L.O.G. 222 Psychological Entropy

Alright, Greg. It looks like we're up and recording here, getting going after a busy few weeks. We had a couple guests on the last couple episodes that were awesome. We're getting a ton of great feedback with Dr. Black and then Chip Hoot, both awesome conversations. We loved them, so I'm glad to hear that other people did as well because you never know sometimes what are really cool for us, some people listening are like, "Hey, this isn't great for us. It's great you guys might be having a great conversation," but everyone was interested in.

So now it'll be us this week, and I know those listening, Greg's a little under the weather from whatever he picked up wandering 6th Street at all hours in Austin.

That is true. I have to say that Kristen, our dear friend on the East Coast, said it's because I snuggled up too close to that beard and something crawled out of it when we were sharing a room in Austin.

That's entirely possible. However, I think the 6th Street explanation is far more reasonable and logical. Whatever you were doing when I was like, "Greg, are we all done for the day?" and you're like, "Oh, I'm going to hang out for a bit. I just want to survey this a little longer." In the morning, "What are you doing in this alley with a cardboard sign?" Exactly.

So we've got that going, but I want to just kind of shout out to everyone listening. We really appreciate it. Thanks for those reaching out and asking questions and sharing episodes. It really helps us out a lot to share those episodes with a friend. If you like it, send it to someone you know, and even hop on there if you can, leave a review. Hopefully, it's a good review. If you spend your time listening to our show because you hate us, go get the help that you need. But if you could leave a review or something, that would be really cool. We appreciate that.

Today, kind of shifting gears here, not the most uplifting of topics, but it's important for us to discuss. You sent me several articles, I believe it was five, just in the last week. In every one of these situations – I'll put the links up in the episode details – there's a reason to really get into each story, but a lot of them were where a family member killed his family, then killed themselves. In one case, it was a mom, it was a female. But at the time, it was everything from a New York City school superintendent – thought he was going to lose his job – stabs his family members to death and kills himself. A tech family down in Texas lost their kid, I believe in an accident, and then ended up he killed the family and then killed himself. There are a few other ones in there. The mom one was she killed her kids and herself after losing custody of her children.

These are brutal, brutal, brutal stories, and we've seen them. This is obviously nothing new. So I kind of wanted to sort of frame this discussion. There are other examples we'll get into, historical ones in the U.S. How does this happen? Why does someone do this to their family? Obviously, I'm assuming, in our terms, their cup is full. But how does that happen? How does your cup get full? Why do you do that to your family members? And lastly, how do we miss this stuff? Because a lot of this is screaming out to the world, and we still miss it. No one ever thinks that that could be a potential outcome. Therefore, they don't look at it. I think we'll frame the discussion around that. I'll throw you to sort of start it off with maybe another example or wherever you want to start.

Yeah, let's do this. Let's talk Austin. Austin PD lost almost 800 officers since the first year of COVID for a number of reasons. Austin, it's a wonderful city. Let's make sure that we say that. It is a wonderful city, but Austin sometimes can't get out of its own way when it comes to what they want, when it comes to policing and lowering crime and all those other things, because you can't have it both ways.

The reason I'm bringing this up is that it's driving towards the narrow end of the funnel. Brian and I are in Austin, absolutely loved our time, absolutely got a lot of great work done, and we're standing on the very first day of college at the base of what we refer to as the Whitman Tower, where the former Marine (Charles Whitman) got up that morning and shot his wife, then shot his mom, and then carried a footlocker full of weapons and ammo to the top of the tower at UT (University of Texas), and killed until he was killed. The kids around us had no idea. There was a police presence, there was an undercover and plainclothes presence, there were UAVs, Brian, flying around making sure that they were keeping an eye on everything, keeping everybody. They did a great job of it. I don't know what those UAVs were for, but they should have been doing that. The locations seemed to suggest that somebody was on the ball. The idea was that, just grab sampling, people had no idea.

They had no idea that was in a vehicle driving down the street that they were walking in.

Exactly. Completely oblivious. You're right. It was beyond no idea, but people miss a very simple connection there.

We love Vegas, by the way. Invite us to speak in Vegas, because we absolutely love it. I got married here once.

Yeah, exactly. It didn't last.

We were at a hotel that was a really high-priced hotel for a change. Thank God somebody else was paying, and I remember walking and seeing all the kiosks ready to go, and there was only one person, and there was a line at this historically high-end hotel. What does that mean? Well, you look at the high-end hotel that we stayed at, you look at a place like Vegas, and you see that there's 200 or 300 open positions at that hotel. Now, that's back to the Austin losing 800 coppers and not having to move places.

So Brian, there's a standard of care that we've all created as a baseline for our environment, and we've had 35 or 40 or 50 or 60 years of enjoying that baseline and filling it with a great deal of fidelity. Now what's happened is those cops aren't there, that patrol isn't going out. Nobody's coming when you call 9-1-1. Specifically in the instance with calling 9-1-1, I remember in Detroit, here's the first thing: they were assigned in a cop car on everything, and there was always a one or a two-man car that was close by or a mid-car or somebody a heavy car that was going to drop in and check on you when they heard a call in the area, and everybody knew the local cop in there. The next thing was, "Hey, listen, is this in progress?" when you were calling 9-1-1. Then the next thing was, "Well, listen, if it's not a felony, do me a favor, come in tomorrow."

