 Can I make 40 here? So the least popular idea that I've shared with people I think in the last six months is from the moral philosopher John M. Doris who published an influential book in 2002, Lack of Character, about morality and personality. And so he made the point that many sociologists have made that there's no true self because who we are depends on circumstance like who I am is very different now standing at the beach than if I were in a synagogue or a church, God forbid, or a mosque or a bar. And who I am talking to, you know, one person is very different than who I am talking to someone else. And often the architecture that we step into will have more effect on how we behave than any personality trait. So, for example, you step into a church or any particularly awe-inspiring architecture, or maybe even some awe-inspiring natural place like Yosemite, that will have more of an effect on how you speak and behave than any supposed inherent personality trait. Yeah, so place and situation often has far more to do with how we behave than any essential trait of ourselves. And so the sociologists and moral philosophers like John M. Doris make the point that there's no true self because who we are varies depending on the circumstance. And nobody, I don't think anybody I shared this with, has enjoyed that perspective. Like everyone has wanted to argue that they have a true self. So many people want to argue to me that they're honest. And so in every situation they see themselves as behaving honestly. And yeah, every one I talk to about this idea wants to believe that there's an essential self. But we are so profoundly changed by circumstance. Like if I fell and you know broke my back right now, that would have a profound effect on me. If I got married next week, that would have a profound effect on me. If I married someone with kids in three months, that would have a profound effect on me. Like the offices that I step into, or the bars that I go to, or the sports clubs that I join, or the people that I hang out with, the situations that I place myself in, they shape me. There's no true look. And virtually nobody that I share this perspective with wants to buy it. It seems like everyone wants to believe that there's an essential self. And one way that we do this is that we justify our own behavior and speech. And we justify the behavior and speech of people who we think we know. So that when people act incongruously, completely outside of the way that we understand them, we justify what they're doing so that we can keep our image of them. And when we behave in ways that we don't want to face up to, we justify it and we say, oh, we were motivated to do the right thing. It's just that someone else was a jerk to us. So I think that sociologists are right. There is no true self. And it's fascinating to me that nobody wants to buy that. Everyone wants to believe that there's this pristine self, that there's this essential self. Just like people want to believe that there's an essential quality to being Jewish or Black or Muslim or Christian or Japanese. And there's not. There's no essential quality that all Japanese or most Japanese or Jews or Christians or Muslims hold. That Christians and Jews and Muslims in different circumstances behave and conduct themselves completely differently. I don't think there are many, if any Muslim terrorists from Southeast Asia, for example. There's virtually nothing that all Jews have in common. They don't even speak the same language. Most Jews aren't observant or religious or feel any particular fealty to Torah. Most Christians, their behavior is indistinguishable from the non-Christians around them. So people want to believe in essentialism. There's an essential quality to being Black or Jewish or Christian. There's an essential quality to themselves and to other people and to their friends and family. So-and-so is outgoing and so-and-so is confident. The so-called confident person has just been in a lot of situations that have given him reason to be confident. But if he goes into a series of situations that destroy his confidence, he's not going to be such a confident person anymore. The happy, outgoing person that you want to describe as essentially happy and outgoing, that's the product of a series of situations that encourage them or brought out the happy, outgoing side of themselves, that you put them in a series of different situations where they're unhappy and introverted. That essential personality, that essential self that you think that they have won't be there anymore. So I'm a very different person when I have a secure income. When I can count on having a certain number of clients or a certain amount of money coming into my bank account every two weeks, I'm a very different person than when my bank accounts say steadily dropping. And I have no immediate prospect of shoring up my financial downturn. And I think most guys like that. That they don't have a job or they don't have a solid earner is going to undercut their confidence. So when I've had financial problems, at times I've largely quit live streaming because I just didn't have the confidence to live stream. When I was carrying over $50,000 in debt and struggling with my income, I did virtually no videos between say 2012 and 2014 because I just didn't have the confidence to do them, to speak out. If you go into a synagogue or a church and hardly anyone talks to you beyond what's pro forma, that's going to take a big toll on your confidence. And you're going to carry that lack of confidence out with you. On the other hand, if you go into a synagogue or a church or a mosque and you're outgoing and you engage people and you make deliberate efforts to be of service, you might collect the the sidurim or the humashim, you may help set up chairs, you may help clean up after after a communal meal or after a mess, or you might help someone in a wheelchair. Or once you make an effort to get engaged and start contributing to the community, then that will bind you to other people you'll start to connect and that will bring out a very different side to your personality. And if you just sit back and you're passive and you just wonder like, why is no one talking to me? Why is no one connecting with me? Does anyone care about me? Right? Those times when I feel like, oh, does anyone care about me? Well, I think this is right. Do I care about anyone? And what steps can I take to actively do some acts of loving kindness to be of service to other people, get outside myself? So the other night, I admit, I was feeling lonely and I was feeling out of sorts and I felt like, damn, my soul is still in lockdown. I felt like, oh, damn, my soul has been in lockdown pretty much my entire life with just, you know, some some streaks, you know, coming out of lockdown. And I got out of it by returning to the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, returning to the 12 step perspective of being a service to other people. And when I thought about, okay, how can I, how can I be kind to someone? How can I be helpful to someone? How can I extend myself to other people? Where can I be useful? Where can I where can I volunteer? Where can I do something for somebody else? Then I came out of that funk. I didn't feel lonely. I felt connected, even though I wasn't around anyone, is just a state in my head that I was thinking about. And I changed the perspective from, you know, thinking about, wow, I feel lonely. I feel disconnected. I feel like my my soul is still in lockdown. You know, what the hell is wrong with me? Why am I wasting my life? You know, why am I taking so many easy shortcuts towards isolation when I should be, you know, getting out there and building bonds with people? In that perspective, I just went down. But when I just simply changed my thinking to, okay, where can I be useful? Where can I help out? Where can I be of service to others? What can I what can I give? What can I contribute to the community and to my to my friends? And just that change in the mindset and the bad feelings went away.