 the night that Donald Trump won the presidency in November of 2016 and at the time and the days maybe weeks afterward I felt about that night was the happiest night in my life. So how on earth did I have such a shallow life that Donald Trump winning the presidency would for me be the happiest day of my life. So here's my thesis the emptier your life the more vulnerable you are to needing hero the more extreme you need the hero the more extreme your desire and intensity for for a hero the more you are vulnerable to gurus to cults to making dramatic life changes like converting to religion so I remember when I was visiting Oxford Oxford University in the city of Oxford in England in 2005 and this you know young stocky man came up to me and whispered something to me about if I was a supporter of a particular football team I said no sorry I'm a tourist and he just moved on but if I had been a supporter of this particular football team he would have beat me up so I don't think we can look at soccer hooligans in Britain as examples of a life that works and people who have a strong need for rescue be it religious salvation secular salvation right generally speaking you know people have a strong need for a hero someone who has a fanatical devotion to sports so that their well-being their psychological well-being their ebbs and flows depending upon the fortune of their favorite sports teams right that's obviously not a life that works it's a compensation for pain and for life that doesn't work I remember when I was a little kid I wanted to become a Christian missionary I wanted to sacrifice myself on a cross to save the world from sin I wanted to go to deepest darkest Africa and India and save people for Jesus now do you think I came to that extreme devotion all right from a place of happiness no I was a miserable miserable kid people thought I looked and sounded and moved and talked like a Holocaust survivor right and so out of that miss misery I desperately wanted some kind of heroic role for myself a desperately wanted heroes so I adopted people like Winston Churchill and Abraham Lincoln and George Washington I saw these people as his heroes and so I noticed just moving through the world the more extreme someone's devotion to sports the more extreme someone's devotion to politics I'm not saying in the kind of 10,000 foot level devotion that we have to politics on this show but I'm talking about a strong emotional attachment to know whose side is winning to you know which politician is on top the more unbalanced the life the greater your need for a hero the greater your need for rescue the greater your need to rescue other people all right the bigger the hole in your soul it just seems so obvious to me now like how on earth was I so ridiculous that I fell for you know internet radio guru like Dennis Prager and when I was badly ill in my 20s of chronic fatigue syndrome I was spending every last dollar on sending Dennis Prager tapes to you know everyone I knew where I spent a thousand dollars on a gypsy in 1998 to try to restore my you know imaginary relationship with with Dennis Prager like why did I spend thousands of dollars on a homeopathic a practitioner of homeopathy right I wanted rescue from my miserable condition why do I use Pittsburgh is my safe word right I use Pittsburgh is my safe word because it is so painful to me that the Dallas Cowboys lost two hard fought Super Bowls for the Pittsburgh Steelers in the 1970s and that's still my safe word today I mean what the hell how on earth is that still you know my safe word today you know 40 years later like I'm still you know I'm still traumatized by the Pittsburgh Steelers defeating the Dallas Cowboys right in some football games and so I mean other people right they seek whoa cut that out you know other people seek you know erotic adventures to try to bring some some meaning and purpose in their life and that's not a winning formula either I mean like needing what oh my god say my we've both got one haven't we look can you please just keep it quiet because some of us have jobs to go to Mark your job have you watched this excellent English show peep show came out in 2003 right so Jess one of the two main characters on it like he is in a storming the erotic heights all right he wants to to be a hero in the bedroom and I remember in some of my relationships I had nothing really going on in my life I was feeling in every area so that it was particularly important to me to be a hero in the bedroom and to have a passionate fulfilling you know romantic and erotic relationship and I just you know put all my eggs on the erotic quality of my relationship which did not help that relationship last very long I and so I would pursue intensity in eroticism rather than intimacy right just trying to fill that hole in my soul like yes in season two episode one of the office my job is having sex yeah that's what I do now that's what I am I'm a sexer okay sorry Mark did we wake you we're both coming so hard we didn't notice the volume an explanation finally thank you Nancy thanks for the explanation okay so dance class you know right having a good night's sleep okay so there's nothing in rotta hello this is you have to take into consideration the effect of your orgasms you know they're not doing it in the hall there's nothing erotic about a hall is there hello I'm coming in now this is me coming into my house so when I was in the throes of this addiction I was doing things with you know inappropriate people in inappropriate places that inappropriate times just like young Jess here all right Jess it's Nancy around no just gone I'm seeing down the rhythms right okay Jess what why is the chair and what's all this strawberry and nine and a half week guys you can't take nine and a half weeks too seriously oh no you haven't have you you haven't been sexing it up in here with my yoghurt have you relaxed markets all right we were just feeling very horny I don't know okay I don't hear about it and I don't want it using up all my yoghurt and right guys it's not okay to use other people's yoghurt in your sexual adventures that are going to be very happy so all these things that we try to do to plug the old hole in the soul and for some it's devotion to Donald Trump I mean I would just notice the fierce of someone's devotion to Donald Trump or the fierce or someone's devotion to Barack Obama that feeling that they had this you know parasocial relationship you know this imaginary relationship right obviously the more I've killed to someone was bloody shower gel I'm just in a very erotic relationship right now I mean we're systematically breaking down all the taboos that society has right and love romance I mean is there any romance in any of this at all who needs romance when you're doing it up the bomb exactly exactly my point I mean if you've actually done that which by the way I can see no point whatsoever in myself you love to try I mean this idea that you don't need romance when you're doing it up the bomb I mean that's that's so empty I honestly would not what is this modern obsession with that look jazz what I'm trying to say is so for better for worse the sixties happened and now sex is fine but can't we take the best of that the nice music the colors the I have a dream etc but not have to face the squalor right so what happens when you're at the inside you'll seize on the one thing that you know helps you feel a little bit better and then you'll pursue it to an absurd degree like me they're buying thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars worth of you know Dennis preggy tapes and dropping thousands of dollars on a homey off with this you might want to give that a bit of a rinse actually mate do I really have to do this what are you afraid of Jeremy he's dressing up in blackface all the race I don't know just feels almost wrong we're breaking a taboo of course it feels wrong we've got boundaries to smash Jeremy it's our duty to God Shiva Nasdaq whatever you want to call him but are you sure this isn't racist Jeremy I come from America I've seen the problems race brings up now fuck me and pretend I'm your mom what why why you can't imagine your mom having sex with a black man it's pretty racist Jeremy it's not that it's just mom really really mommy mommy sorry Nancy I can't do it oh man what a wimp what a wimp sad he just I mean you say racist you can't imagine your mother having having sex with it with a black man is that is that how racist you are so are you holding out for a hero like some people just adore people like Elon Musk right he fits now that that giant hole in their soul for a hero integrator right I mean that's how that's how he would frame his role right that he's the guy he does the systems level thinking that kind of that like one level above the kind of so you sort of relegate the kind of scientists and engineers to the kind of you know they getting their hands dirty you know with the kind of myopic focus on little details but but what