 G'day, May 40 here. So I just bought Andy Nnewicki's new novel, The Insurrectionist. Pretty stoked. It's gonna be awesome. It's the first post-COVID novel, bro. So there's some interesting things in my way of thinking in the dispute I've had for Andy Nnewicki. And I think one interesting thing is, from my mind, the power of situationism versus the defects of essentialism. So I'm not gonna argue that, you know, I'm better man than Andy Nnewicki or better man than anyone. Because who I am, the essence of who I am, depends on the situation, right? There is no essence of Luke, right? I'm different in different situations. Right now I'm lying on my back with my legs going up the wall and I'm making a YouTube video. So this is a different situation than how I spend most of my day. When I'm lying on my back, looking up at the ceiling, different situation, different things come up for me in simply this physical position as opposed to standing, right? I'm a different person when I'm standing as opposed to lying on my back, as opposed to sitting, as opposed to running, as opposed to skipping, as opposed to making savage love, as opposed to praying in synagogue. I'm different depending on the situation. So in his final word on the Look Forward Controversy, Andy Nnewicki made two videos yesterday where he castigated me for being intellectually dishonest and not someone he ever wants to talk to again, not someone he'll ever ever grant another interview, not someone he'll ever comment on again, someone who's just manipulative and just a bad person operating in bad faith. So I don't think that's a useful critique. Now, for shorthand we are going to see, we are going to characterize people with essential qualities like dishonest, manipulative. But if we want to think a little bit deeper, like everyone's going to be manipulative in certain situations, like everyone's going to be dishonest in certain situations, everyone's going to be cruel in certain situations, everyone's going to be gentle in some situations, everyone's going to be loving in certain situations, everyone's going to be honest in certain situations. Some situations people will be outgoing, some people will be introverted, right? So, when I was reflecting back on Andy's critiques and actually reflecting back on the Thursday night interview I did with Andy, I kept coming back to the importance of situation. I kept coming back to the point that I know nothing about Andy, aside from what he says. So, nothing I say can describe his essence, because I don't know Andy, aside from how he presents himself. So, I think it's just much more useful to look at people in a situation rather than presuming to know their essence. So, Andy was proclaiming that I was a really bad interviewer. So, I think I'm a pretty good interviewer. I'm a pretty good interviewer who sometimes does really bad interviews. I'm a pretty good interviewer with certain interviewees. And I'm a mediocre interviewer with other interviewees. And I'm a bad interviewer with other interviewees. So, the power of the context, like maybe I haven't had enough sleep. Maybe there are certain personality types with whom I do a better interview. Maybe I haven't done enough preparation for a certain interview. Maybe we just don't understand each other very well. So, the interview becomes awkward. So, I've done thousands of interviews in my life. I think generally speaking I do a pretty good job. But that does not mean that seeing this afternoon's interview, I may do a terrible job. Alright? I may be distracted. I may do a very different interview if I have a toothache, if I have a headache, if my stomach's upset, if a woman has just rejected me, if I've fallen out with a friend, if I've relapsed into one of my addictions. I'm going to do a very different interview. So, when Andy Nowicki took offense to my asking him on what basis do you see these things? What are your sources of information? Again, that's situational. Andy Nowicki would not be offended or bothered or upset or annoyed or feel like someone was trying to have a go at him in a different situation when asked the identical question. The reason that Andy was offended by my question was the context, the context of a particular interview that was not going as he expected. So, when people feel defensive, they're going to give you very different reactions than when people are having a good time. So, Andy Nowicki was not having a good time in Thursday night's interview and so he gave a lot of defensive answers. That's not the essence of Andy Nowicki. Like, defensive, offended, ticked off, frustrated. That's not Andy Nowicki's essence. That's just Andy Nowicki in a certain context when he feels he's being manipulated, taken advantage of, the interview is being conducted under false premises. That's going to bring out a different kind of attitude than when he thinks that an interview is going along in an upstanding, honest fashion. So, I think it would be ludicrous to say Andy Nowicki is defensive. It's like I think it's ludicrous to say that I'm a bad interviewer. Certain contexts, certain people are a bad interviewer. In other contexts, I'm a good interviewer. I think the role of the interviewer is a little bit like the role of the psychotherapist in that. You don't want to just accept everything that a person says as God's honest truth. On the other hand, you don't want to challenge so much that the other person goes into a defensive crouch. So, for the purposes of getting the fullest amount of possible disclosure from Andy Nowicki, my Thursday night interview was a failure because I challenged him very early on and so that caused him to get to take a defensive crouch with regard to the interview. On the other hand, from a compelling point of view, I still think it was a compelling interview. At least certain sections