"Yeah, but the guy just left."

"Yeah, I got it, but sometime this week, come in and make the report." So what's happened, Brian, is the standard of care in our brain and in our mind and in our life is at one level, and the reality of that standard of care is at another. That creates dissonance, but not the kind of dissonance we see and feel all the time, but almost like a storm in the back of our mind that's keeping us up at night. We're not sure exactly what it is. Is it the full moon? Is it the waves crashing? Do you get what I'm trying to say?

So that cup is there, positioned there to catch the humidity and the turbidity, and what's happening is the cup becomes full without us noticing it's full. Then all we need is that catalyst, all we need is that trigger moment in life. For example, your superintendent hears that he's going to be let go. It's not the truth, but it doesn't matter because it becomes his true truth. The "obiden" thing, the truth versus the fact. Stop for a minute, because what you don't understand is that when I'm sitting at home and I think that my vote no longer counts...

Oh yeah.

Whitman thought his vote over and over and over. That I have something wrong with me. My head hurts all the time.

Oh yeah.

I need help. Legitimately did. Everybody says to him, because he even writes it as his pseudo-suicide note, "Please do me a favor, autopsy protocol and find out." And there was stuff there; he had a brain tumor. But he's begging people, "Pay attention to me."

So that dad in Ohio that kills his wife and his three kids, and remember that the kids are significantly older. It's different – this is going to sound so horrible – but it's different killing a baby child or a smaller child than killing a child that you've spent the last 10 or 12 or 15 years with. I know how that sounds, but folks, follow me for a minute. To do that, to become that person, that's a detachment with the reality, and the reality detachment happened a drip-drop, inkling at a time. Generally, it doesn't happen overwhelmingly, one big decision. So for example, the female that killed her two kids in the trailer and then killed herself. She fought, she fought the good fight. She went in custody. It was a long, protracted battle. Those always, guess what, she's exhausted.

She's exhausted.

She sees no future with those kids anymore. It's just a custody dispute. When we sit back and have coffee, we look at it and go, "Wait a minute, there were a million options."

No, not when you're in the moment. Not when you're in that moment.

Exactly.

The one you sent about the New York City superintendent thinking about his job, that immediately reminded me of one of the worst school attacks in U.S. history, a hundred years ago, in 1925, Bath Township, Michigan. Andrew Kehoe, he was involved with school, he's a teacher, administrator. Same thing, they were going to fire him. He was always bitching about the budget and, "You're just doing this wrong, and I'm going to tell you how to do things, and this is how you've got to..." It was the same things you see at a school board meeting today, I mean, the same stuff. And he's bitching, arguments, and the same thing, he feels disenfranchised. They're going to fire him, they're going to get rid of him.

He went home, same thing, he killed his mom, hung a sign in his yard that said, "Criminals are made, not born," because he's an injustice collector. It's not his fault; it's everyone else's. Exactly. Drives to the school, and he builds up significant... he packed a school full of explosives to detonate on that first day of school. So he detonates that, kills a whole bunch of people. People show up to the scene. His car, he had built into a VBIED (Vehicle-Borne Improvised Explosive Device) a hundred years ago, and then he blew that up with people there. It's a horrible, horrible terrorist attack in our nation. A lot of people don't know of, but the point is, it goes back to that cup is full. Whatever that is.

You brought up a great point, I want to hit on. It just happened last night, the Blue Moon, the full moon. We saw it out right here. I was bringing the Insurgent (his daughter) home from her practice, and we're coming up, which is perfect because it was like just a little bit of a cloud in front of it, but you could see it. It was a massive, I was like, "Whoa, what the hell?" And then I was like, "Wait, is it... that's significant?" So I looked up, yeah, last night was the biggest moon on record. You're not going to see another one like that for another 10 years or whatever it was. And you know what did the Insurgent say? She's like, "Oh, that's when the, that's when the freaks come out." And I'm like, you know, it's so funny because that becomes it. Then it's not everything that's going on in their life, it's, "Well, yeah, and then the full moon happens, and that's when we know things happen," even though there's no difference in activity on a full moon versus a normal moon.

Everyone has a story.

You do.

Exactly.

From the cop work going, "It's not true." No, it's not true, but you do have a story. It's not, yeah, exactly, but we attribute that value. So it automatically becomes something else. "Well, it's because he was wrong, and this happened," or, "This..." You know, we, it's just a perfect because again, we're taking it apart.

So it's easy saying what we feel the motivation behind something was. I don't want to get into the details today because my head's not ready for it, but there was a very recent shooting with a foreign national going in and committing a homicide. One shot fired, kills a guy. The two schools of thought are, no pun intended, "Hey, it's a school shooting," and "Yeah, it's a homicide that happened to occur at a school. It was very targeted. It wasn't random." The second part was that Hogg from Florida, and a lot of people come out and go, "This is it, once too many. We have to draw the line. We're going to show up every time to improve gun laws." It's a foreign national, he can't legally buy a gun anyway. So we're conflating issues.

