 Hello my friends, welcome to episode 87 of Patterson in Pursuit. This is part two of my conversation with T.K. Coleman about race and colorblindness. Or you could think of it as part six of my conversation with T.K. Coleman about race in America in general. We're talking about some difficult and somewhat taboo topics that are important, but unfortunately aren't talked about enough in our society. I've personally found it confusing when I talk about this topic sometimes with people and I use the term colorblindness and they kind of scoff at me. They think I'm being naive or silly or I'm stating something that's self-evidently absurd. I never quite understood why that's the case, but after this conversation I get it a lot more now. I imagine there's a lot of people in a similar scenario where maybe the word colorblind doesn't mean what you think it means. In this episode we also cover the general state of race relations in America. My suspicion is that things are getting worse and T.K.'s suspicion is well actually maybe things are only appearing to get worse, but that's because they're actually getting better. It's a really interesting topic and I really hope you guys enjoy our conversation. T.K. Coleman is the education director at Praxis and you can find out more information about him at his website, tkcolman.com. Also remember this Wednesday will be the live Q&A for everybody if you've got any questions about philosophy or my travels or you want to talk about race more or whatever it is. I'm trying to answer everybody's questions on the 25th and the link to that live stream will be on social media and on my Patreon site and everything. So hopefully I'll see you guys there on Wednesday, 7 p.m. Eastern. Let's take the scenario you brought up in our last discussion about the white woman in the elevator. T.K. That was when our audio cut out so we'll set that up again and then you can bring up your point. Talking about is it okay or what is it when it's the night and the white woman, yeah, she's getting in the elevator, it's midnight and the black guy walks in about her and she kind of clutches her purse. She has that feeling of okay, my chances just went up about getting robbed. I don't necessarily have anything against black people, but I feel like I'm in a more dangerous scenario now. What is that? Is that racism? If so, is it a problem? Is it rational behavior and what were you going to say about that? T.K. It's interesting. It's funny. So I'm going to try to do the opposite of what I see being done a lot when these kind of scenarios are raised. I watched a Ben Shapiro Q&A once and someone raised the question about what are some ways we can fight racism. He said, look, because I believe that racism is a problem. I want you to know I'm against that and wherever we observe racism, we should fight against it. He says, but racism is something specific that institutions and individuals do. So if you're going to say institution racism, what's the institution that's doing the race to stop? What's the stuff they're doing? Who's the individual? We've got to name some names and we've got to identify some things that's going on and usually people can't get past that point. Most people are either like, shoot, I'm scared. And they back out or the people that argue, it just ends up going on and on and on. Well, no, it's not. Well, here's an example. Here's why that's not. Here's why that's not. And so we never get beyond the give me an example of something racist thing. And so I think there's this whole set of interesting questions that we never get to because we never get past the part of this actually happened and it was racist. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to concede those two things at the outset. Okay. I'm going to assume for the sake of argument that it was racist that I heard her say, oh my gosh, scary black man whispered under her breath and we have it on camera with subtitles. She's got a Nazi emblem or something on her arm. So let's just assume that it was racist and let's assume that I'm not describing an LSD experience. It actually happened. Right. All right. I think there are four questions that we have to ask about that scenario. And I think if you treat these four questions fairly and you really wrestle with them, I think it'll lead you to some insights that don't really come out of a lot of the debates. Number one, where is the harm in this scenario? Is the harm me getting on the elevator and causing her fear? Is the harm her uttering scary black man under that? You get to answer however you want. Where is the harm? Where is it located? Number two, what is the precise nature of the harm done? Is it physical in nature? Is it psychological? Is it political? And we may not be able to boil it down too tightly, but let's just do the best that we can without spending all day on it. Number three, assuming that we explained it in terms of something other than race, like she did it because she thought you were obese. Or let's switch it up. How do I say it? It's Ivanka, right? That Donald Trump's door to name Ivanka. Let's say it's Ivanka, okay? On the elevator. Well, her daughter or the I think that's the wife, isn't it? Who's the daughter? I think it's the daughter. Melania is the wife. Oh, no, you're right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Two brothers that don't pay enough attention to politics. Okay, so she's on the elevator and she comes from a different background than us, man. And you got your Bitcoin book out, the podcast is doing good and most of your peers respect you. But from her point of view, like, man, she's a noble, she's an elite, like she comes from money and she looks at you as a peasant and she's kind of afraid that, you know, this peasant is going to hit on her or this peasant is going to harm her and you even hear her under her breath go, oh my gosh, a peasant. I would like to know what you think the proper reaction and response should be on your end. So, so question number three is, assuming that we inserted some other explanatory mechanism for the same behavior, apart from race, because you're obese, because you're not physically attractive, because you don't have money, because whatever. What do you think the proper reaction response should be? Number four, once you factor race back into the equation, why should your answer to number three be any different? Okay, so let's take those. So I forget what the first, what was the very first question? Where is the harm in this situation? Where is the harm? Number one, where's the harm? Number two, what is the precise nature of the harm? Number three, assuming the explanatory mechanism was something other than race, what do you think the proper reaction and response to be number four, once we factor race back into the equation, why should our reaction and response be any different from our answer to number three? So number one, where's the harm in this situation? Okay, so the harm, we have to distinguish and make very explicit, there's no political harm. There's no harm that should be met in court of law. I think that is critical and we probably agree with that. Some people wouldn't, or at least their lines are blurring on that area, oh it's a hate crime if you act in that way. That's nonsense. That's political harm, however. And that circumstance, I'd say there is psychological harm, so maybe it answers part two as well. And in the sense that- Psychological harm to who? To the black guy. Because to have a fellow human cringe at your site is hurt. It's like, oh this person, I've done something, I'm a bad person, I have some property around me that people find disgusting. So I think that it is, harm maybe isn't the right word, but like- I'm okay with any wrongdoings, the things to be mad about, whatever. Yeah, like an unfortunate and unfair circumstance or something I would say. Okay, number three. Assuming that it was the identical behavior, but the explanation was something else. And it can still be offensive, like obesity, poverty, whatever. What should the, what reaction response do you think that? Well that's a good, that's a really good point actually. In fact I think that gets to the heart of a lot of this whole thing is I, if I had to, I don't know, give advice or a pine about that circumstance, I'd say the appropriate response is for that individual to have enough confidence and self-confidence to know that the person next to them is ignorant, that is judging them not based on some individual character, but some based on some arbitrary group assignment, that the person who's throwing shit at them is mistaken, like the issue is with them and not you. That's what I think the appropriate response should be. Okay, so just so you know, I don't think most people have adequately thought out three and four, but okay, I accept that answer. Now let's go to number four. We factor race back in. What is it about race that makes? If I would a pine on, I would say the exact same thing. That the society in which I would like to live in, the culture of individuals I would like to live in is where you, when you experience that, you recognize it as being demonstrations of ignorance and annoying. Just like when I, those academics, you know, make a bunch of ridiculous claims about me because they don't like my pedigree. It is frustrating on my end, but I also see it as ignorance on theirs. I think that's a healthy response to that kind of thing. Yeah. And that response, do you need to have any arguments or conversations with rich women? If it were the case that it was something I thought to be systemic, I think that it would be worthwhile to bring up in some kind of public forum. Not necessarily talking with individual rich women and explain the circumstance, but in circumstances like this, two people part of the same general culture to talk about it, I think, could be helpful. Especially if that bias is actually there. Okay. Here's a scenario that I think is quite common. The variables may change, but I think it happens all around the world, every generation. I don't think there's any guy who will listen to me tell the following that we'll find this to be too strange or inconceivable. Let's say I have a son and let's say my son, Tim is in high school and he tells me one day he says, dad, I like this girl at school and I want to ask her to prom. And I say, yeah, I say, tell me about a son. And he says, well, her name is Chitty and she's really nice. And I think she's really cute. And I say, okay, well, does she like you? And he says, I don't know. I mean, kind of, she's really nice to me. And we sit next to each other in biology classes. Sometimes it makes jokes and she makes me laugh and stuff. And I go, okay, that's cool, man. And I say, well, hey, look, you guarantee you to miss 100% of the shots you don't take, you know, if you're interested in asking you should tell how you feel, man. Like, don't, you know, you don't have to be over dramatic with anything. But, you know, it's just like ask her, see what's up. What's the worst that can happen if she says no? And she says, okay, all right. Comes back later on that day. He's bawling his eyes out. Like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, dude, what happened, man? What's going on? What's wrong? And he was like, I'm sitting up, but okay, so what happened? She probably said, no, right? What happened? And he tells me, well, we were in the calf and I was thinking about it all day and it was lunchtime and I finally worked up the nerves to ask her. And so I walked up to the table where she was sitting with all the other girls and I said, Jenny, where'd you go? Probably as she looks at me, she goes, ew. And all the other girls started laughing. And all of the guys went, dang, oh. And Mrs. Peabody came over and was like, you can't square down, Jenny, no, you be so mean. And that's what happened. OK, now, we know what shouldn't be the response. The response shouldn't be, are you sure that's what Jenny said? Are you sure you heard it correctly? That's not going to be my response, right? So that's out. I'm also not going to say, I don't know, man. I've asked girls out before and I were in high school. I never had anybody react like that. Also not going to say, well, maybe she was reacting to something smelly that was on her plate. Maybe, no, I'm going to let you tell your story. And since I wasn't there and I don't really care, I'm going to let you tell your story, man. It's however you describe it to me because there's something more important anyway than whether or not you got all those details right. Maybe she said, pew or oh, or a hell no instead of you. Doesn't even matter, man. What I'm going to do is I'm going to first, without being overly dramatic, I'm going to validate that. I'm going to validate that emotionally you're having and say, man, I'm sorry, man. I'm sorry, son. And then I'm going to take an action step that revolves around me trying to help you process this experience in a way that will cultivate psychological resilience. Because there's something that I know. I know that I can't go down to the school and be like, where is this Jenny girl? I'm going to give her a talking, right? Like, I can't change that, right? It's going to