where it's really at where the real you know Sigma thinking is happening is that the level of integration you know seeing seeing the bigger picture and all that and it's it's very sense makers right like this is the kind of but this is the kind of person that the sense makers would valorize right oh yeah is that one being here or yeah it's like being it's like a it's like the generalist is is a is a kind of someone that doesn't deal with anything specifically that kind of puts their all the jigsaw puzzles together I can see the bigger picture and make the leaps that that the other people that have got their noses too close to the grindstone can't see it's turning that into the sort of instrumental category so it's really interesting actually I didn't get to talk about this but one thing that the mask episode and everything maybe think about is how about many of these gurus is kind of like a reaction to the modern age like the modern age is one of specialization because you have to specialize right that you know there's just too much knowledge like the age of the kind of gentlemen scientists you know doing experiments and chemistry and figuring it's like elsewhere with optics and engineering a different kind of steam engine like those days are gone it and and the the other thing that's gone is is is the idea that like a person kind of like does things all by themselves in a way like makes a great leap just just goes away and lives in a little hut and then and then you know has this great revelations over themselves like before that that could happen to one degree or another but more and more advances that kind of happening via huge teams of like thousands of people all kind of working together because that's just the way science and technology is now so the valorization of of gurus more generally but also I'm asking in particular is kind of like a reaction against that like we don't like the idea of like specialists and we don't like the idea of these like anonymous teams of thousands of people we want to make it personal and and we want to we want to have a role for the foot for that kind of personal heroic figure so so yeah I think must you know the all the legends that is sitting around must it's not just must driving it it's people's if people's desires I think we we sort of want some but we want there to be people like that even if they can't really exist in the world anymore so yeah sorry it's a bit of yeah so at best that the hero is going to be situational alright someone who's gonna slaughter your enemies is probably not very likely to be faithful to his wife so someone who's you know faithful to his wife a good neighbor right and you know a kind considerate person at your local church he's now unlikely to make you know tremendous technological or military breakthroughs so for those yearning for the hero right the hero can just arise in particular situations when his particular strengths meet the particular needs of the situation but that's that's about it right if a man comes along meets the needs of a situation right we will impute to him charisma because he's seemingly pulled off the impossible and he gets more resources more followers he's better able to pull off you know something heroic again but eventually he's going to fall on his face a little bit more here from decoding the gurus talking about Bill Maher and Richard Dawson he's still fundamentally like but great and you know science is finding things out and stuff so yeah yeah science it's science is still the establishment thank goodness I'm green but he's wondering oh I'm gonna put Bill Maher hi on this like didn't you feel in that he was luxury like these people you know presenting my experts they call me anti-facts have you heard about the way I'm portrayed and yeah no I know what you mean there was a strong undercurrent of grievance there again this is something you see with anti-faxes yeah I'm not being respected nothing yeah that's right people haven't gone but that's that's kind of how all anti-faxes feel especially public ones because they get upset because people call the anti-faxes lying idiots yeah I'm gonna give him three wrong four but that's okay no come on okay you need to leave some headroom Chris for the people headroom there's a five mark there's a lot that differentiates this from the front of the front of the Brett White's things are the Eric White's things of the world Brett's a five that's we need a bigger scale we need to mark them 10 I actually wanted 10 originally but that's fine that's fine and Richard Dawkins actually has a fair bit of grievance towards religion he does and he does have a grievance towards his enemies I think as well this people he doesn't like we had that feud with girls there was a fair amount of grievance on both sides that's right he does but you know academics often do have grievances Dawkins like I feel like Dawkins in some ways is benefiting from my view of like Jordan Peterson right who it's just constantly really at fucking toilet paper recently but also every interview with him is unfair everything is they're all like to get him and he can list like a hundred enemies Dawkins isn't like that no he's not like that he doesn't like but the honeycrisp I know he does have it so that's what I mean he's a photo version of because he did that one honey tweet which the internet was very happy with for like a week but unlike Jordan Peterson he didn't continue to treat like a hundred times a day about you know various topics on that so yeah I mean you gotta you gotta imagine the baseline for the grumpy old man there's a baseline level of grievance with that demographic so I don't know I can't really I can't read him how even though I know he endorsed like James Lindsay and stuff but it's not because he's got a personal tail of grievance no you're right that how his ideas have been suppressed and all that stuff oh yeah I'm giving one for me people that score in the normal range like for a normal human being there's a one is a one right and yeah we're talking to the normal here man he's not normal in other in you know in many respects but with respect to his level of grievance I'm saying he's in the normal range he probably is but yeah for me too isn't you know it's a higher band of normal um self aggrandizement Bill Maher I think he is self aggrandizing but he does it in a little bit the liberal self deprecating way you know like the I'm a stupid like what am I I'm just a you know idiot guy anyway I just like to get blitzed and you know street people sometimes people street night my funding notions like he's a comedian right so they have to have I mean that they have a self deprecating error but we do but we do that too yeah but that's what I'm saying so he doesn't self aggrandize that's the that's why he doesn't score highly on this even though he is quite an arrogant son of a bitch yeah yeah um hey I yeah I'm gonna give him a I want to put him a three I'm gonna give him a three you're off the leash now I'm giving them like one yeah okay that's Chris Kavanaugh Matt Brown there applying the garometer to Bill Maher and Richard Dawkins so one of the best Twitter accounts is by Richard Hananya and he's got some good tweets of late in particular here he says watching these tech guys act as political and economic prognosticators is a pretty good argument for expertise and insight being very domain specific so you have all these tech people endorsing Robert F. Kennedy Jr and Richard Ananya says the the RFK campaign is the best pure idiot detector I've seen in a while I mean even tablet magazine ran a glowing profile interview with JFK anyone who either likes RFK or thinks he has a shot should never be listened to again well the political so-called experts at Donald Trump had no shot in 2016 I think that was part of the reason that I so enjoyed that he he won and that's part of the reason that was like the happiest day in my life right in addition to the emptiness in my life just that like all the experts were wrong was just hilarious but here's a tweet no one knows politics it's just like sports and stocks just just a blast okay Elliot Blatt what's going down bro blessing bro blessings uh small rkk story yeah uh so you know uh like 1995 I moved back to Boston and you know in those days we had to get temp jobs we didn't have uber back then we had to get a temp job if you needed money real fast right yeah so I got a temp job went to a temp agency and they put me at the admissions office of the Harvard Business School that was my temp job wow like I'm you know opening applications and preparing them for review it was just a you know it was monkey work but you know so you know I have to you know so so you'd get this and you get the GMAT scores and then you get the academic transcripts and you'd have to put them all in a certain way and you staple this to that and paper clip this to that and then you'd have this one uniform package to present to the uh the reviewers of the applications so this sort