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Can We Be Actively Indifferent? · Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery

• 0:07
  Speaker A: Welcome to emotional sobriety, the next step in Recovery, with Dr. Alan Berger and Tom Rutledge. You mean I have to go to the bathroom when I'm older?
• 0:16
  Speaker B: Too frequently?
• 0:17
  Speaker A: Well, that's, that's good news because that's my favorite place. Sometimes I could do pretty well with the movies, like the Odyssey, which I've seen a couple times by now.
• 0:26
  Speaker B: Did you like it?
• 0:27
  Speaker A: It's pretty dark, you know, which, like. Because we think of the Odyssey as this rousing adventure. Yeah.
• 0:33
  Speaker B: I was just telling Davey I, I think everything is something I avoided in high school. I mean, it's just like, I, I know it's important. I know there's other stuff, but I thought, I thought I. No, I think she said, you go. You want to go see that movie? I said, well, no, I said, I think I want to keep avoiding it. It's like, you know, I've been. I've been doing this since I was 16.
• 0:50
  Speaker A: It's like, yeah, you're like, that's one of like my proudest achievements is having avoided it this long. Why would I.
• 0:58
  Speaker B: Why would I blow that now? Yeah. No, but I've heard somebody else say they liked it a lot.
• 1:03
  Speaker A: Timeless subjects, like going to war, coming back from war. How do we feel about the war? Can we ever come home again? That's kind of like if you had to put the line of the Odyssey, the one line, or at least this iteration of it, it's, can we ever come home again? You know, is. Is our home the same, you know, because of the things we did? And, you know, you could tell the audience was feeling it or felt the resonance. You know, movies will always reflect the times in which they're made. Are the Allen wrench, those little like L shaped wrenches that you get when you buy. Put together yourself furniture.
• 1:35
  Speaker C: Allen wrenches.
• 1:36
  Speaker A: Yeah, those are Allen wrenches. Do you ever see that meme, the meme from Lord of the Rings where the elf is telling Isildur to throw the ring into the fire? It's like at the very beginning of Lord of the Rings, and it's like the king of men will not throw the ring into the fire. And this is kind of like the, this is the foundation for why everything went wrong is because, you know, mankind would just give up their the is right at the beginning. And so there's. There's a meme where they replace the ring with the drawer where we put all the Allen wrenches when we're done with them. You know, it's just like we've got I. There's so many Allen wrenches I haven't thrown away yet. You think that we have so many. Yeah. Well, how's everybody doing?
• 2:13
  Speaker C: I'm sleeping. I've been getting up at 6:30 every morning, get CC off to school. And I climbed back in bed this morning. I slept for another hour and a half. And I just feel so tired right now.
• 2:24
  Speaker A: My dad used to get me up to help me with my math homework because I was doing poorly in math in high school. And he would read, he'd get home from work and then he would read my chapter that I had to, you know, and then, and then that was the night before, he'd read the chapter of my, of my math workbook and he would. Yeah, he'd wake me up and then.
• 2:43
  Speaker C: Daddy.
• 2:43
  Speaker B: Good dad.
• 2:44
  Speaker A: That's wild, huh? I mean, the things that you guys do is like, you know.
• 2:49
  Speaker C: Well, you know, it's funny. After my dad died, I was never asked if I did homework or not. It was done. It was like everything fell into a black hole. I described that.
• 3:03
  Speaker B: Wow.
• 3:04
  Speaker C: Never. Nobody ever asked. And guess what I didn't do. I got an A plus in alcoholism.
• 3:12
  Speaker B: Well, that's where people say, well, I can't drink because I'm an alcoholic. I go, I'm an alcoholic and I can drink. Man.
• 3:18
  Speaker C: You always find a great way to flip things around.
• 3:21
  Speaker B: It's like, I won't drink. It's much more powerful than I can't drink because it just transfers our victim language to the idea that I can't or somebody's keeping. You know, how many people do we know that get into recovery because they choose to, but then they act like somebody's making them do it.
• 3:40
  Speaker C: It's like, good point.
• 3:42
  Speaker B: You don't have to do this. You can go back, you can go drink if you want to.