happen to my son at 20 at 25 at 30, 35. And it may not be about a girl. He likes, but it's going to be about something. This is going to happen all his life, OK? So hey, man, you know what? We're going to talk about this later. I know how you feel, dude. I've had it happen to me before. Come on, let's get out of the house. Let's go play some ball. Let's go see a movie. We'll talk about this, man. It's going to be all right, OK? And I try to do what I can do to work my magic as a dad, to build them up, to help them get through this moment. And I give them whatever space he needs, right? That's an important thing, OK? And anybody who treats that as if that's not an actual problem just because it's non-political is goofy to me, right? It's a human being. Fillings are important to us. Cultivating psychological resilience, learning how to deal with rejection, it's important. And you know what? Hey, Jenny could have handled it in a classier way, but she's not my daughter. I can't change that. And I'm not about to launch a crusade that's designed to try to get high school girls to say no to guys who ask them to prom in any other way than what they want to say. My job is to try to help my son. And you know what? Even if it's not my son, if it's my nephew, if I can give a speech at church about it and I can help other people that go through it, I will help as many people as I can with this. I'm your guy. I will go to bat for you. And I will work all day long with helping you try to figure out how to deal with these situations. But is there anything more valuable than taking that head on and being real with you and being honest with you about this is the world that we live in? We all agree that at a political level, we're not going to stop that. And we also agree that maybe there are different things we can do that over the long term will make those kinds of things less likely to happen culturally. But is there anything more important than me helping my people develop psychological resilience? I think that's more empowering. I think about a scene not because we shouldn't talk about race, not because the other conversation makes white people mad. I don't care about not making white people mad. But I think about the scene in The Matrix where Morpheus is talking to Commander Locke. And he's like, Neil is the only one that can save us. And Commander Locke is like, damn it, Morpheus. He's like, I don't have time for oracles and fairies and all these kinds of things. Not everybody believes as you believe. And Morpheus tells him, fortunately, my beliefs do not require them to. Think about the power of walking onto an elevator and having cultivated the psychological resilience so that if a woman clutches her purse or a man clutches his book back or anybody does anything for any reason, and you are sufficiently equipped to defend yourself from any harm with them and you know your rights and you know your environment to make sure you're taken care of because you've learned that. What is greater than being psychologically resilient in that situation to where that person is irrelevant to you? If anything, maybe I feel pity for them that they are unnecessarily scared because I'm enjoying this elevator ride and this is going to be one hell of an experience for them. Or if I'm not in the mood to feel pity that day, I continue listening to the podcast I've got going on on my headphones. What is more powerful than that? But to be in this state of psychological need, please Steve, please believe this thing really happened to me. Please believe this is my experience. Nah man, and you know what, this is something, this is not even new. This is something that a lot of people have talked about for a long time. In fact, I encourage anybody to read the autobiography of Malcolm X but in Spike Lee's movie version of it, there's a scene where Malcolm X is on a college campus, he's walking towards the auditorium to give a talk and there's a white female student who walks up to him and she says, Malcolm X, I'm a big fan, I'm an empathetic white person who supports what you're doing. And she says, I just wanna know how could a white person like me, what can I do to help the movement? And he looks at her, he says nothing. Him and the brothers continue walking and she's outside, she's kind of like, whoa, whoa. But one of the things that he taught, Louis Farrakhan talks about it today, but he pisses so many people off with the other stuff that he says that people kind of miss this part. But he talks about this as well, the idea of, hey look, the best thing we can do, instead of trying to get people who don't have the same experience of us as us, to co-sign our stories, to accept that we experience the world as we say we experience it. Let's educate ourselves. Let's support ourselves. Let's love ourselves, let's respect ourselves, let's heal ourselves, and let's not formulate any plan that requires their permission. One of the things that Farrakhan said during the time of when Reagan was in office, you can watch, there's a YouTube video of him on the Phil Donahue show. And I'm not a practitioner of, I'm not a member of the nation of Islam, but he was on the Donahue show talking about some things. And he said, Donahue said, a lot of black people don't like Reagan, and they feel like Reagan is not sympathetic to their causes. And he says, oh, I'm glad he's in office. And he said, really? And he says, yeah. He says, because it's times like this, when black people believe there's a man in office that isn't considered of them, that we're reminded of an all important truth, which is to never look to politicians for salvation. We gotta look to ourselves. We gotta liberate ourselves. Now, by the way, you're talking to someone who believes that the state, which does exist, is an inherently oppressive mechanism. So I believe that we are all being systemically victimized. And we're all being systemically victimized in distinct ways, in unique ways, even outside of race. If you are a libertarian and you believe that taxation is theft, okay? I, as a resident of California, experienced that theft differently than someone who is a resident of Texas, right? Like the state is systemically victimizing me in that area differently from Texans. Now, they may have something else going on that I don't know about or that I don't experience, but the state victimizes systemically by its very nature and it screws us all over in our own ways. And if Tana Hesse Coates can say there is not a single problem in black communities that won't be significantly alleviated by the elimination of white supremacy, surely then I can say there is not a single problem in the black community that won't be significantly eliminated or reduced by the elimination of the drug war, by the presence of real school choice. But you gotta remember who the real enemies are. You know, white supremacy is a secondary enemy. Stateism, authoritarianism is the primary enemy. I think there's an enormous amount of power that individuals gain from having psychological confidence. And I don't know what you think about this, but this is kind of my thoughts on this particular topic because if anybody's been following my professional career a little bit, I do get quite a lot of shit from powerful people and have to have some psychological strength to deal with that, right? Everybody's, well, a lot of these people that have respect in society are saying rather nasty things about me, are they true? If they're true, it's a very big deal. Where I think the real power comes from, the unshakable power is from an understanding of the truth. Or from philosophy, from rational analysis. It's applicable not just to my circumstance, but especially in the race circumstance. Because if it's true that the ignorant person in this elevator scenario is the person clutching their purse, maybe, or saying that it is racism, right, in those clear cases, if that's really where the ignorance is, then there's nothing to be, there's nothing to feel negative toward. It's kind of like if a child calls you a name as you're walking by and you walk funny, mister, I think you're an elephant. Like, do you really let that get under your skin or do you recognize the child is ignorant? The truth of the matter is that I'm not an elephant, damn it. Or in the circumstance where you're in a society in which everybody says that if you're outside the academy, you can't be an intellectual, you can't be a serious intellectual. That's wrong. I know that's wrong. I've worked through the arguments. I'm demonstrating it all the time. And that's where my psychological strength comes from is just the truth. It's just the nature of the game. And I think it's the same thing with race. If you really treat the arguments with seriousness, is it the case that there is a fundamental division between individuals of different races? Is there true superiority and inferiority? Treat it as an open question, investigate. And I think you'll find the answer is there is far more in common amongst all humans than there are differences among the races. To the extent there are true differences, maybe there are biological differences, they really aren't that relevant for 99% of human life. That's the truth of the circumstance as I see it. And that's where I feel like there is this, it's like a immovable confidence and individualism that's all tied together. And it's like, I really, truly, honestly, if you think that you can't have a correct perspective on the philosophy of mathematics without having a PhD, you're wrong. The problem is with you. If you really think that I as a white person, as a white male, as my history teacher told me when I was in college, we were talking about taxation, essentially. I was early in my development of becoming an anarchist and I was saying, so I have to have my money forcibly taken from my paycheck to pay for programs I don't support. And I said, yes, that's the case. And she was supporting wealth redistribution because of race. And I said, so because of my race, I am going to be stolen from more than somebody else. And she said, yes. I said, so essentially I was born the wrong race. She said, yeah, I said, the wrong race and gender. And she said, yep, I guess so. It's a college professor telling me this. I have to know she's wrong, she's ignorant. The truth is not on her side that her arguments did not hold up under examination. And that's where I feel, I don't know if this is kind of a bias because I love philosophy, but I feel like that is this unshakable grounding that you get whenever you're confident in your conclusions about the world. And you don't have, it's not an open question. Yeah, and it not only leads to confidence, but that confidence towards oneself, towards one's ability to walk freely, but also the confidence to exercise compassion, the confidence to exercise influence, right? When I can stand before your story and be unthreatened by it, unintimidated by it, feel no sense of lost in what you have to say about your experience of the world. When I can allow you to experience the world as difficult as you feel like you experience it without being threatened by it, that might create a bridge of understanding between us that allows me to move some truths across to you. And the example that you were giving about Ginny, that was funny because I was thinking, how would I deal with this? I'm not big, my emotional IQ is not nearly as high as yours or as my social IQ. So the way that I would approach it, which I would find very helpful, maybe this presumptuous, is to say, poor Ginny, what bitch? The problem is with her, and not just like, oh, that's her problem, like to make you feel better. No, it's actually the case that that's an inappropriate way to act. To treat somebody poorly, to make a big stink out of it, that person is in the wrong. And yeah, it stings, it hurts that you have that judgment put on you. And like I feel you, that's a pain. But in reality, the other person's in the wrong. You know, so it's like, I don't know how effective advice that's gonna be when I have kids, like oh, little Johnny, that person, they're wrong, just recognize that it's better to be right than to be wrong, and then a lot of your problems get solved. Yeah, so two things. So we got a political dimension, and then we got a psychological dimension. The political dimension is, if you agree with me that the state is inherently oppressive, that it is a system of oppression, it's screwing us all, and it's screwing us all disproportionately in different ways, then the more we can undermine that foundation of authoritarianism, the more we can alleviate a lot of the problems that are at the heart of the race debate, right? So the elimination of something like the drug war alone, think about what that does for black families, think about what that does for black incarceration rates, think about what that does for black gang violence. And this can all be acknowledged independently of what you think blacks ought to be doing, given the fact that it is a law. Those are two separate conversations, right? Like given the fact that the world is screwed up, what should I do? How should I respond to it? However, what are some ways I can fight against the systemic