of kind of like a head rush for me back then because you know I felt like I was sort of you know on the cusp of power you know like uh it was a big deal back then to go to Harvard Business School it was sort of an express train to uh to the higher reaches of corporate america you know so people took it very very seriously and so anyway so uh while I was there two noteworthy applications came through my possession um one was the son of robert craft so do you know robert craft is yes the owner of the new england patriots yes so his son was applying to harvard business school and so this got noticed and called out and like it was a big deal this had to be sort of escorted into a separate room you know this had to be handled with utmost reverence because he was deemed you know vip and his application needed to be considered very seriously the other was the son one of rfk's junior's son I had to you know prepare his application you know get his application ready and as part of doing that I got to see his transcript his his transcript from harvard college you know and I looked at it and it was like straight seas because of this so I I thought that was a music so anyway that's that's my rfk story bro okay that's pretty good it wasn't rfk junior himself it was one of his sons so I don't know if he was admitted or not but he was definitely considered royalty you know to the extent that america as well so you you're holding out for a hero aliad on a scale of one to ten how intense is your need for heroism or for heroes um five it's completely neutral I I'll take one if it comes I'm not expecting one and you don't try to plug the hole in your soul with sports either and and and what role does politics play in your life and it with regard to your happiness lately almost none almost none I'm I'm basically sitting out the entire election drama until October and then I'll start re-engaging because um a lot of things can happen between now and then and I don't want to invest a lot of emotional energy in a what could be a dead end you know and it's hard to know whether or not the election itself is a dead end you know so I I'm I'm I'm really standoffish this year I learned my lesson and what do you think about YouTube reversing its ban on discussion of voter fraud so you're now allowed to talk about voter fraud on YouTube I'm thrilled bro I think you know uh more discussion the better I'm free speech bro all the way I think everything should be discussed I'm one of those Luke one of those even even the jq bro even even the jq bro I think I'm right there I'm like if it exists it needs to be talked about so let's talk about it and have you caught anything interesting from Chuck Johnson or Richard Spencer uh no but that's not to say I haven't tried um no Chuck Johnson did publish any a piece I haven't read it yet uh but I was listening to Richard Spencer the other night and it was that guy mark brahman and they're discussing traitor was it raiders of lost art and it's like I don't know I miss the old Richard Spencer I miss you miss the blood spots you won't miss the blood sports I meant the fun I read like have you ever read Locke have you even read John Locke bro those are the days man like now we're in sort of like this I don't know the penumbra you know the waning days of Rome it's we need something else man we need something else to raise the suck we have we need a new figure to captivate our capture our attention I mean I think what you're touching on is it it's really important to have you know excitement in your life you know you really need passion in your life you really need some thrills in your life I mean without yeah you need a little fight bro you need some fights bro yeah yeah yeah so conflict and drama you know moderate amount I need some new ear candy I'm like I don't know what to listen to these days I'm not part of you know any of these alternate platforms I'm purely YouTube so everything that comes up on my feet doesn't really interest doesn't grab me it's sort of I have been listening to James Lindsay now have you listened to any James Lindsay yeah and I find his lectures really interesting yet I've come to find out that he's more or less reviled on our side of the aisle and I don't understand why do you know I mean I just find him I don't know a slightly higher braille version of Scott Adams yeah but don't you think I mean he seems to base all of his ideas I mean he has lots of sources you know and he has what seems to be a very coherent narrative I think he's several standard deviations above Scott Adams who was uh you know very populist and very poorly sourced whereas I find James James Lindsay very well sourced he's a bit like academic agent yeah so you're not a fan of him either what what happened to your enjoyment of academic agent um I still listen um I don't look I don't have the same zest that I used to but I'm sort of you know far less politicized than I was you know a year or two ago so you know when I'm listening to these things these are background uh this is background entertainment it's not it's not like I'm looking at the chats or studying things or listening to that carefully I'm just listening sort of passively so as far as passive entertainment I think you know it's it's it's interesting it beats NPR and you're not a big fan of decoding the gurus they come from a place their sort of basic frame their orientation is just not mine you know it's it's an orientation that I think I rejected so I just you know it's not like what they say is too outlandish but it feels like watching the daily show it's that sort of they seem to have the basic and the same worldview of the writers of the daily show to me you know and um you know they they're very I've been listening to a lot of red bar lately I've been listening to a lot of old red bar stumps um he has a very impressive character the more I've come to eat it's incredibly quick uh so I've been enjoying some of that but the kind of gurus I'm not surprised I only hear I only hear I want to hear you you know I listened to through you so you let's do it yeah yeah I yeah I really enjoy the academic analysis I really find it it rigorous it's done it's actually demanding so I got some news on the radio front so you know you know how I've been listening to the bone yes yeah so the bone is sort of like a hard rock station uh but it's it goes it it digs deep back into like the 70s 80s 90s you know so it's a very eclectic mix of sort of you know 70s rock 80s rock and then some sort of like 90s metal-ish kind of stuff and basically it was the only thing on there but now as of today a new competitor to the bone has emerged on the radio dot and um I'm forgetting their name but now I've been listening to them and it's a totally different playlist now I should tell you that when I was in high school we had a we went to the local radio station and you got to see how the radio sausage was made I'm sure you know about this because you've worked at radio stations yeah but then these quarter-inch tapes reels that come in every week was this part of your experience yes and there's two of them like a and b and the DJ's job was to push like a and then b or a a b or a b b b a you know just to sort of vary the lineup very slightly but the fair on the radio was more or less preset by what was ever on these two reels and it was very mechanical it was just a very deductive algorithm that was presented so and you got the nevertheless they sort of they they would present this this uh you know facade of them sitting there with records and playing records uh one at a time and slipping back and forth between the two of them but really it was more much more mechanical than that and they would just push one button or the other and it was very disheartening for me to see that yeah I mean though when I was growing up in the 80s it still was the most spontaneous medium that was out there you could talk about things more quickly more spontaneously on the radio than certainly on tv that loan print so before the internet the radio was the closest thing we had to you know live spontaneous discussion yeah I mean I'm talking about like a rock station here but uh yeah I do remember I mean you did back then you did get the sense that the uh presenters were individuals and they had a certain latitude that they could take and they would they had a very distinctive personality but today you know more than ever it just seems like a formula that's being executed you know this demo gets this these selections we've marketed tested them and here you go have you ever gotten into like a parasocial relationship where you you know listen to someone regularly you know have no personal interaction with the person no private interaction but you felt like you were developing you know a fair dinkum or you had a fair dinkum relationship going on in in your life present company excluded well we've spoken privately so um that hasn't played a big role you haven't taken on gurus you haven't you um