• 3:46
  Speaker A: You know, I was thinking the other day about trying to reverse engineer. Like, how did I get to this point? How was I able to build my recovery in essence, you know, like day after day? And it's always thinking about like, well, the way the reason the insanity broke is because the extent of my suffering at the time like that, like, I was just running into this wall of dysfunction day after day after day after day. And it just eventually just broke me. It broke something open and I was able to start changing. But I was thinking like, God, like some people can suffer. Like, I could, I could have let me just put this. Keep the spotlight on myself. I could have suffered another year, five years, 10 years. Like, there's no telling, like how long we run on that hamster wheel. And that's where I. And that's where, I guess, like, you know, that's where the intangible is for me is like, what is the thing that finally brings you back to sanity or that breaks you open? And I just feel like there's no way to put a clock on that. It's different for every person, right?
• 4:49
  Speaker B: It is. And one of the things that's scary when I say. When you said that is because all that time, it's like every day we're just rolling the fucking dice. There's a. There's a. There's a song of Elton John song that, you know, Bernie Chauvin writes all those lyrics. And. And Bernie Chauvin is basically my reason I'm a writer is because of pouring over his lyrics in my childhood. Young, young adulthood is. But he has one, one song that says, how did we get so lucky? Targets on the rifle range. It's like, you know, and who. You know, who goes on to say, you know, who gets. Who gets to. Who gets to choose who gets who's going to win, who's going to lose, you know, but how. The main thing is just how seeing ourselves as looking at all the people we know and, you know, and all the things that we witnessed. And it's like, how did we get so lucky? And we're.
• 5:40
  Speaker C: We.
• 5:40
  Speaker B: We have always been a target on a rifle range, but it's like, you know, so many. We've watched many, so many go down. We're still. We're still. We're still standing, you know, And I just love. I love the way he put that, you know.
• 5:53
  Speaker A: Yeah. Some people made it out of Normandy, Right?
• 5:56
  Speaker B: Right.
• 5:57
  Speaker A: A couple. Well, I've got a daily reflection, and that actually relates to your nutshell, Alan. But should we begin with the nutshell? The ability to speak several languages is an asset, but the ability to keep your mouth shut in any language is priceless.
• 6:14
  Speaker C: I forgot who sent that to me, but it's good.
• 6:17
  Speaker B: Some wise person. That's beautiful.
• 6:20
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 6:20
  Speaker C: Isn't that great? So read it again. That's great.
• 6:23
  Speaker A: The ability to speak several languages is an asset, but the ability to keep your mouth shut in any language is priceless.
• 6:30
  Speaker C: That would be a Tom Rutledge nutshell, I swear to that.
• 6:34
  Speaker B: Well, it's. I tell you what it would be. It would be a Tom Rutledge, but nutshell in the sense that very, very few exceptions, each one of those hundreds of nutshells I've written are. Are to myself. About myself. And it's like. And that's certainly one that I could have written to myself because, you know, keeping. Keeping my mouth shut. I've gotten better at it through the years.
• 6:57
  Speaker C: I just love, though, that one story you told about. Well, the client gave you feedback where you were, just finished a session. I'm just checking every year to see how that session was for you. And the client said, do you think next time I could talk?
• 7:10
  Speaker B: Yeah. Oh, God. I remember her saying that.
• 7:13
  Speaker C: I thought that was. I split a gut when you shared that.
• 7:18
  Speaker B: Yeah. Those are the kinds of stories I tell in my sharing and workshops that people seriously have, on occasion come up and go, like, some of the. I don't think I would share that one.
• 7:28
  Speaker A: You know, talking is absolutely a skill, and being able to project your voice outward and to be clear and to be commanding and to kind of, like, impose yourself somewhat on the world around you, I think is important. I'm lucky in that the work that I do and, you know, kind of my relationships, I found listening to be far more helpful to me. Or it's like, what progress I've been able to cobble together, you know, along the lines of my life that are meaningful. I'll just use my. My job as an example is that I just kind of. I'm. I have to be a sponge a lot of the time. You know, I'm. I'm. I'm this guy's assistant, and I. And also we work in a very small room, and if I was just gabbing the whole time and just sucking up all the oxygen, I mean, I would just be such a pain in the ass. I don't think that job would work very much because we've just really. We need a lot of time, I think. I think stillness and kind of like, the ability to kind of, like, interpret and reflect in between the words is really important. And so. Yeah. And. And then I'll just. You know, you can extend that to, like, rooms of recovery. Like, it's. You learn a lot. Just kind of, like, listening to people and watching things and, you know, just kind of. Yeah. Just absorbing what's around you rather than just always trying to impose your perspective or kind of, like, change the direction of the wind.