Let me just go an inch further before the people start throwing the tomatoes. Look, there's havoc on the streets, and the havoc on the street creates a fear that we can't see, but we feel it every day. I know it's there, and we know it's there, but we can't point our finger exactly at it. There are a lot of contributing factors, so it feels overwhelming. What do you do? Do you say, "Well, we'll privatize, we'll gate our community, we'll hire some security guards?" No offense, the security guards are undertrained; they're not an experienced road-vet copper. Then what do you get? You get a couple of guys in Indiana stealing wood from a Menards. They pull out, encounter the security guard, and the security guard and the driver about that. We don't want that reckoning, Brian. We want accountability, but we don't want reckoning. That's the problem. We have to think that right next door to us, that wonderful couple that moved in that I waved to every time he's string-trimming the lawn and everything else, is in turmoil. He's just waiting for that cup to bump into the last vestige of humility or humanity, and he's not getting that pat on the back, he's not getting anything, he's not getting any relief. He comes home, and the food's cold, or the food's not there, or he didn't bring the food, or he forgot something. Brian, guess what? Now that turmoil comes to the surface, and we can't see anything.

It's a form, and I'm going to use the form of rage again because there's not really a word for what happens there, but that psychological entropy is so damn powerful in that moment, Brian, that I look and I go, "Do over. I want to start over." The only way to start over... Here's the real point that I brought Whitman into this: Why kill your wife, and then kill your mom, and then go and kill the other people, and kill yourself? Because it makes sense. "I love my wife. I cannot expose my wife to the pain that I'm feeling and the shame of what I'm about to do. I'm not going to subject my mom in her last couple of years to knowing that her son killed a bunch of people and blew his damn brains out," pardon the vernacular. Now, I have to clean that mess up. I have to make sure the kids don't have to go to school and remember Daddy this way. Once I finish that, Brian, now I can tabularize it. Now I can clean-slate it. But why do I kill others? Because I hurt so bad that for those last couple of minutes, Brian, I have to feel that reckoning. I have to feel that I'm getting some comeuppance, that I'm getting some attention for how bad I felt these past years, decades, whatever else.

And that's in so many different situations too. That's like a domestic violence situation sometimes where the guy is beating up his wife or girlfriend or whatever, and it's because they're, from the term we use all the time, a broken human being, can't cope with whatever's going on. Do they go pick a fight with a random person on the street or go? No, it's this is someone that's close to me too, so I can take it out on you. It's, you know, why a lot of those arguments and things happen. But when it gets to this level, it's how do we miss it even though it's screaming at us? Because we still don't see this as a whole in our own personal life sometimes. We say, "What's really happening?" You don't see, and no one ever puts yourself in there. It's just like when I, and I do, I don't talk about as much on here, but obviously in our in-person training course, when I bash all these shitty damn video breakdowns of things that happen, I'm like, "This is horrible, they're so bad, they're almost no value in any of the ones that I see." Because it's all happening right there. They wait till like the thing that it happened. They don't talk about anything else. But the idea is no one ever sees them, no one ever puts themselves in that shoes. It's like, that's you in that situation. You don't want to see it as you. Therefore, you're going to get into that situation if you can't say, if you can't walk yourself into that and go, "How would I get into that? How would this happen? What would happen? What would have to happen in my life, Greg, for me to want to kill my own family and then kill a bunch of other people?" Well, for me, I don't know what that is. It would have to be so damn significant. You know what I'm saying? It would be huge. But if I've got a brain tumor or I've got other issues, and I've got all this stuff going on, it's not that significant. At those standards, it doesn't have to be that significant.

Exactly. It's a much lower standard.

It's a much lower standard. And so when we're applying our standard to how we handle things, that's the problem. I'm at the PTA meeting, and someone gets up, and they're pissed off and angry and yelling and storms out. I go, "Well, that person is..." So I move their lens to the side, and I slide mine forward. I go, "Well, because that's ridiculous spelling or using that diphthong incorrectly," or whatever else, "They're beneath me. They're somehow different." No, that's you. That is you. That is the ultimate concession of compassion, is you looking at the least of us and saying, "That is me." Jesus was really good at that. Buddha was really good at that.

And the problem is that we keep thinking of stoicism. I'm talking about a guy that's got forty dollars in his wallet, and he's wondering if he should buy Narcan or some more heroin. We don't do well in the environments when we look down and in because we want to perceive ourselves through a different lens. Look, those were families just like us, and they had social leakage, and they asked for help, and they told people things were wrong. You say, "Well, just go talk to an attorney." Well, an attorney's going to charge you. Well, not all attorneys charge. "And I can't see myself going to a food bank, that's too embarrassing." Dude, go to the food bank! "I can spend hundreds of dollars at the bar with my friends, but I'm not going to spend the ten dollars for a gym membership and go Muay Thai and get a good sweat on and get rid of some of that anger." So my poor decision-making manifests itself a little at a time over time, and all of a sudden, I look back and I say, "That time I spent online searching for porn, that time I was late for work because I was drinking with my buddies." They magnify themselves, Brian, and it's like the wrong end of the magnifying glass now, and we're burning ants, and those ants hurt, and they're screaming, and we've got to do something about it.

We're not talking here about a mental health crisis, because most of the people that do this are not involved in a mental health crisis. It's a protracted painful episode, and they see no way out.

