Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / "Did We Go Too Far?" with Brigid Delaney

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"Did We Go Too Far?" with Brigid Delaney · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

0:00
Get a humans happy festive season it where we've done it. We've done it haven't we this is it it's almost the end of 2021
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Wasn't as good as we thought it was gonna be at the end of 2020. I think everyone was like oh this pandemic has been terrible
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And while we glad it's over vaccines are coming
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When bam thank you ma'am few months will be out of all this and then delta
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And now I'm a crom but maybe I'm a crom will be okay look I'm not gonna talk about that again
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I'm gonna talk about bridge bridge Delaney who's a columnist for the Guardian Australia
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And is one of those rare
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people who
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Who I love because she's willing to say things that are gonna alienate her side of politics or the other side of politics
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And she's gonna say them without fear or favor
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I hadn't realized until we had this conversation that that might partly be due
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To her fascination with stoicism
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I wanted to talk to bridge it about the Australian experience of the pandemic and lockdowns and human
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And the in the overreach of some Australian police and the whole campaign in America about Australia has fallen and just what to how to think as we are emerging
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Now I sound like someone who I was just criticizing from 12 months ago who was getting prematurely optimistic about the pandemic being over but assuming that we are now emerging from the pandemic
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I want to sort of look back on it with someone who is non-partisan and assess Australia's response
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And yet bridge it so much more interesting than that because she does think about sort of how we should want things
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Whether we should want things in a stoic sort of Buddhist sense how we might find more contemplation in our lives
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And how we might reach across the island understand each other a little bit more
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There are still
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Some questions available for might ask me anything episode
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Some great contributions so far, but I'm sure you've got a question
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I'm sure you've got something you're noodling on that you've been meaning to get around to emailing us that you haven't quite done
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Send an email to uncomfyconvose at gmail.com uncomfy with a why convose at gmail.com or tweet at me
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With a question that you want me to address in our end of year ask me anything episode which will be coming up
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I hope you have a lovely a lovely Christmas if I don't speak with you before then enjoy this
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Chatty dialogue with the one only which are delayed
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One of the things that I thought has been that I think has been interesting throughout the pandemic is
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How divided we've all become
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Between the anti lockdowners and the public safety hawks
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You know Australia has been this weird petri dish where a lot of my followers are still in the states
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And have just been looking on with complete bafflement at
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Australia's lockdowns this year since everything basically got back to normal there
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You know end of last year and I don't feel like there are great many voices in Australia who are particularly sane
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On the way that Australia has managed the pandemic
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There'll be a lot that Australia should congratulate itself for and then the things the instances in which we might have become a little paranoid
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a little bit too
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willing to dub each other in a little bit too hasty to embrace unscientific
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Responses that perhaps went too far
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It's like I felt like there are not many voices that aren't from the crazy right who've been able to articulate that position
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And you occasionally have and I wonder as the pandemic winds down hopefully
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What you make of the past two years such an interesting question and I think
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historians and social scientists will be studying the answer to that for for many years um
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I think what happened was
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Things changed very very quickly in March 2020 and people went into
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almost collective
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fight flight or freeze response and
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um
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And we were very quick to sort of hand over a lot of power to the government
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and put a lot of trust in the government and a huge amount of um I guess civil rights and
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And
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pretty much movement
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really uh
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Wound back in a very quick space as time and it then became very hard um
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Particularly on social media to question any of that you know you were
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told that you were being um anti-public health or you were
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You know by speaking out against overpleasing of certain health orders that you were gonna cause people to die
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So I think there there was a real retreat in um in public space both
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You know on social media which you know I consider a public space um
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And also
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Just in peoples. I mean people couldn't really get together to discuss these things because they were locked down
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But um
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You know, there was a sense of being a bit a bit scared to stick your head up above the parapet and question
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Um the government's response because it was seen almost as being unpatriotic
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Um and having a bigger problem or like homicidal. I mean as you say like
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You know people saying you're you're killing you're killing people
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It almost reminds me in a strange way of like the the trend the extreme trends debates
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Which I mean people can't even talk about anymore
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But I do because I think reason is more important than political slogan hearing where you know the the moment someone on
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Twitter
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Suggests that there could be any kind of social or cultural contagion effect taking place between
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Adolescent teenage girls who all become trans at once or you know who question whether or not the the pipeline into
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hormone therapy
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Needs a little bit more scrutiny in the UK or in certain states in the United States or anyone who
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Says that there is there are certain biological differences between the sex even if it's made in the most respectful
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possible way towards all of our trans friends
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Literally gets deluged with you have the blood of trans children on your hands of trans adolescents on your hands
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And in the same way that there's just no way to seemingly bridge the divide between
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The anti-lockdownism the pro-lockdowners without the you know
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Even just saying something like that there's no evidence that curfews at night
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Imped the spread of coronavirus terribly much
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All of a sudden that means that you're killing grandma
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exactly. So um, you know, where do you go to you withdraw as a voice?