parasocial relationships haven't played a big role in your life I don't think so I don't think so it's not to say I haven't been fans of people and enjoyed their work and but you haven't like been jealous of you know somebody's wife because she gets to be more intimate with your hero than you'd like to be no I haven't taken to that far no no sorry Luke um uh you got me bro I'm I'm seriously trying to think about what you're saying so it's like I'm trying to trace through my memory here um like imaginary conversations with uh I don't know Howard Stern or I don't know whoever you're listening to a lot you're not carrying on imaginary conversations in your head no no no I was I've always had a distance you know like like in fact this new radio station it has a different playlist altogether and it seems to be oriented towards millennials but so the bone was more or less oriented towards Xers and this new one is very 90s centric and it's like all these songs and I basically had given up the radio in the 90s and because I was listening to npr you know but I wasn't listening to rock and roll on the radio and all these songs that came up and you know I'd heard one or two here or there but they all seemed very new to me so in a certain sense it was really refreshing because it was not that standard bone fare which is you know lead zeppelin pink floyd and heart all of these chest nuts that they just play over and over it felt like a breath of oxygen but I missed the radio luke I remember like the the radio used to be a journey you know it used to be um you know you could expect something new you know if you didn't like what you're hearing you could change something you get something new and it was it was worthy of giving a chance but not now everything seems dumb down boring yeah the best stuff's online yeah yeah I know but I still have these like romantic notions about like terrestrial node radio I'm just I just don't want to give it up I can't admit to myself that it's dead you know do you listen to the radio ever uh no the only time I'd listen to the radio would be over the internet I mean I'm gonna Australia is going to be playing India in the world test cricket championship and so I'm going to be playing that you know the Australian Broadcasting Company radio coverage of the matches I'm going to play that over my phone so that's in in June and that's starting in two days oh just in time for LGDB you know gay pride was fun what a coincidence haven't been a lot of out gay cricketers somehow professional sportsmen tend to be really gay yeah yeah I just teasing bro well anyway I think that's all I got my dude blessings bro all right buses all right next night all right shall I take care okay so a lot of good stuff here on Richard Hananya's twitter feed let's let's go back have a look here take a scroll you can even subscribe to Richard not just on substack but also on twitter I think three dollars a month so in 2016 China banned tv shows and films from showing gay characters in 2020 Shanghai Pride announced indefinite hiatus see we're so much better than that we chat in China deleted a dozen accounts of college run LGBTQ organizations they also limit the amount of time that the Chinese kids can spend on tiktok the last Shanghai pride festival a little less raucous than what you'd see in American cities Russia has evacuated town under attack the size of buck boots six miles within Russia itself I believe Russia will resort to nukes and keep Crimea or anything else looks like they'll keep fighting a conventional war against western technology university of kinetic it now requires a course in anti-black racism to graduate white women in colorado have their own city into banned guns where they weaponize their privileged those who benefit from student loan repayment freezes start racking up more debt in mortgages credit cards you can't protect stupid people from themselves stop trying this is why the argument that immigration will give us totalitarianism or socialism is done dumb public opinion is always socialist and authoritarian how do we ever have any freedom that's the question to ask Cornell West is running for president he has as much chance as robert f kennedy junior texas law now bans local laws from being more burdensome than state laws in agriculture business and commerce finance insurance labor natural resources occupations and property wow free markets even in urban areas imagine that Ted Cruz is arguing against homosexuals receiving the death penalty the guy who argued the pro side of this parade at ronda sanchez's inauguration invisible you are sovereign and through your son jesus christ you rule and overrule and all the affairs of life thank you for your great love for people whom you have made in your own image and we confess that we have not lived as we ought and we've sinned against you but we also confess that with you there is mercy that you may be feared thank you for delivering up your son to be the savior of the world we also thank you for the provisions that you have made for us to pursue liberty joy and justice in your world and for instituting government and all governing has uh scrolling here through Richard Hananyas how could kids want to become gay what indoctrination we're just preaching acceptance no kid actually drives status from changing their sex wow wow just imagine your kids going through that get to school in the morning think that there might be a bit of a backlash right the last time we were this you know western civ was this pro lgbtq was during the weymar republic what happened after the weynar republic richard ananya says you probably know it's a lot of successful silicon valley entrepreneurs being supporting right wing candidates why is this happening understanding the tech right maybe you will have to decide on having either higher taxes or cutting entitlements this one's humiliating for the russians what kind of war effort is this 26 people 26 percent of people in jail have a serious mental illness 23 percent of police shootings since 2015 involved someone with a serious mental illness less than 5 percent of people with serious mental illnesses are currently institutionalized previously it was as high as 29 percent i don't think there's any way to beat trump in a republican primary all advice saying this is the worst by a white margin striking how you can be a national conservative writer and having this bad understanding of the base so this advice says that render sandish should kill trump with kindness and express confusion about trump's attacks lol killing him with kindness kindness that's the trait republicans are being crying out for in the trump era this guy really gets it the only thing that republicans love more than kindness is a patronizing school mom tone and the one they truly hate is dominance which is where you have to kiss up to trump it's like the guy set out to create a psychological profile that was the polar opposite of the truth and uh here's another theory republicans just want to be entertained that's like saying people watch professional professional wrestling because their school teachers didn't make learning fun enough for them trump advisor we've tested all of dysentemonious's attacks nothing reaches a plurality let alone a majority of voters saying the contrast point would make them less likely to vote against trump it simply bounces off of him same story for eight years and back in 2012 and trump wasn't even running he was the favorite in the republican primary according to new york times biden's age is all that democratic donors talk about aids keep him on a light schedule hide him from the media is a good point on the right you see a persecution complex is part of a broader oppositional culture they have to believe that to be liberal is always to have the advantage while being conservative always brings oppression okay i want to talk a little bit about the the parasocial relationship so why do people have parasocial relationships with people like uh jordan peterson and victim or a hero and people very seldom do that and it's no wonder but i would say perhaps that i became terrified enough from learning what i learned that i tried to avoid the pathways that lead people to the dark places that they go and there's something in that that might approximate good yeah it does approximate good i i would agree with that the parallels between us are so eerie to me that in my book on happiness which came out of 99 right so we've got a couple of gurus here who encourage the parasocial relationship so what's a parasocial interaction all right it's a psychological relationship experienced by an audience in their mediated encounters with performers in the mass media particularly on tv and on online platforms it's from wikipedia so viewers or listeners come to consider media personalities like denise prager or jordan peterson as as a friend right despite having limited or no interactions with them so parasocial interaction is an illusory experience right