Well, and once you've been, you brought up, I like the way you put it earlier when you talked about, we've had sort of a standard of care of how things are supposed to be, and that got shook up pretty badly. And again, changed the entire world. Everyone, it's like we're no longer having that discussion, and we haven't even realized the massive effect it had because everyone's so cool, just in general, humans are like, "Well, you got to push on, you just keep going." It's like, "Yeah, but can we stop and learn from this first?"

Exactly.

Like that massive shift. Look at what it did to different cities. Look at what it did to law enforcement, our country. Look at what it did to this. All of a sudden, this pendulum started swinging, I don't know where it landed, but you know what I mean? But the idea is, you said it well with the "we were used to a standard of care," and then that shifted. So now our baseline has shifted, so now what is it? We're all, it's like a discovery learning process with people. It has been now for three flipping years.

Well, that just happened right out in front of my parents' house. A girl I grew up with, she was carjacked visiting her parents who live across the street with my mom. At 3:00 in the afternoon, three 15-year-old kids carjacked her. Threw her down, beat her up a little bit, jumped in the car, took off. Kids were in the car, so then they stopped about a block away and dumped the kids out, took off. They were arrested a while later. What do you think is going to happen? Well, they were 15 years old. They're doing kidnapping, okay?

But is something going to happen? So now this is a community, like, yeah, I grew up on the south side of Chicago, but I grew up in a community of all, it was mostly city workers. It was like cops, firemen, city planners, like literally a lot of people who work for the city in the neighborhoods, and it's gotten even nicer since I grew up in, and it always was not, I mean, it was a good neighborhood, normal fights, stupid crap, and us being hood rats, stealing crap. But like, it was the neighborhood was insane.

It was every neighborhood, every middle-class neighborhood.

Yeah, exactly. And so, so now that happens, and it changes the dynamic, and that fear sets in. My problem with it when you don't deal with this, what how these things are complex issues, right? So they're introduced on different factors in there. But a lot of times people just need to feel like someone is doing something about this. Because if you feel like, "Okay, someone's listening to me, someone's doing something," what it does is turn down that temperature, turns the volume down a little bit. Okay? And sometimes a little bit, but that's all you need to talk about that scale, that's massive. Like if you get, if you just turn it down 10%, that's massive.

Holy crap, that's massively one percent. I would argue, oh no, I would argue you're making a significant impact.

Completely agree. And so that all adds to it. So it's like my thing, it was like, "While the full moon has nothing to do with it," but it actually does. It's like, "Wait, what do you mean?" It's like, "Well, if I appreciate the inevitable, we create it." And if I'm, if I've got all this on my plate and my cup is full, and I can't handle this, and then that happens, and now it's a full moon, and like, that, that's another thing. It's like, "Does it contribute to it?" No, but yes. I mean, absolutely does if that person believes it does.

So I have a family member, God rest their soul, that's out of the inner circle family, and they used to go to these estate sales all the time, and auctions and things. And the one thing that they mentioned is never, ever buy a mirror from somewhere else, because that mirror contains all of the lives of the people that came before it. It can come spilling out at the worst possible...

I think I've seen that movie.

Well, they gave me justifications every time for, in their life, every time they saw an example of that. So do you search for it, or does it search for you? But at the end of the day, looking from the fly-on-the-wall perspective, scientifically, doesn't matter, because it's still as powerful. So whether it's a talisman, whether it's a tale told to the tribes, it doesn't matter because if that person believes in it strongly enough, it's true to that person. So if you think that you can't see your way out, and you're convinced...

To give you an example, when Sunday night came around, I knew I had a couple of things that were going for me. One, it was going to be Disney, and it was going to be family night on our gigantic console TV. The console must have been eight feet by probably four feet by two or three feet, but the TV screen was 16 inch. But you had to have the whole console with the speakers and the antennas and everything. We were watching Disney, and it was going to be Pete the Mixed-Up Puma or something. You know what? Not during one of those shows did I get angst or anxiety or fear, or did I get the impression that white supremacy was leaking through because Roald Dahl wrote James and the Giant Peach with one hand while he was flipping off Jews with the other hand.

The problem is you have to have a relief valve, and if your relief valve is surrounded by naysayers, and you're constantly seeing the one picture of the 12-year-old kid that committed the carjacking, the shooting, and he's in handcuffs on the back, and everybody's going, "Yay!" But in the very next day, you see a picture of a 12-year-old young inner-city kid in the backseat, and they go, "Hey, they handcuffed this kid for no reason." You can't have it both ways. And when you're bombarded with those messages, your brain has to... your brain has to see a way forward. Your brain has to go, "Oh, I'm learning this lesson," because that's how we're programmed psychologically and survivably. So all of a sudden, we see all of these random messages coming through, and I can't make sense of them. So now I'm frustrated, and the turmoil and turbidity begins, and that constant turmoil makes me think, "Is it me?"