• 8:55
  Speaker B: Well, talking about the value of listening and I won't.
• 8:59
  Speaker C: I won't.
• 9:00
  Speaker B: I'll tell the really short version of it here, because I think I told you guys this story recently is the. The time that Didi and I were working in therapy on communication, and one day she said, I want to thank you for that conversation yesterday was really helpful, and I. And I honestly couldn't remember a conversation. And the short version of this is. It's because I didn't say much. You know, it's like I was learning to listen. And what she was thanking me for was not talking, you know, and listening instead. And it's like, it's so foreign to me at that time that I didn't even register it as a conversation. And what you just said is the exact correct correction place to be with that is like, no, this is. This is very. Every bit as valuable as what you're going to project. But if. If we have to choose, probably more valuable.
• 9:51
  Speaker A: Well, it's. I'm learning. I've been going through some stuff, and I really appreciate it when somebody will just sit with me and let me tell them how I'm doing. Sounds like overly simplistic, but like, I just feel like so held in that moment when I could just sit with somebody and just tell them how my. How I'm doing. And it's just made me reflect on how, you know, I think we all need that. I. I think that, you know, for good reason, you know, bloviating or kind of like if somebody's only talking about themselves and all they really seek from contact with others is basically just a receptacle to put their grievances. You know, I think that that's a bad thing, but I think that there's a place that's more center. Center on the spectrum, you know, where. Yeah, you just. And I. And I, whenever I. Whenever I can really listen and dial in, you know, to what. And especially the people that are closest to me dial into what they're trying to tell me. I get a lot out of it, and I get. I get the sense that the. It goes both ways.
• 10:54
  Speaker C: What makes it difficult at times to keep our mouth shut. And I think that that's an important part of this because, you know, we're understanding now, and especially through these years, that we've been exploring emotional sobriety, the importance of not reacting and being able to pause, collect ourselves, you know, use the gap, as Dr. Rollo May said, is to identify all of the possible ways of responding to the situation. And then out of that. Out of that universe is to select something that's going to best or represent the best in us right in that particular moment in time. And the thing that would be most relevant and appropriate to the reality that's going on for that we're experiencing. What I found is that where I get hung up and start to react, because I saw this when I was going to couples therapy, is that as soon as I would be. And this is a. For me, a button I hold out that. That I have. That I want other people to push. For some reason, I think to work through it is what I'm understanding now, but is when I feel that I'm being mischaracterized, and that becomes the greatest challenge for me. You know, like, I was just thinking of this current relationship that's over now, but this person would just say that, you know, I really. I was acting in a way that wasn't showing any consideration of their feelings. And, you know, I see myself as a pretty empathic and. And caring man. Right. And individual. And most of the time, I am. But when that would happen, I would find that there would be a part of me that would almost. That would need. Not almost. That would need to convince her that she was wrong and that I was caring. It was. I was so invested in protecting my image of myself as a caring person. I didn't act very caring. It was so paradoxical to me.
• 13:08
  Speaker B: I don't know about you, but for me, it becomes desperation. I. I feel desperate to do that.
• 13:12
  Speaker C: I did. I felt desperate that I wasn't pleasing that person. It's like. And I remember when I was working with Dr. Kempler, he would say, for a lot of men, the moment they feel that they're no longer pleasing their apartment, they become desperate, just like you said, Tommy, because we feel so emotionally dependent on that person for so many things, and we want them to be happy. We are interested. But it was such a paradoxical reaction. Here I am defending how caring I am, and at the very moment the way I'm acting is not caring at all, and I'm trying to convince someone I'm caring by showing I'm not. I mean, it's. Sometimes I have to laugh at how absurd I could be.