you're interacting with personas right what you're getting from me now is a performance right talk show host celebrities fictional characters social media influences they are putting on a performance but people often engage with them as though it was a real relationship so why is this the empty of your life right the greater you need for a hero the greater you need for parasocial interaction so parasocial interaction you get exposure to someone you find interesting and it becomes a parasocial relationship after repeated exposure to this persona causes you the user to develop illusions of intimacy friendship and identification and so if you learn things that you like about the persona this can result in increased attraction relationship progresses parasocial relationships are enhanced due to trust and self-disclosure provided by the media persona that's why people who want to succeed in radio or live streaming they're encouraged to you know get intimate share very intimate details of their life to you know try to hook people media users tend to be loyal feel directly connected to the persona just as they feel connected to their closest friends by observing and interpreting their personas appearance gestures voice conversation and contact so media personas tend to have you know quite a lot of influence over their followers so what type of person becomes a passionate follower of a guru right someone who's got a big hole in their soul so the parasocial interaction means the one-sided process of media person perception during media exposure parasocial relationship stands for a cross situational relationship that a person holds for media persona so these parasocial relationships fulfill the same type of needs that we all have for genuine relationships you don't have enough genuine love and connection relationship in your life you're going to be much more vulnerable and needy and thirsty for these parasocial relationships so particularly people who have a dismissive attachment style to others right they find the one-sided nature of the parasocial interaction to be relatively soothing they prefer it to dealing with the messiness of people in real life people who experience tons of anxiety from interacting with people in real life often find comfort in the lives of celebrities or online you know personas and people online create content they earn money off their friends through memberships patreons other cash avenues and so the fans who pay up and feel entitled to specific specific details about the lives of the creators details about specific content so the divide between the creator and their work becomes a fine line so 40 percent of millennial youtube subscribers claimed in one survey in 2017 that their favorite creators understand them better than their friends and that's what it was like for me with Dennis Prager listening to Dennis Prager on the radio I felt like Dennis Prager understood me better than almost everyone in my life so a parasocial relationship is a form of psychological attachment right where people feel like they're developing a genuine relationship with a media persona they grow to depend upon the media personality they make plans to interact with them they count on them like a close friend they develop a history with them they believe that they know this person better than other people do they feel like they have all the benefits of a real relationship with no responsibility and no effort they can control their experience they can walk away from parasocial relationships freely those not as scary as real-life interactions so for some people this kind of parasocial relationship leads to higher self-esteem higher self-confidence a stronger perception of dealing with one's problems you've got you know stronger coping strategies you've got a stronger sense of belonging but these one-sided relationships can also reduce your self-esteem increase your media consumption increase media addiction and you know increase your delusions right a parasocial relationship is a delusion right or frequently leave you lonely dissatisfied emotionally unstable and feeling like you have very unattractive real-life relationship alternatives so using parasocial relationships as a substitute for real-life social conduct contact right tends to bring you down I actually have a chapter on the necessity of having a tragic view of life and then I hear you speak of like just now this tragic view of life and ironically if you don't have that you can't be happy so it's just another example of this and that you're getting this message out if you want to comment on that please if not I'll go on I you are such an I watch you and you're such an intense listener I don't know when you're going to react so well there's this old idea okay so you're just looking at gurus at work who want to encourage a parasocial relationship for but because they think they're doing good in the world right to make money to enhance their own status and fame right we all have mixed motives right very different way of speaking compared to a genuine scholar like Mark B Shapiro we make a brocha but there's no key of delight yontov candles so since there's no key of delight yontov candles even or minnag is right mark Shapiro has no desire that you develop a parasocial relationship with him right he doesn't encourage this certainly he argues it's on the front page of the book a sort of a rech on their yontov and in the discussion of this he mentions all the um the different views he says by the way the very first page he's speaking about there's no source uh in the rambam or the gammara or the midrash that you make that you like so someone with genuine expertise is highly unlikely to even want a guru role they're not going to want a parasocial relationship with you right they're not going to want to give you advice outside of their area of expertise right they're not going to offer you know opinions outside their area of expertise they'd be embarrassed to do so they feel would feel uncomfortable with the spotlight that the guru command so just very different persona here from a genuine scholar like a mark b Shapiro compared to gurus such as Dennis Prager and Jordan Peterson candles on yontov um he says national yontov show young people aim the car bishas etc but he gives uh all the sources here on page uh 43 the various is a mahogas and toast votes uh about uh he he fact he uh you know the rambam says you make a brah on the um the shabbos candles sir utzabi says this is a proof against all those who say that everything the rambam says has a source in the gammara because uh there is no source in the gammara um and therefore we see that the rambam would take things so yeah just such a very different approach from those who are trying to you know encourage delusion in their followers all right david brooks new york times wants to smash the college admissions process but uh mickey kauss notes that david brooks willfully ignores the core horror of the meritocracy namely the role of inherited the smarts as if the persistence of the elite is solely because they can pay more for princeton review sessions right the elite are elite because they have overwhelmingly high IQs and and live in urban areas where you know it's it's easier to have a cultural and wider political influence when you network with other people all right it's not uh it's not just because they get elite education all right that the elite education only plays a a small role so had uh had a mate asked me the other day if i had any expertise on buying a car and i said yes steve sailor wrote it and i said to him you know white people don't buy cars you know on a lot from from the salesman they buy cars online they find out you know what's the lowest possible price they can get and then they you know they don't get bamboozled by a salesman so this is from outside the beltway from 2006 you probably heard about this car salesman quote different prices to different races and to different sexes right so malcolm gladwell had this long running dispute between himself and steve sailor what it means that car dealers quote higher prices to black and female customers than to comparable white and male customers so malcolm gladwell believes this is evidence of unconscious racism steve sailor argues it's much more likely that car salesmen have learned over time that they can get more money on average out of blacks and women therefore uh discriminating against them asuckers not out of bias so if you can take advantage of people right you often will right it's a very rare person who's you know not going to take advantage and so if you leave yourself open if you're if you're vulnerable you're trying to fill that that hole in your soul right someone's going to you know come along and uh take advantage so here the outside the beltway very mainstream even center center left website says the steve sailor explanation seems much more sensible so steve sailor says salesmen have learned over time they can get more money