And then I look, and I go, "I'm getting less than the paycheck." So I buy a lottery ticket, and I lose on the lottery ticket. How the hell can I lose on a $20 lottery ticket when I know that I see a show called Millionaire on TV, and this... And then I'm watching Entourage, but I see my own news, and then we have the former president and everyone in his cabinet going to jail in Fulton County, Georgia, and then the other guy whose kid... This, Brian, I don't care what side you come down on at all. What I'm saying is we're all coming down hard on our heads, and that close head injury is going to manifest. And what's it going to manifest? "I'm going to hurt myself, I'm going to hide in my basement," or "I'm going to hurt others." I'm oversimplifying, folks, but please get what I'm trying to tell you. All of those messages take a little bite, and we only have so much capacity. If we don't return to looking at things with empathy and compassion, you and I disagree on one thing – we disagree on many things, folks – but the one thing that we always disagree on is when we're talking about taking another person's perspective. I don't, you know scientifically how important it is, but you say it's not as easy as I make it all the time. But you get what I'm saying.

I don't just... I absolutely agree with you.

Okay. Absolutely. Because everyone knows, psychologically speaking, it's very almost impossible to take another human's perspective. But I say, in a sense, like to really know, but you don't really have to.

I tell you, maybe so, maybe it's a semantic difference. It's a cultural and generational too. Because I say it's hugely important to put on those Crocs and walk around a little bit.

Absolutely.

And lay down. Of course, you agree with that?

Oh, 100%. But you're saying that's not essential because we've come so far that we can process information faster and better than anywhere before, so we don't have to literally walk in those shoes. And see, that's the only thing, it's both sides of the same coin, and we both agree. But my thing is, it's harder and harder when I'm bombarded with flak, with noise, to find the pure signal. And the pure signal is this: Most people are okay. Most flyover states love God, and our country is doing pretty good. Yes, but holy crap, the Chinese just bought the hair salon next to me!

I mean, isn't it... Well, we don't, we don't weigh information correctly. We attribute more, more... Not even, it's definitely not equal, but force it to be. That's the idea. The news media says, "News media." It's people. All of us do that. We don't, we think this is... It's exacerbated. And but this is, these are all, if you want to understand why these things occur that we're talking about, this is why. This adds to it. Is it the Cable News Channel's fault that this person did it? No, obviously not. But did it add to what that is contributing? Of course, because they were consuming this. But that's no different than, say, like, but then it goes back to, "Look, if I want to order a Coke when I get a cheeseburger, I should be able to order a Coke when I get a cheeseburger." Yeah, I know sugar is bad for you, it's like the worst thing to put in your damn body, but it's delicious, and I love having it. Like, "Well, it's my, I made the choice." Right? But what we don't realize sometimes is when all that stuff starts to coalesce and build, and it's an ebb and flow, and it's like the constant bombardment. So when we see these things, just to kind of take it back to how do we miss it, it's like we're in it. You can't see the forest for the trees sometimes when you're in it. And when the baseline is constantly shifting, and I go back to what you said, our standard, what it was used to, has now shifted. So we have to have a new comparison.

Well, the problem is, if I'm comparing myself to the NBA players, I really suck at basketball, Greg. I'm really, really bad. But if I compare myself to my 40-year-old dude neighbor down the street, I'm alright. You know what I mean?

Yeah, but it's a comparative baseline though. So baseline plus anomaly is so hugely important, but building a fidelity field baseline is the key. That is everything. If I've been taught my entire life that I can be anything, and that coming in last is still important, and that you can compete for any of those NBA positions, you've got equal footing, and nobody's ever said, "Hey, rain falls a little bit, and sometimes the ground gets muddy, and sometimes you get shit on your foot." Okay, if you don't understand you get shit on your foot sometimes, then what's going to happen is that's going to be cataclysmic at some point in the future when things go wrong.

And so what do we do? We turn on the camera, and now we have 90 Day Fiancé, and we have Island of Mistery Toys, and we have Naked Strangers on a Train, or whatever else that was you another way if somebody does that one. Yeah, I get money for that. That's why you're sick. But all of those things don't even start, all of those things contribute to what we don't understand is Brian's analogy, Brian's look into Schrödinger's Cat was so simple when he said, "Sugar's horrible for us, but we can't get away from it." So at some point in our future arc, we're going to look back, and we're going to have three chins and gout, and we're going to look and go, "I would've, could've, should've. I wish..." The problem with psychological trauma is it has an expiration date, and sooner or later, it's going to rear its ugly head. You don't get to choose what that date is, and you don't have sometimes the wherewithal to be able to read it on the outside of the gosh darn box. And what I mean by that is now you walk into the place, and all of those things have been tagged along, like Scrooge's buddy pulling the chains, Marley. And all of a sudden, you're in that McDonald's, and you get the cold fries, or all of a sudden you wave the person ahead, and the person waves you ahead, and you flip them off, and then it's a road rage. You won't see it coming because you're not programmed to.

Let's go back to societal and survival. Do your own research, I'm not going to educate you today, but around 33 to 35 miles an hour, 33 angler pros, a huge important thing. Think about flying or jumping out of the helicopter with a parachute, all the different things, gosh darn pile of dirt you're building. 33 is huge. But if you were traveling at 35 miles an hour, even if the person was holding an IED or a gun or a knife or something else, you're not going to see it. Why? Because our early selves didn't have to achieve those speeds, make those critical decisions. So what we've done now with the advent of social media and AI and all these other issues, is we've accelerated the learning curve and our understanding and information and data, but we're not really good at processing it yet.

No, we're terrible at it.