nature of the parts that are screwed up? I'm in total support of fighting against that element. And I believe that, and because I'm a pessimist on the amount of baggage people bring to this conversation, I'm just at the point in my talking about it, which is, look, I don't even care to spend any time trying to convince you that black people are disproportionately affected by the drug war. I just need you to understand that this is BS, right? Like, you know, if instead of you telling me more white people get killed by the police as a way to shut me up, why can't we just be mad together then, you know? Like, if you're actually telling me that, you know, more you guys can kill, I need to talk you into some anger. You know, why are black folks doing when they get upset about that, you know? Like don't be so naively trusting of everything the state does and tells you. So I'm all about that aspect of things. And on the personal side, the psychological side, I want to be sensitive to something because the Ginny example, God bless everybody named Ginny, listen to this. I really don't have a real person in mind, totally made this up, but. I see about that bitch Ginny from fourth grade, no, not really. The Ginny situation, I try to make it a little bit dramatic, but it doesn't even capture the nature of this psychological challenge. You know, race is something that there's a whole lot of baggage in. And one of the reasons why the political and the psychological gets conflated is because for understandable reasons, we're so used to being triggered by certain ideologies and the historical associations with those ideologies that everything kind of blurs together. So one example would be Charles Barkley did a special on race and there's this interview with Barkley and Richard Spencer. And Barkley's gonna try to give Richard Spencer an opportunity to say what's his take on white nationalism, right? And there are these moments where Barkley says something like, so you don't want black people living in your neighborhood and Richard Spencer's like, right. And you can tell Barkley thought that he was gonna back down with that question or something. And you can see Barkley was just shook. He didn't know what to do, right? And then the other guy in the interview goes, your people will press mine for 400 years. And he's like, yep. And they're like, the hell? Because they're just used to the denial, right? And then at one point Barkley's like, okay, let me ask you this, let me ask you this. Do you believe in white privilege? And he goes, yeah, I want one more of it. And these guys are shook, right? And so at one point it's like they've just had enough, man. They've had enough. And the guy's like, look, let me tell you how it is. We are here, we're not going anywhere. This is how it is. And you know what, your grandbabies are probably gonna be brown, you know? But it got to that point where it was just like, no, no, what's interesting is far be it from me to defend them, to defend them. But what's interesting to me is he explicitly said in that interview that he doesn't condone any harming of black people. He doesn't support like extermination of black people. Now, maybe people have delved into this more than I would say, yeah, but he's lying because I got this video table and sent it over here. Okay, fine, fine. But I'm talking about what they were reacting to which was his words in that interview. He said that and he basically said, look, I just wanna be free for us to go do our thing and live on our own, right? And they couldn't handle it. Now, this would be a classic example of someone they were talking to who was no threat to them. He genuinely was no threat to them. But they were experiencing what he was at the psychological level, okay? But they were experiencing him as a threat in a way that seemed to blend those political and psychological elements because there's such a strong historical association between what he was saying and these things that we read about in history, right? These really hurtful, painful realities. Now, there's a white counterpart to this. I don't think it's as strong. I don't think it has been going on for as long but I've said before that I think, I refer to the term racist as the R word because I think that's the flip side of the N word coin. The R word is the N word for white people. And here's where I think this is a better way of thinking about it than McWhorter's notion that calling somebody a racist is like calling somebody a pedophile. Calling somebody a pedophile is actually kind of like equally damaging, right? Maybe if you're like really rich or something like that, maybe you experienced the legal system differently but whether you're white or black, like if you call somebody a pedophile, that's gonna be like, that's gonna sting. But calling someone a racist, you can't hurt black people in the same way that you can hurt white people with that word, right? Like you can't even hurt a black person's feelings in the same way that you can trigger and anger a white person like that. It's like the N word. If a black person calls a white person the N word, the white person's just gonna be like, what? I'm confused, you're weird. Why are you calling me that, right? And that's all a lot of black people are. Like you call a black person R word, they might laugh at you but you'll rarely see that same reaction. White people are more threatened by it, it triggers them more. And the reason being is because there's a really ugly history behind that word. Like both of these words were not just used to make someone feel bad. Both of these words were used in conjunction with some serious violence being performed. And so we experienced these words today in a way that feels very violent, okay? So if you're walking across a campus and someone calls you a racist, woo, it feels violent because of the association. As a black person, if I get the impression that somebody is thinking of me as just another N word, it feels really violent. And so I think there are a lot of things that are like the situation you set up with the woman in the elevator where it may very well be true that some kind of racialized intention is behind a form of mistreatment. And it gets hard to see in those moments that the answer truly is nothing more than psychological resilience because we haven't had a whole lot of, maybe I shouldn't say time, but a whole lot of help, a whole lot of guidance at being able to parcel that out. It's a really difficult thing to parcel out. And it's much more difficult than helping our son parcel out the Jenny problem. It's like a hundred times more difficult. All right, I'm gonna ramp it up a bit. So let's give the elevator example and just change it that it's me walking into the elevator instead of a black guy. And it's still the evening and it's a little old woman that for good reason, let's say we're in a rough area and I'm the only person in the parking lot and I'm a dude, I'm a big, I'm six foot four. I'm a big dude and she kind of gets uncomfortable. This has actually happened to me like, I don't know about going into elevators, but I could tell, you know, walking down the street, if there's only two people on the street and it's one dude, you know, wearing a hoodie, me, walking behind some girl that she's gonna be a little bit uncomfortable on an edge. So that has happened. Right, you can be broad daylight if I find myself walking behind a girl. I just cross the street or I pass her up. Sure, so. Right. Here's the other part. When you have that kind of, I think psychological confidence, I have no bad feelings about that woman doing that. Like it would be silly for me to say, oh, that person doesn't like me or like I'm taking it personally. It's like, no, she's acting rationally. Actually, we're in a rough area and I would, if that was my mother, if that was my wife, I would want her to protect herself. I'm a big dude, it's the evening, I'm okay with that. I accept that. As a peer, I consider myself a peer and a fellow individual with the person in front of me, thinking, yeah, I mean, it sucks. Like, yeah, I'm actually not a threat. I don't like being treated like I'm a threat, but you're acting rationally, I can't blame you. So that's how I feel. She doesn't owe it to me to not be afraid of me. No, and it's reasonable behavior. Now, where I would be upset is if that individual took that out of the context and treated me that way, like we're at some, you know, like I go to a board gaming group, like I met some board game group and that lady is still treating me like, oh my gosh, I'm a threat. Then I'd say, hey, what the heck's your problem? Get over it, you know. Your, that judgment that you made was reasonable in one circumstance, ain't reasonable in this circumstance. So, you know, get your shit together. Is, do you think- I mean, I don't know. I don't know, I mean, how do you really know? Like, I mean, I can play the same kind of, I don't want to call it game, but I can do the same thing with this as we can about any situation where somebody might be trying to convince you that somebody had racist intentions. You don't know what's going on with her. Like, I mean, you don't know what kind of history she has, what kind of mental thing she might be dealing with, what kind of traumatic experiences she might be dealing with. She can have a fear of large spaces, a fear of- That's true. Let's say that it's, so the, that's probably more correct when you're talking about literal strangers, but people who you're having more interaction with or who are part of your, like these board game analogy, right? Like, because I'm a white guy, right? And go in like, it's super nerdy. Let's say that she's there, she's playing the games we're playing, and I gotta deal with her all the time. She's now part of my community. I feel like at some point, it's reasonable to bring that up and be like, hey, come on. Like, you got some bigotry here. You got some, you got some lens. You gotta get off your eye because it's making everybody's experience more negative. Now, my point bringing that up is to say, I think that's reasonable. I think, one, it's reasonable that the person feels a heightened sense of danger because she isn't a heightened sense of danger because her chances of something bad happen go up when some dude who's much bigger than her is walking behind her in the evening. I don't hold it against her. And I don't take it personally. And I still would, I guess kind of take it personally if we're in a circumstance in which her behavior is actually affecting me or her kind of prejudgments and worry about my potential to rob her or mug her or rape her or something. And those aren't there anymore and she's still treating me that way. Then I think that's a problem. So I'm thinking that's rational. It's very easy to see how that would apply to race. If I were a black guy to say the same thing, what do you think about that analysis? I mean, I think she has the right to be as uncomfortable around you as she wants to be. And- Of course she has the right. Okay, I'm gonna keep going. And whether she's reasonable or not. And I don't think she owes you anything. And even though we might say at the level of behavioral externals given what we know and don't know, maybe she's a nicer person for smiling at you and talking to you. But since we don't have access to the reason why she's not smiling at you or talking to you, we really don't know. We can't bridge that gap unless we make some assumptions. Maybe you can ask her if it's that important to you. And then maybe she can decide if she's cool with telling you or not. But this is the nature of the social game. And as far as I'm concerned, like she's her own entity. What's it to you that she's not comfortable around you? What's it to you that she doesn't wanna talk to you? I mean, certainly you're free to try to crack a joke that loosens it up or breaks the ice. But there's a limit to how far you wanna go with that. But what's it to you? And same thing if it's another dude. So you think that in social circumstances, let's say you're sitting down, right? And you're playing a good game of Settlers or a good 10, right? Well, this person that keeps showing up or the weekly poker game or whatever the heck it is. And there's some guy that is making snide jokes but not about race, but not funny ones. Ones where he's revealing like he's saying really nasty things and he's treating you differently. And you know he's treating you differently or you have strong suspicion he's treating you differently. Because of your skin color. Just like I know that the woman at night is treating me differently because I'm a man, because I'm a tall man. I know that's what's going on. I don't literally know it but I have every reason to believe that. You'd say that it's not something even worth dealing with. That's her problem and you're not even, even though she's in your circle, it's not gonna be something you bring up. First of all, this is some kind of circle that I'm in. But secondly, I'm not gonna lay down a law or rule that says never is it worth your time. How I would respond to that scenario, will really depend on what kind of mood I'm in. I don't feel morally obligated to respond in any