• 13:59
  Speaker B: Yeah. I had a guy one. I had a guy one time yell at his wife who said, you don't love me. He goes, I can't believe you don't know how much I love you is like. Like, I mean, you know, but. But it was exactly what you're talking about. We all do it, or many of us do it. It's like. I think. I think that being. Being the. It's part of the white hat addiction. I think we. We need to. We want to be the good guy, you know? And it's like. And if somebody's telling us that we're not in this scenario, rather than turn in, listen, say, what am I missing? What can I learn here? We really try to. We defend.
• 14:36
  Speaker A: Yeah, right, right. When it's.
• 14:38
  Speaker C: So.
• 14:38
  Speaker A: It's another one of those paradoxes that the way to take back that white hat is actually to absorb the criticism and to. To. To let it kind of pass in and through and to. And then to then try and be attentive in a different way. You're not trying to convince, you know, your loved one that they're wrong. You know, you're trying to. Trying to get to some better, like, higher point of understanding on it so you can change your behavior.
• 15:03
  Speaker B: But, Alan, it's like. It's kind of a reflex, though, isn't it? It's like there's no cognition that goes into that. It's like it's just automatic, man.
• 15:13
  Speaker C: It's so automatic. And, you know, Tom, what you said is something I was thinking about recently, and I think that. That it's worth just pausing for a minute and us looking at it more about. In our culture, when we're growing up, becoming a good person is so emphasized. And I know for me, what you just said was so true, is that there was always this concern, if I wasn't good, it means I wouldn't be loved.
• 15:43
  Speaker B: I mean, that's perfect. The conditional. That's it.
• 15:47
  Speaker C: It is. It set up this whole thing. And so any parts of me or any behavior I had that wasn't, quote, unquote, good became a behavior that I loathed in myself. I hated myself for and rejected that part of me that acted that particular way. It was. It's a very interesting dynamic. It's how just that one concept can really have that impact.
• 16:15
  Speaker A: So what came up for me, one of the things that came up is I just think about, like, my most toxic relationship when I was living in Atlanta, like, more than 10 years ago. It was probably like 15 years ago by now, but I would. When I felt like I was losing ground in an argument or that, you know, or like I wasn't pleasing my partner, you know, just put it in the broadest terms, that's when I would flip out. I would raise my voice. I would, like, punch holes in walls, you know, just because, like, I felt like I was being misunderstood. And then. And then I felt if I just beat my chest enough that, you know, I can make. I can convince her that. That I was right or that I was doing everything I could or whatever some deluded idea I had that, you know, she had it all wrong and. And then all that did was just drove me further and further into the pit. And yeah, I'm just grateful that I've made some progress on that in the intervening 10 to 15 years.
• 17:11
  Speaker B: Well, I want to, I want to, I want to give you credit for being able to name your most toxic relationship. I'm pretty sure if I lied, I don't know that I could do that.
• 17:22
  Speaker A: Well, where I was, where I was the most toxic, I think that's unequivocally I could assess that. I don't know. I can't. I don't know about. I don't know which of my partners was the most toxic, but I know when I was the most toxic. Yeah, I never tire of Joe's beyond belief agnostic musings for 12 Step Life this is for today, July 22nd. When love and hate are both absent, everything becomes clear and undisguised. Make the smallest distinction, however, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart. If you wish to see the truth, then hold no opinion for or against anything. To set up what you like against what you dislike is the disease of the mind. Holy crap, can this be true? If we harbor a preference, have an agenda, or feel strongly about something, then can't we see the truth? What a mind bender. Mindfulness invites us to be open to our sensations and feelings, our thoughts and intuitions, without judging, labeling or steering. This state of letting go may be experienced for a moment, but like holding our breath, the clarity of dispassion is at best fleeting. We don't get life 100% right 100% of the time. The point is to play with the idea of non judgment and improve our mind's fitness. When we do judge, let's not blame ourselves. Rather, let's observe our judgment without labels. If we begin to do cardiovascular exercise on day one, we might only be able to run a single block, but on day two we do one block plus one driveway. Some days we don't do as well as the day before. Some days we don't get out the door. Eventually, after a regimen that's included progression and regression, we can run a 10k run or a marathon. Maybe just being non judgmentally doesn't seem practical while swimming with the sharks at work. That's fine. We can apply different rules of engagement throughout the day. We can be 12 step Buddhists and 9 to 5 capitalists during the big game. We don't have to be open to a world of possibilities. We can root for our team, bitch at the officials when they don't rule in our favor and revel in our opponent's misfortune. How do I feel about these exercises? To seek truth? Is this a way of life for me or something to try out to keep life interesting? Is this relevant, an impossible ideal or something I wish I was better at. If I want to be more non judgmental, maybe I can try doing it for two minutes at a time.
