 May 40th here, so one of my favorite commentators on this channel is Mr. Reasonable and Responsible. And his comments make me think, you know, about as high a percentage as anyone in large part because he kind of goes against the tendency of the chat and the commentary on this show, which is kind of jocular, you know, ribbing, teasing. He's more likely to be serious and morally responsible. And so I just did a stream earlier today about this ridiculous $10 million statue of Martin Luther King in Boston, which looks like a statue of his flaccid penis. And so I used an image of this ridiculous new statue across most of my screen for the first few minutes of my live stream. And Mr. Reasonable and Responsible calls me on it, says, you know, must you display such an obscene image, right, on your live stream? And so live streaming balancing a lot of competing values like in life. So one is competing value, not to put obscenity on a screen. Number two, don't put something sexually provocative on a show. Don't put a stumbling block before the blind to decode from the Torah. So that's certainly a value. Another value is to put a picture of what you're talking about. So given that my audience is, you know, overwhelmingly hetero, putting a picture of this ridiculous Martin Luther King statue in Boston seems like a good call. But yeah, they're competing values. So on the one hand, you want live streams to be as off the cuff and easy and relaxed as possible. So if you search for tips on how to be a good live streamer, they talk to you about just saying virtually anything that comes into your mind. You want that stream of consciousness operating. That's what makes them the most compelling show. Now on the other hand, that also militates against saying things that are reasonable and responsible. So do we try to live a life that, you know, absolutely minimizes the chances of doing harm to other people or are there other values such as the entertainment value of showing this ridiculous Martin Luther King statue or the truth value of showing people what, you know, what all the hubbub's about. So yeah, I like like Mr. Reasonable and Responsibles challenges. And so I often keep him in mind when I'm making decisions on how to conduct a live stream. So I want to do a live stream that's contained spontaneity, that is realistic, that is a stream of consciousness that also contains something that's thought provoking and considered and reasonable and responsible. And if it's going to affect people, I'd prefer it to affect them positively or no effect whatsoever. On the other hand, you can then sanitize what you are doing to such a degree that it loses its power. So you've got competing values here, right? It's not like the most sanitized antiseptic live stream is the best. And on the other hand, the wildest, at least censored live stream, not necessarily the best either. So there was a question that I got about a relationship. So anyway, Mr. Reasonable Responsible says, do you have to choose that indecent image as the frozen screenshot for a stream? Well, it was. Come on, tell me that that Martin Luther King statue in Boston that cost $10 million is not ridiculous. Other comments here. Michelle Malkin got sucked into the Nick Fuentes orbit and now she's retired from the journalism. So yeah, Nick is compelling. He's entertaining and you know, it's easy to, if you're sympathetic with many of his points, it's like it's easy to defend him. On the other hand, he says so many really stupid, horrible things that you really have to surrender too much of your conscience and your discrimination and your good taste to consistently support him. Virtual pilgrim, another one of my favorite commentators, is Lucas playing a video of these various women, black and brown and Middle Eastern women beating each other up. This took place in Belgium. He's talking about in-group versus out-group. He said that people are willing to stand around, watch people get beat up if they're not part of their in-group. I think my major point was that if it's not safe to intervene in situations like this, and if your society is so diverse that you don't feel ownership over your society, you're more likely to let these things go on. So if you own property, all right, you're less likely to put up with bad behavior on your property than if it's public property that you don't own. And so if people feel a ownership of their society, which people are more likely to do if there's one dominant group that dominates the society, then you're less likely to just allow bad behavior to operate. So it's a lot more than just in-group versus out-group. He said people are more willing to stand around, watch people get beat up if they're not part of their in-group. Also, if you don't feel a sense of ownership over your society. 1970, when I lived in El Cajón, California, going to junior high, there were a number of fights. I hated them. I would leave and not watch. I was astonished that all the girls gathered around and were cheering and laughing while two boys beat each other up. I did not understand how they could enjoy such violence. It was an all-white school, so everyone was part of the in-group. Well, the human being has an infinite capacity to divide up into in-group versus out-group. So you can have an all-white school that still contains many different in-groups. Right, here's another question. Hey Luke, I was in a three-year relationship with a mentally unstable girl, who I changed to be a much healthier and stronger person over the time period. I ended the relationship as I began to question whether her mental instability was a general lack of critical thinking would pass on to my children. Think of her daily. I was just wondering whether you thought I made the right decision. She tried to kill herself at age 15. She has cuts all over her arms and legs. Thanks. Okay. First of all, I