kind of way but hey, there might be a day where I'm there. I mean, I don't know what the scenario is but apparently if I'm coming to this weekly poker night I'm here because these people are my friends and maybe I'm trying to get to know this crew. They're not my friends. I'm new in town and I'm trying to get to know the people. So one option might be to say, okay, looks like I found everything out. I wanna know about this poker night. This person's being crazy and passive aggressive and everybody around here seems to be cool with it. Might not be my crowd. Might not be my crowd. Option two might be, hmm, if these are my friends and I deem that I might have more status, more pool, more rank, more influence, I might use that to create a difficult time for this person in nonviolent ways, you know? Maybe I'll be like, hey, let's not invite Johnny to the next poker night. I don't like him, whatever. Or maybe I try a little social pressure and see where that gets me and I look at him and I say, hey, Johnny, what the hell is your problem, man? Huh, say what? Yeah, man, what the hell's your problem, man? For the past 30 minutes, you've just been passive aggressive, giving me the evil eye. You got a problem? You got a problem? What is it? Is it my black skin? Is it the hat I'm wearing? What is it? Oh, no, man, no, no, no. Maybe that changes things. The mere fact that I put a spotlight on him and made him a little self-conscious, maybe he's cool from that point on. Maybe that makes it worse. And maybe I decide, you know what? This poker night ain't worth it. I mean, I don't know how it would handle it. It would depend on so many contextual variables I don't have, but like, to me, what you've described is the very nature of society. Like of course, as we, perhaps as we grow older, as we grow more intelligent, we become better at manipulating our environment in a way so that we minimize those elements that we don't like and we maximize the elements that we do and we're able to live out Mike Murdoch's dictum to go where you're celebrated and not where you're tolerated. When we're children, we have the least amount of that control and the ideal is to have more and more of that control. So these kinds of scenarios, perhaps they don't pop up as much, but yeah, for the most part, they are unavoidable. Human beings are amazingly diverse in terms of their ability to be petty about a variety of different things and a variety of different places. And even if I'm living in my little commune with people of whatever, the same religion or the same race or the same political views, like we're going to annoy the hell out of each other in a lot of different ways. And creativity, psychological resilience, communication skills, these are how we deal with these things. So let me ask you then, I have an answer to this question and I wonder what your answer is. So in the scenario in which we're in a society all of the same race, hypothetical society and the tension between groups is tension between the genders. So there's this thing that women are treating men, let's say, as if they're all potentially dangerous. And the men really have a problem with that because it's like a systemic cultural thing. What to do? Is this how to deal with cultural issues like that that you think are significantly affecting how you experience the world? My answer I just discovered is move. If you have the opportunity to find a better culture, move, what do you think? Yeah, so if we have a society where all the women feel like they're dangerous. Hypothetically, hypothetically. Sure, sure. I'm working with it, all the men, all the women feel like the men are dangerous and stuff like that. I don't even have to say what I think should happen. I'm gonna tell you what will happen, okay? Some of those guys, man, are gonna really, really develop some serious songwriting skills. It's true. Some of those guys are gonna write some flowers, they're gonna write some poetry out of this world. Some of those guys are gonna dig deep into their souls and come up with some of the most amazing display since the creativity you've ever seen. And they will find a way, it may not be easy, it may not be overnight, but they will find a way to speak the love language of at least some of those women and be able to bridge the gap. Okay, you've demonstrated, I made a very bad analogy because that's exactly what would happen. Better, let's just say it's- Let's find one that works, so I wanna speak to the court. Yeah, let's say it's the tall people. The tall people have this experience. Yeah. So the tall people feel like the short people are dangerous and they were in the distance themselves. The tall people feel like all the short people are treating them as if they're dangerous. So it's the short people who have this bias. Yeah, yeah. Which may be true. Yeah, so I think something that the hypothetical presupposes is that it's possible for groups to be divided. We have to accept that as the primaries of the scenario. And I would say if we just extend that primaries, we should expect the short people to be divided and amongst themselves and what they think the proper response should be. And the tall people should be to be divided amongst themselves about what they think the proper response should be. I believe if there is anything human beings are incapable of, I've seen no evidence of it is being completely monolithic. Like, we are terrible at that. Now we're good at thinking the same way when it comes to arriving at lazy conclusions and stuff like that. But separate the Christians and the Muslims. Go into a Christian church. You don't need longer than a couple of services to see the gossip and the drama. Boil it down, just join the choir and associate with no one in church but the choir. It won't take long to see the drama amongst the people in the choir. Oh, boil it down. Just the people in the choir who are the lead singers and directors. It'll take long to see the tension and the conflict between them. I think built into the very nature of human interaction is a propensity towards disruption and disagreement. And people will splinter off in different ways and experiment with different ways to not just bridge the gap out of some belief that it has to happen, but like if there's an ideology that says don't associate with those people just like our ideologies about God and politics like generations grow up and they question that and they disagree and they challenge that and they experiment and they explore. Like, unless you've got some kind of violent system that is punishing people for the expression of curiosity for exploring, for meeting up in secret, for deviating from the mainstream philosophy and stuff, there's no way you'll be able to keep them apart. It may not blend into a perfectly integrated homogenous environment, but there's no way you're going to stop a short and a tall person from helping each other out with something at some point and then boom, it's gonna be broken up. So do you think that that story plays out in the history of the States that this is kind of just an inevitable falling from the institutionalized segregation to a much less segregated, at least from the political level society? Do you think that that's just kind of something that's gonna happen? Because I mean, we've experienced and obviously not monolithic, it's not like there's the white group and the black group but we've experienced all throughout history groups based on parts of their identity, where it's their skin color, their religion, whatever it is, do face systemic problems that significantly affect their experience of the world, being minority groups in a population? I still don't quite see what the way of dealing with that is, I'm saying, is it part of the story of how groups interact that eventually they mingle together and it results in less discrimination just because you can't really forcibly separate them? I think I'm still wondering what's going on. Yeah. Yeah, I'm not sure I understand but I don't think voluntary association and disassociation is a problem that needs to be dealt with. I believe it's one of the most important freedoms that we have. I believe it's the basis for all the goodness that exists in human interaction. Now, forced segregation, forced integration, well, that's a different thing. And I believe that the examples that we have, a segregation being a problem, either implicitly or explicitly, it's been propped up by the state or artificially insulated from consequences by the state. I don't think it's sustainable apart from that. But I don't think that if you leave people to their own devices, they'll become like perfectly homogenized or anything along those lines. I think people will sort themselves out in a way that will be characterized by spontaneous order. And I don't think it'll be evenly distributed but I think people in general tend to behave in a way where they have a preference to be around their own tribe and things along those lines. But you'll always have outliers. So when you think back to the 1940s, you would identify the political segregation as a problem. Are you saying that you don't think the psychological racism or the voluntary segregation is a problem? Wait a minute. We agree that the political segregation was a problem. Yeah. So in addition to the political segregation, I think you had much greater prevalence of actual racist ideas. I think that's why you had political segregation is because those ideas were more generally accepted in the society, which means they're more generally accepted in the government. So I'm saying, do you think that individuals having prejudices of against people of different races is something that is negative? Or are you saying that it's not even your position to say whether it's negative or positive? I get what you're saying. So first of all, I think it's simplistic to say that we had political segregation merely because or primarily because the dominant attitude was that segregation was good. Because if that's true, why do you need the political element at all? Right? You only need law to enforce things that people are naturally inclined to rebel against, right? It's like saying drugs are illegal right now or whatever, because everybody just kind of agrees that it's a bad thing to do or what have you. Really? Why do we need the law then? Everybody kind of agrees that you look both ways before you cross the street. We don't have to make people do it. Everybody kind of agrees that you don't cut people off in line. We don't need a law for it, right? Sometimes we fight about it, sometimes we get it wrong. But the things that we agree on, the things that are social norms, the things that we do, we don't have to hide behind laws. Wherever we have to threaten people with violence. Well, what about something like gay marriage? 30 years ago, it seems like it was not even on the table. I mean, I might be wrong about this, but it seems like there was a public shift of opinion before there was the political shift. Yeah, so, okay, but at the heart of that, right? At the heart of that is someone saying, this thing is wrong and definitely being able to convince enough people to take their side and then saying, wouldn't it be great if we use the threat of violence to squash those who disagree with us, to render powerless those who disagree with us? And what I'm saying is without that element or in a system where people's ability to exploit that element is weakened, then the fact that the people think that way is pretty weak. I think one of the causes, I'm not sure how you rank the relative weight of causes here, but I think one of the causes of the gay marriage shift is because of a kind of very rapid cultural, intellectual, philosophic shift that happened just really in the past few decades. And I don't think that was, I think that the reason that we saw the Supreme Court ruling is because the public's ideas had already shifted. And I think it's the same thing, again, I wasn't around at the time, I think it's the same thing that happened to civil rights movement, that the reason the civil rights movement didn't happen in 1890 is because there wasn't the public, the public's ideas hadn't changed enough. And then as time went on, that the general idea changed and suddenly the government policies are out of date and then they changed. Yeah. Yeah, sure, so in a system where the overwhelming majority of people are all in agreement with one another, that statism is the way, that the monopoly on violence is legitimate, then if that's the foundation, then the majority of people based on the culture will have the greatest influence on how violence is used, agree, right? So if violence is used to stop this group of people from doing that, as the culture shifts, while the foundation of violence remains the same, then the culture says, hey, let's stop using violence this way and let's use it in a different way. So yeah, I agree with that. My contention however, was if you remove the violence, the things that are propped on it fall away. So I mean, how would I put this? You know, I think you would agree with me with that when it comes to gay marriage, that the real solution is, hey, government has no business being involved in