When they take a day or a million years. We haven't reckoned that here's... We're back to reconciling, Brian, the reckoning. What happens therefore is that sometimes we feel that we're on equal footing with these intelligence giants when we're not. So anytime that you put yourself up and propriocept that you're as good as that person down the street or as anybody else, and your opinion weighs equally, but then somebody comes and pulls a rug out from under you and says, "Yeah, but for this whole section of your life that you thought was secure, it isn't. Oh, and by the way, your vote didn't count, and you need to get back in line." Brian, sometimes that's it, and we have to be able to see that in ourselves, in our kids, and in our neighbors.

I'll give you one for instance. A kid shot himself the other night, 16-year-old kid, because two guys from Gambia or Nigeria got online and talked him into a sexting interface. "Hey, I'm a kid at school, I'm this girl. I'll send you a photo of my bare breast, send me a photo of you." And then flick the switch, and it's called sextortion now. Folks, if you're my age or older, look it up, learn about it. And that kid found that there was no way out. "I send you a thousand dollars, or I'm releasing it to everybody at your school. I'll send it to your mom, I'll send it to everybody." The kid says, "Look, I'm going to have to kill myself because I don't have the money." They said, "Good, because this will ruin your life." If that boy would have known about sextortion, if the family...

Yeah, I'm not blaming the victims or the family. It's just, it's got to be everywhere. That's a good use of social media. Your own daughter looks at people that smoke now and goes, "Why would anybody do that?" I was of an age that, Brian, I was smoking during class.

Yeah.

Well, when I'd explain to her like, "People used to smoke inside their homes," and she's like, "Wait, what?" And I was like, "Yeah, like you go to someone's house, like they'd smoke inside their house, not even go outside, not even..." It was like, "No, man, like you just, people just smoke constantly. Restaurants, come on." Completely. It was a huge foreign...

And that's... that comes down to the education and awareness of something.

Exactly. And that's hugely important. And being able to take that step back and going like, "Alright, well, wait a minute there." We've been in conversations before, too many people, "Oh, did you hear this? Did you hear this?" And I'm like, "Yeah, I know, man. I get kind of selfish with this stuff when I get overwhelmed with information, I go, 'What affects Brian's life?' And then I focus on that."

We don't cherry-pick either. The reason we don't cherry-pick, folks, is you've got to be careful with information because almost always the first view of information from the scene is wrong. It's flawed, it's lacking. So we like to wait until we have a full picture or at least enough in the picture that we can opine about what the most likely course of action or the most dangerous course of action is. People hate that because they want to know now.

Well, we're right. I know. I love that when people would, "Did you see what's going on with this?" I was like, "Yeah, well, what do you think?" I go, "I don't know, man, this crap just broke like an hour ago. Hold on." Really not put much value in this analysis here. We're not saying, "Listen, don't run when you hear the gunfire." That's not what we're saying at all. We're saying that when you go back and you're trying to figure out the demonstrations of intent, everybody's got a story. So this witness in the world is generally your eyewitness.

So that kind of comes back to how we miss it too. It's another thing, right? We're often going off of whatever just happened in front of us or very little information, and we make decisions based on that, which is really what humans do. It's sometimes necessary in emergent situations, but it's even in that, taking that step back and being like, "Okay, like what don't I know right now? What do I not know that that could potentially, you know, because that could add more to complete the puzzle a little bit." Yes, I can see what we're building here. And that goes with all of these situations, and again, I'll put the links in the episode details.

It's so important, but you know, if someone could have in that moment gone, "Man, this is the most catastrophic thing for this human being that's ever going to happen," maybe, maybe we need to intervene now because this is not handling it well. And the earlier, you know, as I mentioned, the less likely someone's going to do something, and the less likely there's going to be blowback on it. You know what I mean? Because some people do the, "Well, I don't want to get someone in trouble or I don't want to say something and do this." It's like, "Well, then this is going to keep happening." Exactly. And there's nothing to say. So the communication aspect of it is that and seeing that in that moment, that's why when we take certain precautions, or even when we're just talking to people on the street, and we're doing stuff like, if you're talking to someone, I'm on overwatch, and say vice versa. If I'm doing something, you're watching. Because people are like, "Well, what, it's the middle of the day, it's right here." It's like, "Yeah, do you not get this? This is a damn two or seven thing." Like, it's done.

So we walked up, we walked up to a street guy, and the guy had what looked like a burglary tool fashioned in the back of his truck. And we were in a bad neighborhood of town. We walked up to the truck first, and then he pops out like a Jack-in-the-Box, and the idea is to de-escalate the situation immediately. I go into a story, "Hey, back when I was in high school, I used to have to use that on my truck." Now, it could have been a stolen truck, he could have been the guy that stolen everything else, but I gave him out. I gave him a whole bunch of things, "We're not important to you, and you can drive away at any time." Brian, it turned into a great conversation. We've got a little bit of a bid on it. I have to do that because I don't want to get shot and stabbed the day that we go out and do those interviews because we take a lot of risks.