need to be humble here. I don't have enough to sustain a relationship longer than a year. I'm a 56-year-old man. Okay. Second, you're unable to have relationships with anyone who is significantly different in differentiation or emotional maturity than yourself. So I'm sure this girl could also deliver a fairly scathing critique of you. So if she's mentally unstable, that would have to resonate with a large part of you. Otherwise, you would not have been able to be in a relationship with her for three years. So anyone that you're in a relationship for longer than a month with, they're going to be at approximately your level of maturity. So however mentally unstable she was, that would have to match something in you. And as for you changing her to be a much healthier and stronger person, yeah, I'm sure that we can affect other people. We can sometimes provide them with emotionally corrective experience. But overwhelmingly, if she changed to be a healthier and stronger person, that is on her and her decisions. You can only change someone in a direction that they want to go. And so I credit her for most of that change. When did the relationship, you began to question whether a mental instability and a lack of critical thinking would pass on to my children? Well, again, there would have to be a lot of mental instability in you for you to have a three-year relationship with this woman. So I'm going to assume that she had a positive effect on you as well. She tried to kill herself at age 15. So overwhelmingly, when women quite unquote try to kill themselves, they don't go through with it. It's just a cry for help. So when men try to kill themselves, they are much more serious about it and much more successful. Okay, Wall Street Journal article here and the inspiration for this stream. The tragic mind. Wars fought when tyranny risked chaos and bloodshed. The tragedians of ancient Greece captured the cruel trade-offs of noblemen's pursuit in an empathic world. So Robert Kaplan has written more than it does in books on geopolitics, history, international relations and defense policy. And this relates to that relationship question and the question of, did I have to show that indecent image to start my last live stream on Martin Luther King Day? So Robert Kaplan's perhaps best known book is Balkan Ghosts 1993, where he made his name as a far-sighted American observer of ethnic conflict in distant places. So the tragic mind is his 21st book and is one that he's written as an act of self-flagellation. So you can't trust things that people say about themselves. You can't trust things that people say about other people, right? People rarely say what they mean. Really mean what they say. You have to understand everything critically, place it in context, you know, figure out what are the incentives and get multiple sources of information. So he visited Saddam Hussein's Iraq in 1986 and it proved for him more terrifying than anything he'd experienced before. He saw Iraq as one vast prison yard led by high wattage lamps. So in the wake of 9-11 his mind scarred by Saddam Hussein, he was quick to support the Iraq War, despite his worries about what would befall the country in the post-Saddam era. And then he says, the clinical depression I suffered for years afterward because of my mistake about the Iraq War led me to write this book. Okay, so his mistake in supporting the invasion of Iraq was a very serious mistake. It did show really bad judgment. But I think one is taking oneself very seriously if you go into clinical depression for years afterward over something like this, right? The normal human reaction to this is this is an exercise in excessive self-regard. I was a journalist who got too close to my story. It's interesting Dennis Prager noted similar things about Iraq, but then came to the very opposite conclusion. So when Dennis Prager was traveling in the Middle East, he met an Iraqi, said, we Iraqis are the cruelest people in the world. And so Dennis did not support the 2003 invasion of Iraq because he was too concerned about the aftermath, the chaos. So in April 2004 Robert Kaplan embedded with U.S. Marines during the first battle of Fluja and he changed his mind about the war. So he witnessed something far worse than even the worst of Iraq under Saddam, Saddam, the bloody anarchy of all against all. But the prodigiously brutal Saddam had kept under a lid of tyranny. So he says that he failed his test as a realist on the greatest issue of our time. He then cites the medieval Persian philosopher Abu Hamid al-Qazali that a year of anarchy is worse than 100 years of tyranny. And I would say it depends on the situation. Sometimes a year of anarchy is worse than 100 years of tyranny. Sometimes a year of tyranny is worse than 100 years of anarchy. Overall I agree with the sentiment. I would usually prefer situations of tyranny and situations of anarchy. So I am on the right and part of being on the right means your greatest fear is disorder, chaos. And Kaplan then says well the ancient Greek says that chaos is worse than tyranny. So Kaplan says tragedy is about briefly trying to fix the world but only within limits. Yeah that's tragic sense of life, makes sense. So is the Iraq debacle that taught him how clearly important such limits could be. But now 2023 it's not at all clear that Iraq is worse off. It seems on the face of it that Iraq is better off for us having invaded in 2003. I admit that that's not clear. So Kaplan feels that his writings help promote a war in Iraq. Well I guarantee you that if Kaplan didn't write about Iraq we still would have invaded Iraq in 2003. So his writings were not decisive. They were not even particularly important. So he has an excessive self regard for his own opinions. It would be like me making live streams with a few hundred total views about my position on this or that invasion and then