on average out of blacks and women and therefore discriminating against them as suckers not out of bias so there's an economist robert stonebreaker who notes that statistical discrimination is the real corporate blatant bigotry is not the cause rather car dealers and car salesmen use race and gender to make statistical inferences about the consumer's sensitivity to price what economists call it price elasticity in other words taking into account someone's race or someone's sex or someone's ethnicity or someone's religion or all these other stereotypes tends to make you more effective in reality so having like an intent 10 out of 10 in group identity and just you know beating up and deploring and denigrating and denying out groups right in you know today's western world or relatively low threat you know relatively high levels of confidence and safety and affluence right that 10 out of 10 in group intensity usually isn't a winning formula but simply noticing reality that different people have different gifts and different vulnerabilities that makes you more effective in life so most people it seems like you take the red pill they become less effective in life because it leads them to you know an extreme in group intensity that is not adaptive to reality but simply noticing stereotypes makes you more effective at life so car dealers and car salesmen may know little about a particular customer but they know quite a bit about statistical differences among races and genders they know that women and African Americans typically enter the car show route with less information less proclivity to bargain and this isn't just true in car show routes right you have higher information people and lower information people in all sorts of barriers in life although white males often salivate at the chance to lock horns with car dealers in the bargaining struggle females and African Americans are often unaware that bargaining is even possible so many female respondents more than one half of African American respondents believe that sticker prices are non-negotiable my god so there are all sorts of areas in life where men are just idiots compared to women and there are all sorts of areas in life where women are idiots compared to men and there are all sorts of areas in life where blacks have a far more realistic attitude so it's quite rare that black people for example regard a pet as a member of the family right that's a ridiculous facet of white life so Richard Posner of the University of Chicago law school says it would not occur to Malcolm Gladwell a good liberal that an auto salesman's discrimination on the basis of race or sex might be a rational form of the rapid cognition that he admires may be sensible to describe the group's average characteristics to each member of the group the one knows that many members deviate from the average and individuals characteristics may be difficult to determine a brief encounter the salesman cannot afford to waste his time in a protracted one so he may quote a higher price to every black shopper even though he knows that some blacks just as shrewd and experienced car shoppers as the average white or more so so economists use the term statistical discrimination to describe this behavior so Steve Saylor notes some of these guys have been selling cars for as long as you have been alive believe it or not they pay close attention not just to what makes the most money for themselves but to what works for other salesmen as well if the salesman's unconscious prejudice is costing the dealership money his manager will make him highly conscious of it quickly or the salesman will be out on the street so african-american buyers were charged the same price differentials by african-american dealers as if they were as they were by white dealers the female customers were treated just as poorly by female salespeople as they were by male salespeople so neither the race nor the gender of the car dealers or the car salespeople seem to matter so if black men are treating other black men worse than they are treating whites because of racial animus it must be quite unconscious indeed right interesting story here out of japan showing again if you leave yourself wide open other people will take advantage hi i'm motoko riche i'm the tokyo bureau chief at the new york times i'm reading a story i reported about a young woman who had a 10-year relationship in tokyo with her professor and who later sued him for sexual harassment she then was sued by his wife so in japan there's a quirk of the civil code where someone who's been cheated on can actually sue the partner to adultery and win damages i'm japanese-american but this law was a surprise to me and it was really interesting and a little bit puzzling that this was still possible in this day and age what you need to know before hearing this story is that japan is a country with rigid age oh hard to believe that this is still possible in this day and age as though this is a bad law as though this is a bad thing that uh there are you know legal safeguards legal protections for marriage and legal penalties for damaging a marriage right i'm not so sure that this is a bad thing and status hierarchies and it's very difficult to say no or pushback against someone who's your senior really really it's difficult to say no like anyone who's senior to you they can just ask you for sex and it's just very difficult to say no to that i'm i'm skeptical of that claim but let's uh let's let's hear this claim again but this law was a surprise to me and it was really interesting and a little bit puzzling that this was still possible in this day and age what you need to know before hearing this story is that japan is a country with rigid age and status hierarchies and it's very difficult to say no or pushback against someone who's your senior it's also a country that has not yet wholeheartedly embraced the me too movement so this is a story about a woman who had a 10-year relationship with her professor but it started with a sexual encounter that she so apparently japan is not fully embraced the me too movement i mean is there any country or community that's fully embraced the me too movement like every movement right has you know good good parts to it usually but it quickly you know often turns into a con and a way to do damage and hurt innocent people so fully embracing the me too movement you know is going to wreak havoc on all sorts of innocent people like you need you need a little bit of outside skepticism on even me too claims until they're substantiated and i don't find the woman's case here particularly strong this student he said was against her will and he said it was consensual so those were very difficult beginnings and then they went on to have a relationship for 10 years in which she always felt that she could never say no and that she felt gaslit and perhaps even indoctrinated he said that it was completely consensual and that it was just as he said a free love relationship all along i actually met makosano about a year and a half ago when she approached me to tell me her story and i spent many many hours interviewing her and then we reviewed the court record attended court testimony we attempted to reach out and invited comment from both mr hayashi her professor and mrs hayashi his wife but they both declined to comment i think what's complicated about the story is that obviously the relationship went on for a long time and i think there will be and i think there will be people that will see different perspectives on their story but it certainly speaks to how tangled and difficult relationships can be and how power dynamics affect the way different people perceive the same relationship and how power dynamics can make it very difficult for someone to extract themselves from a difficult relationship the prominent art history professor and his student had finished dinner and were strolling along the river in hyoto japan's picturesque former capital when they stopped at a bar for months they had been spending a lot of time together and the professor had okay if you're a woman who's spending a lot of time with a man he in all likelihood is gonna try to have sex with you like why would you spend a lot of time with with a man if if you're not interested in having sex with him when men and women spend time together alone they usually end up having sex i mean that's that's just the way it works so if this woman is not capable of saying no to sexual relations with someone who's senior to her or someone who seemingly has power over her then she should have the court appoint a guardian at light and she's clearly not capable of adulthood right there should be a family member or the court should appoint someone with with the power to make important decisions in her life because she clearly doesn't have had already kissed her once in a park in tokyo now after drinks he invited her to his hotel where they had a sexual encounter that she said was against her will he said it