• 19:46
  Speaker C: Beautiful.
• 19:46
  Speaker A: Always a conditioning towards, you know, it's
• 19:50
  Speaker C: such a wonderful concept. And you know, we talk about that. Obviously the Buddhists talk about non attachment all the time and not being attached to anything. And as, as the state Stoics are very similar, aren't they?
• 20:05
  Speaker B: Right? Yeah. The word, the word we use so often is, is this is shocking to people that because we want to make it a negative is. I was thinking what Joe wrote there is like the power of indifference. And you know, indifferent. Indifference does. We put a negative connotation on it. But indifference is. I always think that if I think about my higher power or you know, some part of my spiritual connection, always I think of those entities or that energy as indifference because. Because they don't attack. They tell they were. I get reminded of what I need to do regularly. But when I don't do it, I, I never get the judgment. You know, they don't come busting in the door the next day when I've been procrastinating for six weeks. And what the is wrong with you? Why don't you get out of the bed? They just come back in and give me the same, hey, you need to get moving if you want to get this done. It's. And that's based in indifference. It's like it's there. I always tell people your higher power is not dependent upon you, your success. You know, your higher power is fine regardless of what you do. Their high powers there to love you. And you know, and yeah, I love, I love the fact that. Well, I like things. Of course we like this because the nutshells are all that. And Joe does a lot of that, which is just get you to think about words in different ways, you know, shake you up a little bit. So, so yeah it's. And Joe, Joe says a great writer
• 21:34
  Speaker C: anyway, you know, I, you know what, When I was thinking about this from my own personal experience, I don't know if I can be not attached. I can be open. But I don't, I don't know if I ever get to that place of not having any kind of an orientation or bias. I mean I don't know if that's a possibility, to tell you the truth. You know, the way I understand the way that we're wired from a psychological point of view is that through our development, we're not passive creatures. We're actively organizing our experience, our environment. We're giving meaning to it. And to say I suspend that seems to be an impossibility. I have to be a blank slate right now. I think I can get to the point of being open to. Is contrasting a new idea to where I'm at, into what I think about something. I've been able to do that, but I don't think I cannot have any orientation or any kind of investment in a position.
• 22:50
  Speaker B: Well, you make a good point because I think this is where our. Our brains getting too involved, where we're. That's very dangerous because we could judge ourselves. It's like. I think. I think when we talk about goals like that, like. Like detached, being more detached, it's like it's a direction. It's not because. Because I don't trust somebody who says they've got it, you know, right on. And you.
• 23:14
  Speaker A: And would you. I mean, and somebody who truly holds no strong opinions. I don't think that's somebody I want to spend too much time with. It's. Yeah, it's not a fixed thing.
• 23:24
  Speaker C: I think even not having an opinion is an opinion. I mean, it's a weird thing. I don't think it's a possibility. I think what Tom just said. I hope everybody hears this. When we talk about these things as things like, let's say, surrendering our hobbling expectations. Wow, that's a wonderful idea. It's a great thing. Don't expect tomorrow. You're not going to have any.
• 23:48
  Speaker B: Right.
• 23:48
  Speaker C: See, it's almost like that same thing as we're talking about now. Belief being an expectation about how things are and the way life looks and what meaning we give to it. I don't believe we can spend this. This guy Kelly, who was a psychologist, had this idea of theory. I think it was called. I can't remember now, but it was this idea. Here's the concept. I can't remember the title he had on, but he said that we are always generating theories about life and about us and our experiences and trying to explain things because we are meaning generators. We approach something and we give meanings to it. And that's why what we've been talking about from emotional sobriety perspective is be aware of the meaning you give to something because it helps you understand where you're at in your development. If I give a situation, if I take that situation personally, if I interpret as meaning something about me that reflects where I'm at psychologically and developmentally.