it in the first place, right? Marriage isn't a government created institution. It's a religious idea, whether people like religion or not. It's a sacramental idea. It's a ritualistic idea for those outside of religions, whatever. But it's a free market phenomenon. It's a voluntary thing and government has decided to stick its nose into it. And once you stick your nose into something and say, well, will tax people who have this status this way, will give these benefits or exemptions to people who have this status, then you get in the business of defining what the status is of those who will receive your benefits, exemptions, or what have you, then you get all that trouble. I get all that, you know. I don't disagree with the notion that cultural shifts are reflected in the way that we use political violence to achieve our ends. So I agree with you that segregation in the past part of the reason why that was so unchallenged for so long and why it was embedded in the political system is because the majority of people were cool with that. The majority of people thought that was okay. I agree with that. But I also agree that both the politics and the culture have changed significantly. And I also believe that the cultural influence I'm okay with that is quite different from some of the cultural I'm okay with that. I believe if you're interested in winning a culture war, the people who preach segregation, there are black people who do it and white people who do it, they both get buffed, right? Like, I hear white people say things like, why do black people gotta get mad? You know, when we say this, we're just looking out for our own, but white people get mad too when black folks start talking like that. And if you don't believe that that's true, then just go watch some of the videos that I referenced and watch people get angry at that, watch people feel like that's racist. And black people say we need to come out from among them and separate ourselves. So it's really interesting. This actually, it gets into metaphysics because we're talking about like abstractions here. And I'm, I still kind of want to know, I think I know your answer, but when you're thinking about a community of voluntary, voluntarily-assistinating individuals, and one of their policies is we don't want tall people for whatever, because tall people are genetically abhorrent or whatever. Do you not have any negative analysis of that so long as their association is voluntary? You don't look on that and think, what a bunch of idiot, what a bunch of fools? Maybe so, but first of all, I think we're thinking about voluntary communities in a really unimaginative way. We have voluntary communities now. We got plenty of examples, where we can see how we deal with these sorts of things. So, for instance, when I go to church, okay, there are implicit and explicit rules about what forms of expression are not allowed there, right? What kinds of conversations are not appropriate there? And there may be some things I enjoy doing. Maybe I enjoy having a beer or something like that, right? That are not appropriate within that context, okay? And it's okay for me to have a membership of one community where certain aspects of myself are not expressed. Certain freedoms are temporarily suspended because that community isn't the totality of my life, right? Like I'm a voluntary member of many different communities. I'm a member of the gym. I'm a member of the WeWork facility. I'm a member of a lot of different places. So, if there could be a scenario where, hey, I'm part of a basketball league, right? And it's like, hey, this is the sixth, four and under league. You know, there's a world of opportunity for basketball players that are tall, but this is the sixth, four and under league. And we don't let tall people in. Hey, maybe I'll join. Does the league give me what I want? Does the league own me so that I can't go play ball with my tall friends when I want? It depends. It depends on so many variables, but I don't think we have to go into the hypothetical. I think we are living this reality right now. We are all a part of voluntary communities that place all sorts of restrictions on who is allowed there, how we are allowed to express ourselves there, but no one community is required to meet all of our needs. I think this is such a beautiful case for individualism from a metaphysical standpoint and for libertarianism. I mean, it's hard to disassociate the politics with what you're talking about here, that in reality, when you have this many people, you've got to let them associate and disassociate and it's okay. The problem is by forcibly putting groups of people together or individuals together that don't want to be associated. That's the problem. So long as they're not infringing on other people's rights, they're not causing harm in the world. But it's also beautiful, not just on the political, but on the individual end, because I want to make the case for you moving to Tokyo, right? So I love the idea. I love this notion of building voluntary communities that you like based on the principles and the ideals that you hold. And I don't think there's anything wrong with it. When I made the joke before, I said, oh, yeah, I don't like white people. The truth is there's a lot of accurate statements packed into that. Like it's not as, I would love to be part of a society and a community and a group of individuals who recognize that you can have nuanced, rational opinions and say things like that without being labeled as a bad person. Like I don't think me saying that your conclusion was, wow, Steve's a racist, he doesn't like his own people. He's internalized his hatred of his own race. No, what I'm trying to say is I see there are real differences among groups. There really are my own racial group, my own socioeconomic group, my own political group, libertarians in America. And what I want to do is build a culture and a community taking all of the good. And the other part is to leave out the bad parts of culture. Like can't you and I as peers, as individuals say, hey, you know what? There are bad parts of the culture of rural, upstate New York. There's bad parts of black culture in Atlanta. There's bad parts of Chinese American culture. Can't we do that and say, oh, I don't want those parts. I'm gonna pick and choose just the best parts and make my own culture. Get my own community of individuals that support my beliefs. So anyway, I think this is about philosophy because people suddenly, they get, they think that somehow they see your group identity first and say, no, you can't say those things. You can't act that way. You have to act in accordance with the culture that you're born into. Or at the very least, you're not allowed to criticize cultural traits that you see in other groups. And I feel like the profound truth is that if we're all individuals and we're all humans, it's none of your damn business. What cultural traits I value, what cultural traits I don't value, and the kind of community that I want to build. Like let's both be adults about it. Well, I agree with part of that. I'm not sure I'm picking up what you're putting down when you say like, you can't say this, you can't do that. I mean, I'm hard on that kind of speak because I feel like you can say whatever you want. You can think whatever you want. And wherever the world live in means that you understand that there are repercussions that come with having certain modes of expression, you know? You're right. So I want to clarify because you're right. I think all that I'm doing is I'm sending out a signal to two groups of people. The people who disagree with me, I'm really saying screw you. I think your values are wrong. And I'd rather you're not waste your time judging me. And I'm seeing out the other signal to people who agree with me, who like this idea, who like this cultural idea. And I would say, hey, yeah, I want a part of that too. I value that as well. So it's a pitch for all of you listening, yourself included, TK, that Japanese is hard, but it might be worth it because really their culture is great over there. That's funny. You know, it's interesting because I don't relate to, I don't know how you organize, maybe how you organize your life. You seem to start with, you seem to start with kind of a perception of an ideal culture. And it seems to be like maybe place oriented. I'm not sure if I quite get it. So maybe I'll share the contrasting starting point for me, which is for me, my life starts with the endeavors, the creative project, the creative projects, the creative interests that I wanna pursue and be a part of, right? So I have all these different parts in me. There's a part of me that loves to be involved in sports. There's a part of me that loves to write. There's a part of me that loves to take walks and go hiking. There's a part of me that loves jazz. And I like to organize my life around my interests. I have a part of me that loves education, loves motivating people. And so sometimes that leads me to do things, like go to the park, shoot some hoops, go to the trail, do some hiking, sit around a crib, listen to a little jazz, listen to a little Christmas music, have some coffee with my wife, whatever. And my culture is something that kind of organically forms around the places and the people that the pursuit of my interests, my passions and my priority kind of intersect, right? And sometimes that grounds me in certain places. It might be the case that, yeah, I mean, LA is so perfect for me, right? Cause I got a lot of bookstores and I got a lot of hiking trails and there are a lot of people that are really into music out here, there's a lot of life there. So it may be the case that there's a place that captures a lot of that. And I discovered that through trial and error and I settled down and I say, hey man, I love living in this place more than any else. I can get that. But for me, I still have much use for people who radically disagree with me about certain things politically. Like some of those people, I can have some really fun arguments about LeBron James with. And I want them in my life for that reason alone. I've got some people that I disagree with on very important issues, but they make really good music recommendations and that's the only role they play in my life. They're part of my culture. They're part of this very eclectic culture. I'm not sure if I want or I need or I'm pursuing a community where everybody kind of thinks this or that way about race. I'm pretty much about, hey, you leave me alone and I'll leave you alone, save where we enhance one another's joy. Yeah, it sounds like this is like an emergent, kind of an emergent perspective versus like maybe a more rationalistic one or you're kind of starting with particular rules that you like and behavior that you think should be normal in my circumstance or you just, so you find yourself in scenarios, you have these values and activities and your kind of culture emerges from that or my perspective. I didn't realize this until experiencing it. My wife Julia had the same thing where it's like you observe the behavior of even strangers and say, oh, that's a better way of doing it. Like I wish that were a social norm is when you're on the subway not to leave trash places. I had this experience in Tokyo, true story, where I was eating peanuts and you're like not supposed to eat food or whatever on the train. And I've been a bunch of trains all over the world and if you drop a peanut, it's not a big deal. It's just, you don't even think about it. It's like, whatever, it's the ground. It's like dropping a peanut out on a piece of grass. It's like no big deal. But there, in only a matter of weeks, you pick up that the overwhelming expectation of you and your behavior in public is to clean up after yourself. That there's a city of 40 million people and you are responsible for your trash. They don't have a bunch of trash cans in Tokyo because the social expectation is you put your trash in your pocket so you take it with you. So I dropped the peanut and I felt this sense of existential dread that was like, oh no, I better clean that thing thing up. Like that's, I don't want other people to have to deal with cleaning up my mess on the ground. And it was just organic that you get that sense being in a community like that. And that's the type of thing was like, oh yes, that's better. That's much better than the Atlanta Metro System or the DC Metro System, which people treat like crap and the people who are working there treat each other like crap and we treat each other like obstacles here, going over there and getting the experience of a radically different way of doing things. I really found superior and so desirable and such a better way of living. Like you could write out the rules and the expectations at least for how the Japanese treat strangers. I don't know, it might be different if you're actually born Japanese. I think you have a lot of different expectations put on you but being a foreigner there is like, man, this is the rule set that I wanna live by. Yeah, and it sounds like that rule set is your greatest priority. And with anything that we prioritize, we then have to compensate by getting creative for some