Looking at it from that perspective, I would tell you, why is life skewed? Why is it that sex workers and drug abusers or users, and sometimes street people, why are they the most resilient? Because they've taught themselves to be, and they bounce back from everything. And you look at that, and you don't see how important that standard is, that no matter how bad it gets, there's a tomorrow, and I can fix this, or I can go somewhere, I can do something. And you're going, "Poor example." No, it's a great example. Just stop putting your lens on it for a minute. Then let's go just a little bit further, and today's the day to hate me because I don't care anyway, I'm so damn sick.

But there was an FBI raid within the last 48 hours, look it up, and the raid was for a person that has a veteran that has significant PTSD and some form of mental illness from that. But that person went in and did a stabbing at some store like a Home Depot or something. So the feds for whatever reason got a warrant, and they go to the house, and they're going into the house, and at some point there's a scrum inside the house, and they shoot the person. The person is now a decedent. Immediately, we're posting that the family members who weren't there said, "Listen, he never carried a gun, he didn't have a gun. They shot him, and as a matter of fact, from the position they shot him, they couldn't have seen if he had a gun or anything else." So to your argument, here's this brick wall, and it's got significant amounts of stone missing or places that it needs mortar. So instead of looking at that and saying, "Which of these is most critical for me to solve now to avoid the whole pile falling down?" what I do is, I fill those gaps whatever I can, in a bird's nest and this and any other. And it is going to eventually come crashing down, and that misinformation does so much more damage than just saying, "Hey, listen, we'll wait and see." So then somebody goes, "Yeah, but the FBI lies all the time." The FBI lies, everybody lies, but they don't lie all the time. "The FBI is going to cover this investigation up, and every cop on there is going to look the other way." Now, that never happens, only in Hollywood.

But Brian, why do we miss it? Because the truth is right in front of us, and we hate confronting the truth. We would much rather go on the life that we've designed for ourselves. Again, why when the rug was pulled out from us after COVID, we're so crushed. We developed a standard of what we think our life will become, and when it doesn't meet those expectations, we'll be crushed.

Well, and you know, we have to find, I mean, she's just look on social media what every book is out now. We have to find meaning and purpose in everything. So we often connect dots that are just random dots, and then we don't understand randomness. As humans, we don't understand randomness at all. Like we think, and part of that's a, it's a, it's sort of an imperative to believe in order to be a contributing member to the tribe and survive, things matter. Things matter, right? My role has to matter in society, Greg, because so I feel as part of the tribe, and that you take care of me when I'm sick. You know what I mean? And you watch after me. That's the idea. And so we sort of have this, this, you know, almost biological imperative that there's, there's a reason everything happens, and it's connected in some way, and there's a lot of faith that has to do with that. And that which is, which is great if you want to believe in your creator or whoever it is, I don't care. But there is a lot of crap randomness out there, and sometimes the weirdest crap will happen just because it crap happens.

Here's another random one. They busted a woman yesterday night because she was cheating on Social Security because her 95-year-old dad, she was still making the collections for his Social Security, and he's been buried in the yard for the last couple of years. And you look at that and you go, "What kind of person could do that?" "I'm eating cat food, I'm skipping meals. I can't make my house payment. My dad was going to die anyway." And you look at that and you go, "Yeah, person's still a criminal." Yeah, but what was their intent? Was their intent to defraud the U.S. government, or was there an intent to make it a couple of more years because working at Circle K just wasn't cutting it? That's what I'm talking about putting yourself in the shoes of somebody else. I'm not saying have the level of compassion that she doesn't have to pay the consequences, but I'm saying understand, just understand the decision.

Yeah, and that'll help you. That'll help ease the pain. You don't, you don't have to be okay with it. You don't have to approve, you don't have to say, "Oh, there's nothing." You don't want to approve it, right? You just have to say, "Oh, okay. I get it. I see how you followed this path and got you to this point."

It started with something that seemed reasonable and then slowly over time it got less and less reasonable, but not to you in the moment. Exactly. I cannot talk to you about school shootings and the importance of a parking lot and you giving the gift of time and distance when your kid was shot, you can't.

I can't, exactly.

But so, so I need to understand that what we're doing is we're filling the jug past its capacity, and sooner or later, some of that hate, death, and fear is going to spill out. And so what did we used to do as a society? We used to come together for a block party or a county fair or a softball game or get behind Timmy the wheelchair kid in South Park and, you know, stage a dance marathon or something. But now we're...

Exactly. We met him the other day.

And now it's this resounding, concussive, expressionist wave that's hitting us over and over and over from social media where we see like the gosh darn, and I'm old, Brian, so this crap bothers me, the, "Hey, let's tell the teacher that I've got a gun in my backpack," and that's a challenge. "Hey, I like the challenge for cerebral palsy. I like the challenge to try to identify and fight cancer." But to try to go up and videotape yourself telling your teacher that you've got a gun or a IED in your backpack, and you look and you go, "Yeah, but that's such a small percentage." Yeah, but Brian, I haven't got a million hits, apparently Eric Levine has. And that gosh darn thing about telling the teacher, we have to adjust our lens, or we're going to continue down this path until it hurts us worse than it is hurting us.