was consensual from that conflicted beginning they embarked on a clandestine decade-long relationship that included furtive meetings volleys of amorous notes and several trips overseas over time the student came to believe that the professor had taken advantage of the power imbalance between them and that she had never truly consented to any of it okay so she was voluntarily spending a lot of intimate time with this guy's long before anything physical happened and then she continued a sexual relationship for years and years afterwards so if she's saying she's not capable of saying no to someone in authority above her then yeah time to time to take a guardian out lighter you're not capable of the responsibilities and privileges of adulthood when she finally broke off the relationship she made an official complaint to the university and sued the professor for sexual harassment her argument that he had exploited his position as her supervisor when she was 23 to groom her for sex assault her and then fundamentally hold her under his sway for years as she continued in the sexual relationship for many many years after he presumably assaulted her all right what kind of person stays in a relationship for years with someone who assaults them and i'm tats skeptical of her claims but in a twist she also found herself sued by the professor's wife accused of adultery and causing mental distress under japan civil code which views extramarital relationships as an infringement of the marriage contract in the end the wife won nearly 20 000 the professor was fired last year for the university said conducting on quote inappropriate relationship but the young woman lost her case when the court ruled the professor had never forced her to do anything against her will the story of meiko sanno now 38 her professor michio hayashi 63 and his wife machiko 74 highlights the tangled state of sexual power dynamics in japan where women rarely bring much less win cases for sexual harassment and where the me too movement has yet to take hold as it has in the west miss sanno knew her sexual harassment suit against mr hayashi was a long shot but she went through with it she said in several interviews to show how she had experienced quote why is this primarily about tangled power relationships in supposedly backward you know hidebound traditional japan it seems to me much more about a broken person like i was broken right that's why i chose gurus and spent thousands of dollars on gurus this woman's obviously broken i'm not sure it's primarily a story about tangled you know power relationships i mean do you think i want to be this kind of traditional bloke you know holding on to you know outdated gender norms and you know clinging to my guns and my religion and i could be an enlightened you know reflexive you know elevated highly self-disciplined you know contained protected you know modern liberal person you think you know and joy just being this you know knuckle dragging neanderthal and i could be as enlightened as the new york times psychological abuse like grooming and gaslighting that japanese are really not sure about although the case received muted attention well many skeptical people are not sure about a lot of claims of gaslighting you know a lot of claims of sexual harassment and gaslighting are bogus and some are real but uh there's good good reason to have some skepticism so glib medley says groomed at age 23 the horror the horror in the japanese news media it roiled the japanese art world and academic community where unlike in the united states few universities prohibit relationships between professors and students at the same time rigid age and status hierarchies are culturally pervasive making it difficult for subordinates especially women to say no to their superiors experts say within japan there is this culture where we should all try to get along said yuki kosato the director of spring a nonprofit advocacy group for sexual assault for survivors so if you're asked to have sex you might find it difficult to say no in court misano repeatedly made that argument but japan's laws on sexual assault do not mention consent reflecting skepticism that anyone can be forced into sex without violence every society has status hierarchies there's no way of getting rid of status hierarchies like all you can do is change the basis of the status hierarchy but in the end if an individual is not capable of saying no to a sexual advance from her superior then she should forfeit the privileges and rights of being an adult in terms of sexual assault there has to be a great threat and the victim and that is women are much quicker to claim victimhood and the claim that they can't say no I mean I think you know most men would be too ashamed to claim that they lack the stuff to you know make adult decisions for themselves but both men and women will bend in whatever direction is getting socially praised and you know whatever works so if claiming victimhood works we've seen since the 1960s you know more and more people will do it some has to fight back said Mizuki Kawamoto a lawyer who reviewed possible amendments to the country's sex crimes laws the current law she said does not protect people who are quote coerced psychologically into saying yes by contrast it's good idea to have some protection from law you know I I think that's nice idea but one's primary protection doesn't come from law right it comes from your connections your family your extended family your community all right if you're part of a traditional community people are going to be much less likely to try to take advantage of you right because they know that they will have to reckon with the wrath of your community now that puts a tremendous restriction on your personal freedom but in turn you get a tremendous amount of protection like a lot of orthodox women or traditional Christian women or just women who have a strong sense of self you know men would never even consider you know acting like predators towards them because these women are so formidable on the other hand men can smell you know out the vulnerable woman so if you're a vulnerable person you're a weak person you can't say no attach yourself to a community to a family in an extended family and you know take guidance from other people right a lot of people want all the freedom that comes with doing your own thing but then they don't want to take the responsibility and the burdens and the consequences of doing your own thing separate and apart from a community right you're part of a traditional community they will watch out for you you're not going to get into this kind of trouble but she didn't want to give up that degree of freedom and so she chose to play the game. Laws in the United States and some European countries take into account that a victim may not be able to consent because of illness or intoxication or that an offender could exploit a situation of authority. In court filings Ms. Sano said that after the first sexual encounter with Mr. Hayashi since she wasn't covered in bruises she didn't think of herself as a sexual abuse victim. The judge's ruling in March acknowledged a gray zone between coercion and consent deeming it quote suitable that Mr. Hayashi had been fired but in tearful remarks Ms. Sano said the judgment did not take into account what someone who is in a higher position than you can actually do to your psyche. Although Ms. Sano lost the case the court ordered the professor to pay her 1.28 million yen close to nine thousand eight hundred dollars. So this ties into the overall topic you're holding out for a hero right the stronger your need for a hero the more vulnerable you're going to be the more likely you are to get screwed over more likely you are to be taken advantage of by gurus right there are a lot of gurus in the orthodox Jewish community who would love to teach attractive women you know Torah through the tip of their penis a lot of you know yoga gurus want to teach you know attractive females through the tip of their penis a lot of professors want to teach their attractive female students through the tip of their penis. So the more wide open you are right meaning the bigger the hole in your soul right the more vulnerable you're going to be for people taking advantage of you and it begins with you know fundamental sense of dissatisfaction with your own life with your own choices where you are in life with your relationships and you know yearning for someone to come along and to make you whole and to give you life more meaning and purpose and that leaves you wide open to predation to take responsibility for his share of the penalties imposed on her in his wife's lawsuit. Tomoe Yatagawa who lectures on gender law at universities in Tokyo said Mrs Hayashi's suit might seem quote a bit strange when the marital contract was between husband and wife yet Miss Sunno was held responsible for breaking it but experts say these cases are not rare. Mrs Hayashi who declined to comment for this