• 24:53
  Speaker B: Alan, you just said something that's so important to this is because before we begin, I'm speaking for myself, but before we begin this or I begin it, it's like, I don't know that piece. Is it something I don't. It's. I can't know her because I don't know it. Like, like herbs is. It's like, like that I am. I am the meaning generator. It's like so much of our work is just helping ourselves, reminding ourselves that we are the ones who, who are responsible for who and who decide on meaning and as opposed to just having meaning on its own. And that empowers us to be able to make changes. It's like so often people. I mean, it's. And it's. And it's not, it's not an insult because before we learn this, it's just like we assume, you know, a fender bender is a bad thing. You know, you know, somebody, Somebody, somebody, you know, being upset with me is a bad thing. You know, whatever it happens to be is like there's other. There's so many other ways to look at things, and that's, that's what we're teaching.
• 25:59
  Speaker A: You know what this makes me think of just a practical world, real world example is I gotta drop the T word. It's more so than I think the way that Trump is tied to any ideological thing. It's. It's just the, this, this intense divisiveness surrounding him for or against that, like, we've come to understand is like, that's why we don't bring up Voldemort's name at the luncheon, is because it immediately puts us into some kind of judgment, you know, whether that we really like him, you know, or really we really don't like him. And so you just. It's verboten. You just kind of leave it off the table. But, like, you know, I've definitely, I've definitely had instances with people, especially around like, AA and stuff, where there's like a Trump person that I am. I would like to try and kind of reach across the divide and kind of like, maintain some connection with. That doesn't mean I want to talk politics with him, but I need to temporarily suspend my judgment or to kind of like to. Yeah. To play this kind of like, mental exercise that Joe is referring to here in the book in order to stay cool and and, yeah, and I feel like that's. They've been, like, one of the defining, you know, can we suspend judgment? Should we suspend judgment of this. Topics of our era, figures of our era?
• 27:24
  Speaker C: You know, look, I. I don't want to turn this into a political show.
• 27:29
  Speaker A: Oh, neither do I.
• 27:30
  Speaker C: No, but. No, but. See, it's interesting, and please don't misinterpret what I'm about to say, but I am truly believe that he believes what he is doing is best for America, and so do a lot of people. You see, this hearkens us back to a very early time and in American history, right? Where we were exactly what Trump is trying to make this country into. It was so focused on capitalism, on our own country. We were very nationalistic in our own way. You know, we saw that we had a right to ex. To, you know, project our power into the world and to change things and to change countries. And, I mean, so there's a whole group of people that are saying, that's what America is. For me, we evolved in a different direction, or I evolved in a different direction, but for a lot of people. Look, millions of people voted for him, right? So obviously, their idea of what Trump was talking about resonated with something inside of them that said, this is where our country is about. Because, you know, when people see him behave the way he does, like we say, how can you be surprised? Of course he's going to be acting this way. He didn't hide the fact of who he is. He showed us who he was loud and clear in his first presidency. How he acted in that presidency is. It's maybe a bit more, you know, what exaggerated at this point in time and more blatant and stuff like that because of some of the positions he's taken. But it's no surprise. And when I grab ahold of that, you know, I can see we're on the same page in that I love this country, too. I want this country to be the best it can be. But I have different ideas of what that looks like, and they have certain ideas of what that looks like, and that's where our ideas are different. But in one way, the way I've started to try to get to that position, Patrick, because I think that the divisiveness is not just what they're doing. You see, I think that that's us projecting our responsibility.
• 29:47
  Speaker A: Interesting.
• 29:48
  Speaker C: Yeah, isn't it? Isn't it? When. When I say that, because everybody blames what Trump is doing on the divisiveness, I don't think that's right. I think it's that same problem of me projecting. I'm divisive. I cannot find a way to reconcile what's going on with my own beliefs because I think I am right, damn it. And. And I don't need to be right to be able to see that we're on the same page and that if I strive to find a way to stop the divisiveness in me, I'm contributing to ending the divisiveness in this country.
