years and go, "Where does this lead?" And we talk about time all the time on this, and I love even when we had Dr. Lea De Bella on here, who's great. She brought up, "Time is a function of language." And that was another one I wrote down. I was like, "Yeah, we don't... our brain is not good at categorizing things or perceiving time very well." So, no. I think that's... that in "fear is myopic," I like that one, Greg.

Well, and I tell you what, every once in a while, you see something that just changed your outlook on a day. So, we're in a small community in the middle of nowhere, and there's a great distance between all the homes. A couple of dogs went missing a couple of days ago. And what does the community do? They put together, they locate the dogs, and everybody yesterday was out cheering for the dogs as they came back out of the wilderness. And people were crying and patting each other on the back, and it brought the community together. Look, you can have that power with a culture, or you can turn it into hate, death, and fear, and just by using words or by saying nothing, or by jumping into a protest and further alienating the people rather than having a pancake breakfast and bringing them together. And Brian, I truly believe that, truly. Plus, I love pancakes too. Who doesn't? Wow, you've never taken me to someone else for breakfast, and then I have to wait all day long and eat nothing but a Larabar and a Fig Newton or something. It's horrible. Not a Fig Newton; that sounds good though. I think I'm going to stop and eat now. Yeah, that's it. That's probably a good spot. I talked myself into being hungry. The problem too is the outrage culture. If you can say, "Hey, we're having a free pancake breakfast," and someone will come up, "Would you have a problem with waffles?" Exactly. And "What do you mean by free? There are strings attached somewhere." So, that's good.

Well, I know we kind of... we got into a lot. I started with understanding what we mean by "culture is context" and bring that into "perception versus reality" and how those go hand in hand, and how things come down to fear and decision-making. So, hopefully, there are some takeaways in there. Got to be a lesson in there somewhere.

It was the right amount of time that we talked. I don't know, worry about the content thing at this point. I'm just going, "[Expletive], I've got like six things I've got to get done today, so maybe we should wrap this."

Exactly. And I wanted you to protect Friday, and you damn jammed a bunch of [expletive] into Friday.

I know. I apologize, but there are only so many days in the week and so many hours in the day, and that was not my time.

It's just a function of language. It is, it is. Well, I want to remind everyone, we obviously, we have The Human Behavior Podcast side where we go into details about some of the stuff or give a little bit more that we want to at least just have behind a paywall a little bit, just to keep some of the riffraff out. And then, check out The Human Behavior Podcast website, TheHumanBehaviorPodcast.com. You can sign up there, stay informed about different stuff that we have going on. And check out the Arcadia Cognorati one as well. Follow us on social media. We've got a lot coming this year, a lot even this summer. So, stay informed because those folks who are in the club and sign up and do all that stuff obviously get first dibs and get all the discount stuff when we start doing all this. And we get to use [you] as a sounding board for future things that we do. So, some of the things that we do behind the scenes, we'll enlist the aid of others, as we recommend other people doing. And so that's this community here who listens to this podcast, enlisting your aid where you can get some maybe some cool free training or something like that out of it. And we get some feedback for what we maybe are potentially building on another project.

And you become the rat czar in that moment. You become the rat czar for Arcadia Academy.

Yeah. The Piper of Pied. So, we always... we've had those different job descriptions. We're like, "Puppet Master was who runs the range," and different stuff, "different dominion," and "Trunk Monkey" or "Prank Monkey." I mean, "Death Blood Driver." "Rat Czar" is a whole new one. "Rat Czar" is like... but that sounds really important. I think that might be sort of like my title. I don't know.

Well, "Senior Rat Czar" would be above you if we ever have to, if we ever have to bring in an outside CEO, I think that would be their title. "Rat Czar." Love it. Okay, well, folks, tell us what you think though.

Yeah, let us know what you think. TheHumanBehaviorPodcast@gmail.com. We appreciate everyone listening, and thank you for those of you who've been sharing it with your friends because we've had a bump in listens and everything. So, we welcome all of our new listeners. Please, we do appreciate it when you share an episode with a friend. That's the best way to kind of grow this and get more people into it. Say, "Hey, here's what I listen to, here's why I liked it." We should also include these kind of comments more at the beginning of the episode too, when people are still listening. But we've got to remember to do that. So, are we still on?

All right, I think so. Thanks.

But we thank everyone for tuning in. We do appreciate it, and we appreciate your support. And thank you for listening, and don't forget that training changes behavior.