of the other things that are not made readily accessible by the limitations that come with our priority. So maybe for me, I spent a lot of time at the theater. I spent a lot of time at the library. Maybe for me, having a place that is cheaper so that I can have more resources available for travel and being near the places where I like to hang out, maybe that's more important. And that requires me to maybe live in a neighborhood where people aren't so picky about dropping a bubblegum wrapper or a peanut on the ground. And I either have to decide that I'm just gonna not care about that or I'm going to involve myself in my community in a way in order to improve it in those areas where it does irritate me or something along those lines. But I think we all have to deal with that but it is interesting. I see your priority being those rules. And maybe for you, that's going to create this tension on this topic of race that we talk about because that's gonna separate you from certain kinds of people. Maybe separate certain kinds of conversations but you deal with it. And we live in a vast world too where we're not just limited to where we live physically. I mean, the world is very digital and we got friends all over. Well, and it's really interesting this point because human psychology is this weird black hole that it goes so deep and it's so confusing because apparently I think what you say is correct. I haven't thought of it in that way but I didn't even know this. I literally didn't even know it until experiencing it. So somehow I have this value system and we all have these different value systems about the expectations that we have for human behavior. And somehow I experienced a world in which people were acting in accordance with that and I didn't even know it was there. Like that is very bizarre to me. Yeah, that's it. You know, another thing too and maybe this is related to how we're inclined to approach topics on race and so forth is I don't feel, I don't wanna use the word entitled but I don't know if I have another way to say it. I don't feel entitled to or I don't have a lot of faith in the possibility of. I don't know what it's like to experience happiness as something that results from me bringing the world into conformity with how I wish it to be. I only know happiness, peace and success as something that results from me working within the context of a world as it's presented to me and figuring out how to creatively negotiate all the things that initially show up as obstacles. So if I walk into a space, somebody doesn't like me for me that's like, of course, isn't that the default? Of course, somebody doesn't like me. Right? Of course. So I gotta get creative. I gotta establish a relationship to my mind that allows me to not be affected by that, enjoy that or get good at navigating environments like that or get good at finding different environments where I minimize my exposure to that or get good at relating to people like that. I don't think it's fair to ask people to be like that all the time or necessarily most of the time because again, I do believe it is important to make sure that we do not position a message of things like resilience and personal responsibility as if it's mutually exclusive with an acknowledgement of systemic oppression. And I don't believe that the acknowledgement of those things is the same things as embracing victimization. But I think that's where a lot of my thinking comes from on things. And I say that without bitterness and I live a pretty happy life. And it's not just like I got nothing but shitty things going on in my life and I find a way to be happy in spite of it. Yes, I do know what the creative process feels like. I do know what it's like to generate a desire result through creativity, through hard work, through persistence, through faith. But the notion that the world shows up in a way that is that the default feels like inconvenience, opposition or rejection. Oh yeah, of course. Is that just a coping mechanism though? Because that's the environment that you've been around your whole life? Or is that something that you, were you to experience a contrast of you getting a base level of respect by virtue of being a human? Do you think he would go, oh, I actually like that more? But I do get that because it's not that I experienced the world in a way where I walk into a room and nobody likes me all the time, right? In fact, I think the ability to see that there are people in a room who do like you, I think that's a kind of skill, a kind of skill that you learn to develop. To see all the beauty that is in the world, it's a kind of skill that takes a lot of effort, meditation, reflection, looking, learning to see, to develop it. So I don't feel like I'm in a situation where I'm never loved by anyone. I'm never looked out for by anyone. I'm never blessed by anything. So my default isn't, I don't mean it in the sense of like, I feel like everything going on is opposing me. But I guess I can say, for any desire or dream I have, or that you have, I find it exceptionally easy to argue, to make compelling arguments for why that's not possible for you and me. To me, that's pretty easy. That's the easiest thing to do. So, like you tell me something that you want, I think I can do better than any pessimist at making an argument for why you don't have the right to want it, why you can't get it, and what all the obstacles would be. That's easy for me. I do wonder though, I believe you, I believe you, but I wonder, because this reminds me of kind of my own circumstance. I think everybody's circumstances growing up is, I did not realize growing up in upstate New York, the spectrum of possible human existence and the spectrum of possible human interactions. And it's mind-blowing, right? Not just your geographic area, but the society, the culture, the time you were born in, there's just innumerable environmental things that radically affect your, inconceivably affect your experience of the world. And it was only after experiencing the contrast, you look back, in my case, do I look back and say, oh, I didn't like a lot of those things. If I had a choice, I wouldn't wanna be around those things. I made it work, I could cope, but if I had a choice, I wanna go to the beautiful place. I wanna go to the place where literally, the last story, I've kept you longer than intended, but I guess, I'm not surprised. So, this is another true story. So I'm there, we're there, right? And it starts raining in Tokyo. And this is, I really just infatuated and loved this country and this city. And I'm out, it was the day that I got an interview with a Buddhist monk. And I think I was in Osaka or something, which is not Tokyo. It's the other big city, farther south. And it starts to rain and I'm waiting for a bus. And there's an old lady who doesn't speak any English, who comes over and is also waiting for the bus. She has an umbrella and she sits down to me, a stranger, a gaijin, big six foot four white guy, doesn't speak any Japanese, and she holds her umbrella, she sits next to me and covers me with her umbrella, covers both of us. So this is this old lady, probably 80 years old, who's like, and we have this connection. And I try to say, Sayaka, thank you, I don't speak Japanese. And she was, I assumed saying like, you know, here you go, I don't speak English. And yet we had this beautiful interaction between total strangers. And she treated it like it was no big thing. Now for me, that was like, mind explode. Wow, what, this is amazing. I want this. And now that I have the choice, because my wife and I, we don't have any kids yet, we have the opportunity, I don't, I have, it's hard for me to think that people wouldn't just see that as being a better system than one of adversity, in which on every corner, everybody's crappy to you. And, you know, you've got to deal with all these obstacles. And it's, it ain't like there's not obstacles in Japan, of course. It's just that there are some, there's a, it seems like the base level is higher in other places and other cultures and other countries, maybe. And for you, you're saying, it's a nice story, but you're saying, eh, a bunch of softies there. Like, I mean, when I hear you say that, there's a part of me that's like, yeah, I think I've had some experiences like that. But then there's another part of me that's like, I guess that's cool. You know what I mean? Like, it doesn't make me feel like, oh, I got to get over there. I mean, hey, look, I like passion too. I like art making, I like intensity. I like NBA Finals game seven energy. I like World Series game seven energy. Like, I like that kind of energy too. I like the energy of builders, the energy of creators, the energy of people who want to spark a revolution, the energy of people that want to shake things up. And I like being around those types of people too. Like, I don't know if what I can get in Silicon Valley or what I can get in my startup communities. I don't know if they, if they give it to me like that, maybe so. But sometimes the tension that we see, the drama that we see, that is expressive of a fighting spirit, you know? That I think is unique to our country and there's something about that that's beautiful and that I like. And there are some things that come with a lot of drama, but man, I love them. But I'll tell you what kind of community you can find for me that will make me go. Okay, no matter what else I have going on. You find me a community where I can fit all of my books and where nobody can find me. Everybody will leave me alone. Nobody will call me. Nobody will be saying, hey, I'm in town. Find me a place that's so far away, nobody will be flying through there and I can just disappear. It's been all about reading my books. Find me that kind of community. I'm gone, I'm ready. I can't tell you where it is because then you'd show up and it wouldn't be private anymore. All right, man. Well, this as always has been an awesome conversation. What we've talked about right now is platonic. It's all out there. It's ideas, it's kind of abstract. But the concrete scenario in the States is I would say bad and getting worse. Like I don't think that we're in a good, I don't think race relations in the US are very good right now. Yeah, you know, I feel like sometimes progress can feel like regress when you've got a lot of things underneath the surface that are bad and unhealthy that have never been exposed when you're accustomed to a kind of false piece or a kind of lazy comfort. Maybe an everyday example to begin with would be, let's say that all you do is sit on a couch. You never get out there, you never work out, you never move your body. You just sit on a couch, take the elevator all the time. You work from home, sit at a computer, whatever. And when you start to work out, you feel worse than you ever have, right? You get out there and you start running and you feel like you're going to die and it can be easy to conclude if you don't understand what's going on. Man, things are getting worse. I went from feeling super comfortable to feeling sick like I'm about to throw up. Oh no, things are getting better because things have been really bad for a long time. But it takes getting off the couch and moving and working your body and facing some resistance to realize that resistance is what exposes what's underneath the surface. And I think this is actually true of most forms of change. Most forms of change means you start by abandoning what was previously a comfort zone in order to enter into a space where it's primarily characterized with the tension of navigating the learning curve, the tension, the embarrassment, the frustration. And then at some point you break through that and now you have a new form of progress. I mean, man, another simple everyday example. Let's take getting a new phone. You get a new phone because there's something about the current one that you don't like. You get that new phone and now you just went from making calls with ease, sending text messages with ease to taking way too long. It's frustrating. It's annoying. Almost makes you feel like you're experiencing some regress. But you're actually experiencing progress. You got a better system. You got a better phone. And you're gonna be able to do more things. But that learning curve, man, getting used to something new when you've been comfortable with something, oh, it's tough. I mean, I've recently made maybe a couple of months ago some dietary changes, some lifestyle changes. And going from eating like crap to eating healthy feels like my life is truly 10 times harder. I have to think more. I have to buy groceries. I have to set aside time to prep food. It takes way more creativity because I can't just like walk into any convenience store or gas station and grab a candy bar. So I gotta be like, what can I eat? What can I eat? What can I eat? Healthy food costs more money. Like in so many ways, my life is harder and I'm doing better than I ever have before. So sometimes progress feels like regress. Now, how does it relate to this? Cause I use a lot of examples that are different. Well, this is one of the things that I do appreciate about what the race realists are doing. I know that's a bad way to start