Well, you see that in the, that that's why I think there's so much of this, you know, "Get outside, do this, be part of this in this group." There's that, you know, there's like all this, and most of it's just people selling your crap on Instagram. But the idea, they're selling it because we know it's the right. Yes, we know it's that I miss, you know, or something. And people have to go, and there, there's a, there's a lot out there, and I think that's the answer to it. The answer to it is because people, it took a significant event like COVID for people to realize like, where are we going? What's important? What do I need? And so there's all this crap noise, and then it's like, "Well, what, what does a human actually need in this?" And you know, we kind of took a little spiral there for, for a while from the immediate topic, but it all has to do with that because we consider it does. People really do live in a simulation in a sense because you create your world. It's, it's goes back to the reality shows that I hate, but the one woman on there was like, "Let me speak my, my truth." And I was like, "I, I hate these shows," and I love that line because it's just so perfect. It's absolutely perfect. It's, "That's what I felt happen, regardless of if that's what happened, that is what happened, and that's how it's affecting me." So if I can see it, and this goes back to taking that person's perspective. Like, how did they take it? Not not what did I just see? How did that person take that comment right there, or that situation in life, or whatever that event was? Because they're clearly taking it differently than I am right now. I'm going, "This is annoying, but you know, no big deal," where it's ending that person's world today. So what's going on in their world? And that being able to, that it's like what we talked to Chip Hoot about and arbitrary people, we obviously go into a lot of detail and really give an explanation of what that means and how to do it. But that simple, it's like, "Okay, how do I, how do I put it from their perspective to know what they're likely going to do?" Because you know, you don't clearly don't see it in a moment where someone's going to do something catastrophic, and it could hurt you or the community. I mean, you'd look at what happens when those things happen in those communities. They talk about it for years. It's devastating.

It changes their the dynamic, and we forget about it because we're only taking a quick peek, Brian. That's enough to get titillated, enough that we're excited by reading the headlines. But what about that parade where that guy in the stolen drugs, where is he now? And it seems so far away, Brian, that we don't even reconcile anymore. We don't even go back that way because we're always pushing forward. That's what I mean, when we approach that speed and Event Horizon becomes blurry, we're going to make poor choices, and then we think we have to stick with the poor choices rather than throwing in the towel or raising our hand and saying, "I need help."

Agreed. I think that's, I think the Event Horizon is a good place to stop this episode actually. So maybe, maybe that's where we're watching that film right now, had nothing to do with our talk.

So, Amy, we covered a lot in here, and we covered some of those cases, and then we talked about Whitman and Andrew Kehoe from Bath Township. These are good things you can learn and understand because that's there, it's been going on longer than anyone thinks. You, and it's the same thing every time as far as we look at it. Now, Kehoe is an interesting one because he literally did have a tumor in his brain pressing on it that clearly affected Whitman. Yeah, we thought absolutely, and he was screaming it to the world. Kehoe is very similar to any other shooter you see today. I mean, it's like, go back, disgruntled, in pain, and something's got to give, buddy. And so it's being able to see it, and not miss it in a sense. You know, you, that's, that's the thing that, you know, it's why we investigate every little thing. "Hey, did you see that? Stop. Flip the car around and check." Because why? That could be, that's the missing key. You found something that you, you don't know what that leads to, and being curious with your environment, man. I mean, that's what it's, that's what it's about. That's why science is going to fix this. That's why math is so important.

I have to give a shout out to Clark Dever. It was such a great time in Austin. First of all, Warren, Bungee, Cook, in the eighth in the Marines. What a great experience it was. And then Austin PD, thank you so much. And then go to Clark. I love sparring with Clark because Clark is from a different time and a different way, and he just has so much knowledge. And Brian, that's why I love so much sparring with you is because it takes me out of my comfort zone.

And right exactly. You know that's, that's always learn something.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's, that's where it comes from. You have to, you have to, you can't, you just, I don't know, you, you got to that gets into parenting. What I see people do it's like, "You're not going to expose your kids to the danger of the world? What do you think's going to happen? You're not going to explain it to them? You're not going to show them?"

Yeah, that's right. Isn't the problem? It's the people trying to get in your kids' pants with a problem. Exactly. So, but those heavy thinkers. And the reason that we had fun with Fox and Prim and all these other people over the last few weeks, when you challenge your assumptions, you rebound harder, smarter, and faster. But you have to challenge them because the things that you know work, that stood up to the challenge, get stronger and harder, and the things that didn't that you thought were, they fall away. So you become faster. I mean, it's just...

Exactly. Right. Like that should have been at the phone in the pledge first five minutes. You know who that right? Because everybody watched this backwards. Alright, well, we do appreciate everyone for tuning in. Thank you guys so much. There's, there's more on the Patreon side. And like I said, please, it'd be great if you can share an episode with a friend, and, and you know, leave us a review in whatever app you listen to it on. It does help because people do come across a new podcast, they go down and check the reviews, so it, it does help. We would appreciate that as we try to grow things and we got more coming. So... anything else to add, Greg?

Yeah, Shelley's parents are on the way. They'll be here tomorrow. So if this doesn't help, I'm going to go out and invest in a cheap bottle of bourbon and just sit in New York. So I love him so much, but you know, it's been a long drive. Tomorrow's going to be a challenge no matter what.

It's taxing when the family comes in, so it always is, and even people you love, even people you look forward to. It's, you know, it's the old cup full mentality, right? Yeah, Clark. Alright, I pray for their safe trip. Thanks everyone for tuning in, and don't forget that training changes behavior.