accepting responsibility for the consequences of that invasion. So Kaplan's Balkan ghost is known to have caused Bill Clinton to delay American military intervention in the former Yugoslavia. So he thought that such involvement would be wasted on a people programmed by nature to kill one another. So Balkan ghost so depressed President Clinton that led to inaction on his part in this field Kaplan with a lifelong remorse. By support of military intervention and printing on TV my book had the opposite effect of what I intended. So if you're writing a book or you're doing a live stream I think your primary obligation is to tell the truth particularly about public matters. You're not obliged to tell the truth that your neighbors are engaged in an incestuous relationship. You're not obliged to tell the truth that your boss suffers from irritable bowel syndrome. But about public matters I think the primary obligations tell the truth and then that the consequences fall where they may. So somewhat grandly Kaplan asserted ownership of the region. I had the Balkans virtually to myself before the media hoard arrived. So he had no choice in his own mind but to accept moral responsibility. What excessive self-regard and easy lies the head that wears the frown. I think all the writers you know tapped into the histrionic grand years narcissistic sense of self. I remember I broke stories about the spread of HIV infections in the San Fernando Valley porn industry and at one point in a draft of an essay or a book I read something about you know I'm really sorry that I didn't identify patient zero earlier. But that's grand years. So I just love that he feels like he had the Balkans right the entire Balkans to himself until the media hoard arrived. And so he has no choice but to accept moral responsibility for the consequences of his book. Now when you're writing a book or making a live stream about public matters your primary function is just to tell the truth. Your primary function is not to try to shape public policy. Okay and then I read a good thing here in the Washington Post about laughter. Apparently you're 30 times more likely to laugh than you're around other people than when you're on your own. And that is my life experience. I remember watching this Monty Python movie The Meaning of Life. I saw it on my own in an empty theater and I hardly laughed at all. And then I watched it with my brother and friends on VHS about a year later and just laughed and laughed and laughed. So there are all sorts of mysteries that are only available to those in the dance. So this idea according to a scientist who studies laughter 30 times more likely to laugh when you're around other people than when you're on your own. I think there's really important really important insights to be cleaned from that. You know walking five miles is pretty effortless if you're doing it with people that you like. You're doing it on your own and it's a bit more challenging. So laughter is a social phenomenon. Contentious laughter demonstrates affection and affiliation. Just being in the presence of people you're expected to be funny or prime at the laughter within you. So laughter apparently lessens depression and anxiety increases feelings of relaxation improves cardiovascular health releases endorphins that boost mood and increase tolerance for pain. Lower stress levels. Lower is your final flight response. So you feel better when you're laughing right. We are wired to mirror one another. So laughter spreads around a room just like a yawn. We tend to copy the behavior and laughter of others. Someone else starts laughing and this sensory information is then converted to the same area of our brain. Laughter strengthens relationships. People naturally want to be around those who make them feel good the way that laughing does. Yeah good people make you feel good bad people make you feel bad that's the best way to detect psychopaths right. People who make you feel bad tend to be bad for you. People who make you feel good tend to be good for you. You're much more likely to catch a laugh from someone you know. Laughter is a kind of a molecular building block of friendship. We crave the company of individuals who give us these good feelings. Apparently great aids are documented behaving similarly. So laughter is a play signal in humans and many other animals. So 30 times more likely to laugh with other people than when you're on your own. So the contagious laugh response is immediate and involuntary. It involves the most direct communication possible between people brain to brain. So babies apparently aren't born to do this. People learn to laugh contagiously eventually but we don't know how or exactly when it begins. I just love that insight that we're 30 times more likely to laugh when we're around other people than we're on earth. You know it's scientifically been proven that sex is 30 times better when you do it with someone else than when you just do it on your own. I mean going for a walk is five, five, ten times better when you do it with other people than when you're on your own. Remember in therapy I tell my therapist during a particularly lonely stretch of my life that I go to synagogue every morning in Dublin and that was my most consistent you know social interaction. So I'd go to synagogue for about 45 minutes to an hour every morning and then the rest of the day I'd be on my own. And my therapist reminded me, hey normal people spend you know six to eight to ten hours a day around other people. You may want to up that. So I was just sitting on a bench here in Kudji looking out at the ocean and just struck up a conversation with a stranger. And he lived in Boston so we started talking about gridiron football right? It's a wonderful way for two blokes or strangers can start to connect and to bond. Sports saving lives by bringing people together. Bye bye.