a sentence, but bear with me. For so long, people have been saying, this is an issue, this is an issue, this is an issue. And the debate has been over the existence of the issue. One side, you're hallucinating. The other side, you're not being real, okay? And now what's happening is people are starting to say some things that's scaring people and making people uncomfortable, but I want you to see the progress in it. You got people who are now stepping up and they're angry and they're saying, yeah, you know what? Yeah, I did clutch my purse because you guys are committing all the crimes. Oh, yeah, you know what? You guys are getting a profile because you're the ones that's doing all the harm. Oh, interesting, right? Welcome to the discussion. Welcome to the discussion. You know, I'll give you an example. The other day, the other day, I did laundry. I finished up at about three in the morning, got rid of everything, straightened up, and my wife comes in around like 6.30. She's in the place about 10 minutes after they're being here. We both happen to look on the floor at the same time when we see a black sock on the floor. And we both go, what is that? And I say, I don't know, did you drop a sock there? And she goes, no, I wouldn't do that. I wouldn't leave a sock on the middle of the floor. I'm like, well, I wouldn't either. I'm not that type of person either. We've never had that moment before. And she's like, well, I know I wouldn't do it. And I said, well, I didn't do it either. And she says, no, you had to have done it because I'm not the type of person that would do it. And I said, you know what, fine, I'll take the hit on this one because I did do the laundry. Maybe it happened somewhere there. But I thought I cleaned up pretty thoroughly. And she's like, well, that's what it was. It's you, because I wouldn't have done it. And she walked away kind of rolling her eyes at me for not getting it, that I'm the one who did it. And I kind of walked away sort of rolling my eyes at her for being so passionate about saying, I'm not the type of person that would do it. Like, what is that supposed to be? But you know what I'm glad about, Steve? I'm glad that we didn't have a different conversation. I'm glad we didn't have a conversation that went like this. Hey, love, what is that? What is what? You don't see that black sock on the floor? No. This black sock right here, I don't see anything. That conversation would have been two hours long, very frustrating. And in the end, she would have been worried about me losing my mind and I would have been worried about her being blind. I'm glad we had the conversation that we had where we both were able to look at something and say, that's a problem, even though we had a disagreement about who was responsible for it. You know, you're an MMA fan, you're a boxing fan, I'm a basketball fan, we both like sports. You agree with me when I say that it's more difficult to play a sport against someone that's really good versus someone that's only moderately good, right? If I'm in a MMA fight, I'm gonna have a harder time against Conor McGregor than a more novice fighter. If I'm playing one-on-one in basketball, I'm gonna have a really hard time against LeBron James versus a high school kid who's on the team. But paradoxically, the hardest person to play a sport against is not the one that's really good at it. The hardest person to play a sport against is the person that doesn't agree with the rules, the person that doesn't know what they're doing, right? Because now we plan a game and I call a foul and you're like, that's not a foul. Now you travel and I say, that's traveling. You say, that's not a travel. I say, you're out of bounds. You say, I'm not out of bounds. I would rather play LeBron James because he may not be beatable, but at least he's playable. The person who doesn't agree about the rules of the conversation, they're not even playable. They are neither playable nor beatable. And I feel like for so long, this discussion hasn't been playable because the existence of the problem has been up for dispute because we've lived in a world for so long where people are starting to come out of the closet and they're saying less and less, I don't see color. And now they're saying, hey, why y'all black folks acting like that, right? I'd rather have that, man. I so much rather have that. And there's a lot of anger from a lot of different directions, but this anger didn't come from nowhere. This anger didn't come out of a vacuum. This anger didn't start three years ago. This anger has been underneath the surface and a lot of people have been hiding behind fear, behind political correctness, behind the sensation of being bullied. And now that the fit is hitting the shan and everybody's uncomfortable and arguing and fighting, we're saying things are getting worse. And I say, no, things feel worse, but family, we're finally talking. And you know what? Communication about the stuff we don't like about each other, it's the lifeblood of our relationship, but it's uncomfortable. And that's why we've been avoiding it for so long. But welcome to the conversation, everybody. It feels like crap and it's better than it's ever been precisely because of that. Don't let that false piece of the past fool you. Just to be clear, so you're saying that with the existence of the race realists, it's now a sign of progress because nobody can deny that that type of racism exists? Not only that nobody can deny that that type of racism exists, but that they are emboldened by the fact that the anger and frustration and concern that they express is more prevalent than any of us have been willing to admit to ourselves. And you got to understand for every one spokesperson, there are 100 people underground that don't possess that courage or that ability to articulate, but they're listening to that spokesperson, they're saying, yeah, yeah, make that point. So you think that there is a race realism problem and not just like the race, like not just with the political system, you'd say that there's actually more race realism out there that is the invisible sock. Well, okay, so this takes us back to something that I'm not sure if you ever got clear on in the beginning of our conversation, but what I feel is that the thing that has been referred to throughout history as racism, that that thing has always been something that has felt itself to be on the right side of the argument. This whole idea of like, I'm colorblind, I don't even see color, I don't even notice any difference. That's kind of like a newer, rarer phenomenon. See that I feel like is a caricature of real color blindness. I don't think there needs to be mutually exclusive to say, hey, I'm colorblind in my evaluations of people and why y'all acting like that? Like I don't actually think those things are mutually exclusive because one is a statement about group averages and the other is a statement about how you evaluate individuals. Yeah, but if all that is meant, and okay, so there's a difference between how we might define or describe our colorblindness in a philosophical conversation of this nature and how that sentiment often gets expressed in response to observations that other people might make about color, right? So sometimes the colorblindness philosophy gets expressed as I don't see color, why are you still talking about it? I don't see color, I don't see color, and you see it, so sounds to me like you're the problem. Okay, I see what you're saying. And see, I can't speak to this because I'm not on the other end of it, but I view that as a, I would see that as a kind of a character, but you're saying that people who are call themselves colorblind actually act in the sense where they don't acknowledge that race is like an existing thing whatsoever, not that in their personal evaluation, I don't care what your skin color is, but rather it's literally not even a problem, so what are you even talking about? Sometimes it's expressed that way, but also let's not debate the legitimacy of saying I'm colorblind if all we mean is the uncontroversially innocent contention that I prioritize the evaluation of people's character over their skin color, right? Like I don't know anybody that disputes that, the innocence of that, so let's not dispute that, but I think it is telling, interesting, worth inquiring into why you hardly ever hear people of color talk about that, right? I mean, in the sense of describe themselves that way, and while I'm not saying is wrong, here's what I'm saying, like sometimes it's an expression of a lack of self-consciousness about one's identity in relation to color, I'll put it this way, I'll say that you are self-conscious to the degree that you experience your attributes as a contrast to the perceived norm. If I go to a party and it seems like it's evenly distributed or slightly guys are the majority and there are some ladies there and so forth, I'm not really conscious of myself as a guy, I'm just a person, I'm just there. I know in theory that I'm a guy, but I'm not conscious of myself as a guy. On the other hand, when I, if I go to a party or to an event and it's all women there, I am conscious of myself as a guy in a way that doesn't characterize my normal existence. So you probably don't spend most of your time being conscious of your whiteness and I'm not saying you ought to be, okay? But if you came to Chicago with me and went to my dad's all black church, a few hundred people there, from the moment you walk in, no matter how they treat you, you will be very conscious of your whiteness. You will experience yourself as a great contrast to everything you're looking at around you, okay? And there is a way of looking at the world, a way of hearing people, a way of expressing yourself, a way of processing experience that is unique to experiencing who and what you are as a contrast to the perceived norm. I'm not even saying you should seek that experience out. But what I am saying is when you listen to the race realists taught, they are speaking from a place of being conscious of their whiteness, okay? And some of that is based on fear, like, oh, we're at risk of becoming a minority, right? So some of that because of like anger, like, hey, I'm tired of being called this and stuff like that. There are a lot of different reasons behind it, but that is an interesting element to have in the discussion because the discussion for so long has been between a group of people or groups of the people that have self-consciousness about or have a sense of racial identity and a group that's kind of like, what are you talking about? You know, I would say it's probably not an unsafe bet to say that most white people in this country have at some point kind of like wonder to themselves, like, why do certain people like talk about race so much, man? You know, like every comedian, every TV show, like it's so interesting because I just think that's such a different experience. And it's, there's something valuable about having that consciousness enter the discussion. There are things we can gain. It's not just this notion that the race realists represent the majority of what whites believe, but the race realists also force for those who lack this consciousness of a racial identity, having to contend with people that are the same race as you saying, hey, Mr. Colorblind, hey, Mr. I don't see myself as a color. Yes, you have whiteness, it's part of your identity. That forces someone like you to address that, to think explicitly, you know, by someone in your own race to think explicitly about it in a way that's different from the challenge that a black person might make. Now I can't speak for other people who would call themselves Colorblind. I still like that term. I would call myself Colorblind, but it sounds like what I mean by that term, something very different than how you're using the term and maybe how other people use the term. But I know in the conversations I've had with people who I think share of this mentality that I have, it's not about literally not recognizing race. It's not about even seeing that it doesn't affect people's experience of the world. It's about your judgments that you have towards individuals. And it really is a thing, like judging people based on their skin color and not based on their content really is a thing. What the Colorblind people that I've engaged with, all we're saying is like it's not, we're of a point now, maybe not like our grandparents or our great grandparents where that's a really big factor in determining your evaluations of individuals is their skin color. That doesn't go into the equation or the extent it goes into the equation it's virtually nonexistent. And it does feel like a lot of people who are more conscious of race, it is a factor. Like it is much more of a factor than it is for I would say people like myself. So I like the term Colorblind, but the way that you're describing it, I would not call myself Colorblind. I would just be ignorant and silly and naive and incorrect. Yeah, so let me be careful because I like precision too, and I care about words too, but I believe there are two dimensions to the role that our use of words play in communication. The first dimension is, hey, what