article said in court filings that she resented her husband for committing adultery but that she did not believe he was guilty of sexual harassment. She accused Miss Sunno of quote pushing all the responsibility of their relationship onto my husband as if she is wholeheartedly the victim. Miss Sunno met the professor in 2004 when she was an undergraduate at Tokyo Sophia University and enrolled in Mr Hayashi's art history course. He was a well-known specialist in modern Japanese art without spoken views on feminism and free speech. For a long time their relationship was strictly academic. They discussed her graduate school ambitions. He offered to write her a recommendation and helped her secure an internship. The summer and fall before she began her graduate studies in 2007 the boundaries between them began to blur as Mr Hayashi started grooming her she said for a romantic relationship. He invited her to regular teas. She felt she could not refuse. He would make suggestions for reading or study sessions for grad school and it felt like he had expectations for me Miss Sunno said and I felt like I couldn't betray that. Some advocates say Japanese institutions like Sophia need clearer guidance about relationships between students and professors. The government recently called on universities to provide more information about counseling services for sexual harassment and violence and to disclose when disciplinary actions are taken. Any relationship between a supervisor or professor and a student is by definition harassment because of the desire to please someone in power said Kazue Muta a professor of sociology and gender studies at Osaka University. Mr Hayashi who declined to comment for this article admitted in testimony that the relationship had been quote inappropriate because he was married and was Miss Sunno's supervisor but he said Miss Sunno had consented to and even encouraged it. One of his primary pieces of evidence was a thank you card she and other students sent him after they joined him on a museum tour around central Japan the summer before Miss Sunno began graduate school. On the card which she wrote in English she addressed him as Dearest Professor H and signed her message XOX a flourish not commonly used in Japan. To be addressed as dearest in a message from a student to a professor there is a familiarity there that is not quite normal Mr Hayashi testified. Miss Sunno said she meant the note merely to show gratitude and thanks. Mr Hayashi said he and Miss Sunno grew closer as they spent time together according to the court record. Miss Sunno confided in Mr Hayashi that she felt like an outsider in Japan after spending much of her childhood in England. He assured her he understood because of his experience abroad. In the fall when she began graduate school with Mr Hayashi as her supervisor she took a walk with him in a Tokyo park. He kissed her saying no and making him look bad was out of the question she said. In court filings and testimony Mr Hayashi then 48 said he believed he and Miss Sunno then 23 were dating. Miss Sunno accompanied him on a trip to Kyoto that fall where he was lecturing at an art symposium. She testified that when he asked her to join him in his hotel room she refused him multiple times and said she should return to her own room. He said the decision to go to his room was mutual. Both testified that Mr Hayashi performed oral sex on Miss Sunno but she portrayed it as unwelcome. She said she asked him repeatedly to wait signaling resistance she told the court. But he kept saying it's okay it's okay Miss Sunno said. Over the next 10 years they regularly met and so yeah one thing that surprised me is I got to know women is how many complained about men who performed oral sex on them the first time that they hooked up. They just thought it was way too intimate and even though they orgasmed they still felt icky about it. So it seems like women tend to regret sex that doesn't lead to lasting commitments such as marriage. Tokyo at so-called love hotels with a mixing of academic discussion and sex. Mr Hayashi reviewed Miss Sunno's thesis at one of these hotels the court filing said. Miss Sunno sent him affectionate notes and accompanied him on trips to France Italy and Spain both while she was under his supervision and after graduation. Mr Hayashi said such behavior again proved the relationship was consensual although he acknowledged he wanted to keep it secret. She said that her behavior was a sign of indoctrination and that she was afraid to be rude to her supervisor who had authority over her future career. When she would try to end the relationship she said in court filings Mr Hayashi would accuse her of being paranoid or tell her she would never be able to date anyone else. She said Mr Hayashi told her you consume me for sexual harassment if you wanted to but you won't because. I just noticed a lot of people trying to use the legal system to fill a hole in their soul to try to you know write something wrong with them by you know going out of legal jihad against someone else. I've seen a lot of people ruin their lives by doing this they're trying to fix a hole in their soul by launching a lawsuit and it destroys them. I remember this very attractive very intelligent highly accomplished woman who sued her supervisor for sexual harassment. She lost the lawsuit and she I mean she hit the wall hard. I mean it just destroyed her. So in general not a good idea it seems like to try to use the legal system to fix a hole in your soul to fix a vulnerability in you. You're not that kind of girl. Mr Hayashi said in court filings that he never made those remarks or coerced Ms Sunno and that they were simply adults enjoying a free love relationship. I understand that I was way too naive and I still hate myself for it Ms Sunno said. There were so many times where I could have just said no and run away. By the spring of 2018 Ms Sunno was working at an art gallery in Tokyo and broke off the relationship for good. She slowly began to tell her family and a small circle of friends about it and grappled with an overwhelming sense of shame. She said she began cutting herself and considered suicide. Shusako Sunno Ms Sunno's eldest brother said his sister told him she had been brainwashed. I knew for sure that she was hurt he said. Haruko Kumakura an assistant curator at a museum in Tokyo who collaborated with Ms Sunno on an exhibit said she was disgusted when Ms Sunno told her about Mr Hayashi a figure of respect in the art world. Okay so you can admit you've done stupid things like I that's a staple of my show talking about all the stupid things that I've done. There's absolutely no need to hate yourself for having done stupid things but for being human. You didn't choose to be a victim she didn't choose to be a victim she didn't choose to be an idiot I didn't choose to be an idiot I didn't choose to be you know a victim of a guru all right you know I didn't choose to be a sex and love addict I didn't choose to be a debtor and an under owner and codependent right so you can admit when you've made really big mistakes and it doesn't mean you have to hate yourself for it. You can be at ease with yourself and just be free that yeah I've done a lot of stupid stupid stupid things early the next year Ms Sunno contacted Mr Hayashi's wife I just felt like I had to tell her the truth of what had happened and that I was sorry Ms Sunno said Ms Sunno also wanted his wife to know that she felt Mr Hayashi that's a horrible thing to do right she wanted to spread her pain right her people her people her people and she was a her person just spreading the pain that's just horrible thing. Hayashi had manipulated her according to court filings Mr Hayashi confessed the relationship to his wife who filed her suit against Ms Sunno and an email that was part of the court record Mrs Hayashi through her lawyer wrote to Ms Sunno if the relationship was coerced by my husband you could have easily filed a complaint with the university from the start experts in sexual harassment say it will take more than legal action to change the culture the commonly accepted view is that if a woman accepts a kiss or goes on a date then it's consensual said Ms Muta of Osaka University who advocates university policies barring romantic relationships between professors and students we're struggling to change the climate but we are not so successful yet Ms Sunno said she was now in therapy coping with post-traumatic stress disorder she lives with her parents and has not been able to work full time since she left the art gallery in 2019 one of her primary goals she said is to recover my ability to say no so you think if to survive she had to work she might suddenly recover the ability to work and to you know pay her own way in life right she's unable to work right because just you know so many abundant options where other people will take care of her that salvation will come from above and that she'll be taken care of she will be rescued