• 30:23
  Speaker B: Right. Okay. Okay, Watch this trick. I'm going to bring us back to our subject from the. Using that is meaning making. One of the issues I would argue about and probably have written about in the past about politics even, is the idea that we all fall into a category at some level of belief of thinking meaning has. There's an objective sense of meaning. This means this at some place. It's like. Because what we're talking about is no, the. The healing is in no understanding that we can change that if we want to. We can. We can change a bit of it or not. And so. Which basically would open our minds to listen to other people's perspective because, you know, in the big. In the big strokes, we're not going to agree with somebody that's radically on the other side of something like that. But when we listen, if we actually listen to the conversation, I mean, just Marshall Rosenberg, I mean, if you haven't read, you know, what is it? What is nonviolent communication by Marshall Rosenberg? Read it and listen and listen to him on. On audio talk about it. Because this man is an absolute genius. It wasn't. And I wish he was still here with us today. Being able to find the peace in the midst of just tremendous. I mean, I don't. I mean, when I hear him do it, it seems simple, you know, simple, not easy. But it's like it's, It's. We have to find a way to be in. Both of you have used this term more open, not just demanding that they be more open.
• 31:56
  Speaker A: Yeah. And. Yes. And that process Alan described was also a way of. It was a way for you to get to a deeper understanding of your own position or your own. You know, and in a sense, you were. You were stress testing or you're interrogating your own beliefs, but you needed to be open to the other. The other side's beliefs in order to kind of fully understand, you know, what it is you were looking at. Yeah. You had to kind of suspend judgment temporarily and kind of like, let, Let the poison in to kind of get it right.
• 32:31
  Speaker C: Well, you know, you know, what happened is I started from the position, which I wish I could do more often, is that I'm okay and they're okay, that they're not evil. And I'm not saying there aren't evil people. I think some people are evil, but they're having a view of the world that they think is the right view. It's different than mine. Extremely different than mine. You know, I really. I believe, and one of the founding principles of this country, that all men are created equal. And I also believe that our. That our. The doors of our country need to remain open because what's made us such a great country is our diversity is, you know, what does Statue of Liberty stand for? You know, send us those that are oppressed, those of you that are. I mean, it's. It's really one of the values that our country has held for so long that I respect so deeply, because I'm. I feel like I'm one of those people. Right. In some way, I identify with those people that. Well, and my family did come. My mom's family came from Italy. They were waps in Ellis island without papers. Right. That's what they would call the Italians that showed up that didn't have, you know, papers to come into the country. And they were welcomed. Thank God they were. And I just see that on all the years. And it's so interesting, too, when you go back. Every one of those groups that immigrated to the United States, the Irish, the Chinese, the Japanese, the Italians, the Polish, every one of them met so much bias. I mean, they really did. They were. They were castigated. They were. They were seen as less than human. I mean, it's such an interesting dynamic, the mass psychology that takes place in terms of accepting other people that are different than us. It becomes such a challenge. And so it's no surprise, the divisiveness, because it's been existing in our country
• 34:35
  Speaker B: forever and it exists in all of us. And the debate of no you, no you, no, you is. And before we finish, I wrote this, this question down when I was listening to both of you talking about. About this before, earlier today. And I think this may even be part a question to lead us into part of at least solution thinking is, is the question is, can I be actively indifferent? Because. Because you're saying because it's not our nature. Not, not at least not in our Western culture. It's not. Yeah, but to listen to people.
• 35:11
  Speaker C: You reframed it as indifference, Tom. Because that's really a great description of it is not to be attached to anything, is really being indifferent about it, allowing it to stand and be what it is.
• 35:24
  Speaker B: It leaves us open to learn.
• 35:26
  Speaker A: Well, and I learned from watching a lot from watching both of you guys. But, Tom, you had a political blog. I've read some of it. It's really good, from the Bush years. And you've taken your lumps. As far as all this goes. I mean, active indifference is hard fought. And you come by it honestly.
• 35:45
  Speaker B: No. Yeah. No, I've been. I've been under fire for sure.
• 35:49
  Speaker A: And then Alan literally has been under fire.
• 35:51
  Speaker C: So.
• 35:51
  Speaker B: Alan, Alan. Alan knows something more about than we will ever know about the front lines.
• 36:03
  Speaker C: Sam.