of it were. I thought it was revelatory. I thought it was important. I thought there were lots of different lessons that can be deduced from it. Lessons for me, lessons for Andy, lessons for anyone who watches. Status quo. I think the happier you are, the more successful you are, the more invested you're going to be in the status quo because the status quo is really good for you. But the more unhappy you are, the less invested you're going to be in the status quo. Generally speaking, I would not expect revolutionaries to be happy, contented, successful people. I expect dissidents and revolutionaries to be discontented and unhappy because if you're happy and contented, you're going to be invested in the status quo. Why would you not? If you're happy and contented, you're going to see the world through the prism of your happiness and content and you're going to look for more and more reasons to be happy and contented. I think we all experience the world and look at the world through the prism of our emotions and our thinking. When I was struggling between, say, 2012 and 2015, I was much more interested in points of view that challenge the status quo and deride the status quo and trash the status quo. That's where Trump was so fun. Then when I started getting my life together in 2016, paying off all my debt, earning good money, then I developed an increasingly friendly attitude towards the status quo because I don't want to give up the things I've got. I don't want to threaten the beautiful life that I have. Simply changing my financial and social situation and my psychological state, I moved from being quite disgusted by the status quo to being much more respectful of the status quo. To a large extent, I don't think we see the world as it is. I think we're much more likely to see the world as we are. We encounter people and sometimes we encounter them on a bad day, in a bad situation, when we're not at our best. We then come away from that, particularly if it's the first encounter with certain ways of looking at people that are very hard to change. Really what's affected our thinking is largely the situation. It's nothing inherent about the person. If you get good news and you turn to someone, you're going to see that person in the light of your bad news. If you're feeling happy and you read a book, expect you'll probably be more likely to like it. If you can find things in that book to be happy about, then if you're depressed and miserable and you pick up a book, then you're going to want that book to reflect your depression and misery. If you're trying to impress a girl, you're going to behave a little differently than if you're just doing your own thing. If your religious community is really important to you, then you're going to be quite unlikely to do anything publicly, even privately, that threatens your position in your religious community. If you love your job, you're going to be much less likely to conduct yourself in any ways that might threaten your job. If you like your car, you're going to be less likely to conduct yourself in ways where people might be tempted to scratch your car. I just think the power of situation isn't just so important. We're always coming from a particular place, whether it's our views on politics or culture or morality. Knowing where we're coming from, what are the incentives that we're responding to? What's our life experience? What do we hope to gain? What are we afraid of losing? Who do we see as our friends? Who do we see as our enemies? That's the critical thinking where I think situationism is really just the subset of historicism to find situationism. Situation means that the situation has a profound impact on whatever is said or heard or done or felt. I am right now in a situation where my feet are running up the wall and I'm lying on my back and I see the world differently. I experience the world differently on my back and I do if I'm walking down the street. My experience walking down a beautiful street is very different from walking down a scary street. I'm going to speak differently, think differently, experience the world differently when I'm walking down a scary street as opposed to walking down a clean, safe, beautiful street. I'm going to think differently, speak differently and act differently if I'm feeling healthy and well rested as opposed to being, say, sleep deprived and having a terrible headache and a toothache. So there's going to be a different subjective state for everybody in every situation. So essentialism means that you attribute essential qualities to a person such as clear core is honest. Well guess what? There are situations where clear core is going to be honest. There are situations where clear core is going to be dishonest. Essentialism would be saying clear core is brave. There are situations where clear core is going to be brave. There are situations where clear core would be cowardly. Essentialism would say clear core is funny. There are situations where Claire-Core is funny and there are situations where she's unfunny. Someone might say Claire-Core is extroverted. There are situations where Claire-Core is going to be extroverted and there are going to be situations where she's going to be introverted. Someone might say Claire-Core is honest. There are situations where she'll be honest and there will be situations where she's dishonest. There will be situations where she tells the truth to the best of her ability. There will be situations where she she dissembles to the best of her ability. So we often tend to have this self image of ourselves. Like I like to think that, you know, I'm brave, that I'm a true seeker, that I'm erudite, I'm charming. Like I like to think I have all these heroic qualities of every single one of these qualities are situations that bring out the very opposite in me.