are the lexicons tell us, right? Like what's the etymology of this word? What's the dictionary meaning of this word? And what's my intention? What am I trying to convey? And I believe it is totally appropriate that that one should be able to explain him or herself in this regard. One should be able to defend him or herself in this regard and that one should strive for precision in this regard. And I completely acknowledge that the concept of Colorblindness that you like, that it is a real thing. Black people have used it too. Black people have espoused it. Martin Luther King has quoted for this all the time, right? So it is a thing, it is acknowledged and when that is explicitly stated, I honestly don't know anybody who says that's a bad thing, right, that ultimately you should prioritize who a person is at the core of their being, prior, you know, over their skin color. If somebody is doing right by you, that's what you focus on, not the fact that maybe you don't like their skin color. And if somebody is doing wrong by you, that's what you focus on, not the fact that they have the same skin color as you. I don't know anybody, I haven't debated or discussed anybody who disagrees with that. The second dimension, however, is given the way some words have received a negative connotation because of how they might be used by other people, the things they might be associated with. It's a kind of charged word that if you use, you got to make sure you're ready to do your linguistic judo. It's kind of like the word feminism, you know, if you ever get asked in the Q and A, what do you think of feminism? You better not start off by giving you, giving an answer, right? Like you better get clear on what that person means, what they're asking you and you can't hide behind what you think might be a rock solid dictionary definition of the word. You don't know who you were talking to, what conversations they're having, you know, and so forth. And so I'm not saying, hey, you're not allowed to use that word or hey, you're using that word incorrectly. I'm just saying that you can actually find articles on this where there are examples of people verbally expressing their own color blindness in the form of confusion or shock that this is something that you feel is happening to you. Whether it be like, I wouldn't do that. Why would anybody else do that? Right? So ignorance. Yeah, or, you know, like, I'm not sure if I find your experience plausible, but because I don't really make an issue out of color and I prioritize character over that, why are you even talking about the color part? Let's just talk about the character part, like the color part is irrelevant anyway. And that's something that happens sometimes. And you can feel or think whatever you want about that, don't let me change it, but if you want an accurate flawless prediction of how people will respond for the things you say, come talk to me first, I can help you. That's very helpful because that one, this is just, this is interesting because in all of these conversations, language plays such a key part. We really do are talking about different things. Racism, does it have a big R or a literal R? We kind of mean different things, color blindness, kind of mean different things, discrimination. All of these things are, we're not on the same page here because I knew that racism was a kind of a word that means different things. I didn't realize the color blindness was even, was even on that level. I didn't realize that it was controversial. I thought we were using the Martin Luther definition or talking about that idea of judging people based on the content of their character, not the color of their skin. I thought this was, which is why it's so infuriating when people say, oh, you're not really colorblind. Think what the hell do you mean? I'm not really colorblind. Yes, I really am actually, or 99.9% as much as I can consciously. That's a shame too that it doesn't mean that because that's a brilliant word, colorblind. What you're talking about, I could see be infuriating and an opportunity for people to morally print themselves and act like, I don't know, make themselves feel good or something, but it's like, I don't need race incompetent or literally race colorblind or something like that. Well, there's also another component too where the term has a history of being said and not being lived, right? Hello, Christian Church. Okay, so let me ask you though. So also too, like, you'll have some circles that will hear that as a form of naivete. Some circles will hear that as an attempt to invalidate their experience. Other circles will hear that as, hear that skeptically and be like, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. We've heard this one before, nice rhetoric, you can quote MLK too. Let's see how you live that for a while. So what's the word? What's the word that we can use to describe what Martin Luther King was talking about are just the simple principle that you actually evaluate people as individuals based on their behavior, based on their character, rather than these arbitrary properties. What's that word? So first of all, that's a question I never ask. Like, I don't even like the way that question feels. Like some, whoo. Like that feels so permission seeking, that it feels so powerless. I don't like that question. And I don't like- But you have knowledge about how the word colorblind is used and how the word racism means and all these things. I mean, is there a word that people use in the vernacular that describes the phenomenon I'm trying to explain? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm asking you a question about English. Yeah, I get it. But even when I say, even when I say like, hey, this is how, here are various ways in which this term is understood. That doesn't mean I can tell you, the black guy you work with is the kind of dude that's gonna react that way. He might not, okay? But, you know, if maybe if you went and spoke to an audience of black people and you said that, you will be using a charged term that probably a good chance somebody gonna call you on that. Probably a good chance somebody gonna feel some kind of way about it. And it's just good to be aware of it, good to be conscious of it, even if you choose to use it. But for me, I'm all about this conviction that effective communication is the kind that realizes the goal of the communicator. And it's highly contextual and, you know, which words people will hear me when I say, which words I'm willing to compromise on, that can change with many variables. But look, I think instead of looking for a word, it's like, hey, what's the underlying sentiment I'm trying to express and why? Okay, so for me, why would I even feel the need to tell somebody I'm colorblind? Well, because I want this person to know that I'm not judging them negatively, that I respect their character, right? That almost always it's because you've been accused of being a racist. That's the reason it comes up. So it's like, oh, you're saying something that I'm one of those people that really focuses on race when in reality, that's not how I operate. Yeah, I mean, so, I mean, again, I don't want to legislate your speech, you know, like you go with what works for you. I don't want to be that, I don't want to be like the coach for talking to black folks. But I mean, if I'm talking to anybody, right? And if I'm inclined to use that word colorblind, what I hear underneath it is, hey man, I don't have a problem with you, period. You know what I mean? I don't have a problem with you. Or I do have a problem with you and it is specifically the fact that you're an asshole, okay? There you go, right? I treat it in the same way as anybody else, like again, let's be colorblind, let's take color out of this situation and let's say you're talking to a white person, you know, how would you communicate to that white person that you either respect them or that you don't have a problem with them or that you're not, or that you don't hate them just because they're broke, you know? I may say something like, hey man, I don't care about your income. I don't care how much money you do or don't make, you know? I really don't care, either way, you know? If you want to go play ball, let's go play ball. I think you're the best three point shooter in town and I love to have you on my team. Don't give a damn about your income as long as you can hit those three pointers, we good. Like, what's what? What are we gonna do, you know? And another dimension to that is, I mean, like, if I respect somebody, I'm just gonna tell them, I respect you, man. I like you, man. We're cool, we're good. There's no beef between us. If I don't have anything against you, you know? Like, hey, look, we good. I don't have anything against you. I'm good, you know? So sometimes my wife will come home from work and I'll be on the computer working really intensely and looking focused and looking mad. She'll be like, and she'll be like, hey love, I'm like, yeah, hey, what's up? And she'll say, hey, is everything okay? We good? And you know what, I want her to get it and I stop, I look up, I go, oh yeah, yeah, we're totally good. I'm just in the middle of like the rightness even right now and I'll probably be done like 10 minutes later. Cool, all right. Like just let people know we good or we're not. And the other part of that is, I don't think there's much profit in begging someone to listen to you and begging someone to hear you, you know? If I say I'm sorry to somebody, I'm saying it one time. To say it more than once proves I was disingenuous the first time. You're not hard of hearing, I'm sorry, man. My bad city didn't mean to do that, my mistake, you know? If you wanna keep trying to hold it over my head, at some point this conversation is gonna end. Like I don't believe in begging people to like you, begging people to hear you. At some point, you also gotta be confident. Me, what you say, say what you mean. Put a little pressure on people to try to understand you too. And as Martin Lawrence said, stop it. If they're not. So yeah, it might be that there's not, we don't have one word of language to describe this. And it's interesting, that's the last thing and then I'll let you go, TK. It sounds like when people say I'm colorblind, which I think is a fine phrase grammatically, but maybe that's not what is interpreted is it now has turned into kind of a political statement. It's almost like saying, oh, I'm Republican. I am this one word thing that puts me in this group of other people, rather than explaining yourself as you just said, like I have no problem with you. Like I don't really care about your race. So maybe that's a better way is actually not to find a word because that's like a label of you being part of a group which can then be politicized and the whole effective communication goes out the window. Yeah, I also think trying to find the right word is lazy too, right? I mean, part of being a good communicator is recognizing that you might find a word that works for all your relationships. And then when you talk to your mom, she's bothered by that word. Okay, you talk to your dad, he's bothered by that word. And there are a lot of people out there, they spend so much time trying to find the right word that they're constantly exhausted because they go up to one person and that person says, I'm not black, I'm African-American. Oh, okay, African-American. And then they say African-American and another person say, Hey, I ain't African, nothing. I'm a person of color. Oh, okay, okay. People of color, what do you call it color? Oh, okay. And so now you got, this is what the search for the right word does, you know, just like in all communications with all people, you know, relax, chill, be comfortable, be good intentioned, realize you don't have an obligation to sustain a conversation with anybody that isn't going to give you a chance to learn, to explain yourself, you know, pay attention a little bit before you open your mouth, you know, you know, ask yourself, am I in a situation where I even need to use person of color or black anyway? I mean, you know, maybe I can just say what I want to say directly, man. Like, you know, like, you know what I mean? I just think it's, I think if you look for rules and the right rules, the right labels, it's a way of missing the point and it's a way of being lazy. It's a way of disconnecting from a more fundamental practice, which is learning how to connect with human beings, learning how to dance the dance that is communication. And it might also set yourself up for future trouble because the word, the definition might change just like violence. Now we agree that was the word to describe something and now it's changed and it's been politicized, you know, so. Yeah, absolutely. All right, TK, this has been great. I appreciate it, man. I'd love the conversation. All right, man, it's fine. I look forward to the next one. I think I have a few topics that I like to get into and I do think there are some ones that were in the comments from one of the last ones that we didn't get to, well, somebody wanted to. Yeah, yeah. So I think maybe we can get into some of that stuff too. All right. Thanks, TK. Take it easy.