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You know, it's uh, I mean what's happening now is that I'm interviewing a lot of civil libertarians
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At the moment to and asking them
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What was your position in the pandemic and do you think you acted?
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You know dynamically enough when a lot of rights were gone and
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And
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They they's replied that
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When it comes to rights and this can be applied to anything
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Um, there's a big kind of stout show of the definition. So is it my right to um
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Travel the country or is it the the rights of um of people in in communities without covert to be free from
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The potential of getting the disease. So there are all these kind of interesting
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Um, almost philosophical arguments um going on but
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Usually when something that affects people gets debated
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It can be that the facts can be debated and positions can be debated without death threats people being attacked
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People being cancelled. So you saw this kind of very unreasonable
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Almost a rage around the debate which meant that
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You know very few people really
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We're able to say that they had properly
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Analyzed the issues
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Because there was no debate
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Hmm. I don't know if that makes sense. No, no, no, no, no, it makes sense
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I mean, I'm just thinking now as I think about the
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Images that went viral of uh, you know right-wing protesters in Melbourne protesting vaccination vaccine mandates and
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Lockdowns and and things how
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Sort of universally that was derided as being deplorable and of course violence has never
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An answer to anything and yet the the rage that had built up even even if it was in co-ate and
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Unhelpful when it finally erupted. It was like there was no
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Understanding or comprehension of why the rage had built up in the first place what the more what the I guess
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A lack of generosity to ones opponents on both sides like with the the right-wing protesters think that
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Everyone who wants to lock down wants them forever and wants to usher in authoritarianism
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And then the people who are pro lockdown just can't understand why a small business owner might feel like it's a little bit overboard to
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Be in the 16th week of a lockdown when we're already at 30% vaccination rates and you know where there's no risk of the hospitals being
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Overwhelmed which was the original rationale for lockdowns at the beginning of the pandemic then I don't know
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Do you think that people can't see?
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Their opponents point of view or
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I'm willing to see it
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They can't see it and they don't want to see it because in their minds the stakes are so high
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So you know people often say to an argument. It's not a matter of life and death
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But a lot of people felt with this that it wasn't a matter of life and death like if you got the virus
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Because there weren't enough protections around you if the state hadn't kind of
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Made masks mandatory etc. Then you would die. So it suddenly
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You know people's you could see it almost people's blood pressure go up when you talk about it because
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They are as I was saying earlier in that vital flight response where they feel like this is an issue where they're fighting for their lives and
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I definitely can understand people who work in hospitals and frontline workers
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Having very strong opinions
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Because they are the ones who ultimately are most good risk I think
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For a lot of say journalists like myself. I work from home
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I
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You know I'm
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A very low risk of getting the virus just by sitting in my apartment and writing a column
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um, so
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I come from a different perspective where there's not so much skin in the game maybe
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But what a lot of people what I would have liked to see more of in the pandemic was people
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Realizing that this is a global experience and that
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What's happening in Victoria might be really different from what's happening in chilly or in
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London or in Italy and looking at different models and saying well look
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You know, there are different ways of doing this other countries. I've got their own
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perspective
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Including in the US a much more kind of patchwork libertarian perspective
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um
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There is not just one right way of doing uh, you know the pandemic
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Hmm
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What do you make of the suspicion and the dobing you wrote about dobers during the during the lockdown?
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So I remember reading this short piece in the age where it asked readers to
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write in and and dobbin
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People that were flouting
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say at home orders and um someone reading saying I saw 14 ages outside the clipped in home with donalds shoulder to shoulder
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um, you know, it's disgusting and all these other people were writing in with you know, neighbors that were doing
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things that weren't
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You know weren't allowed and I just sort of those poor teenagers at McDonald's who hadn't really been to school for two years and
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We denied a social life and maybe they shouldn't have been congregating
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For of them in public, but I then just saw how mean and kind of petty and
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You know
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Sad we are a nation that will
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We've got our like kind of little spy glasses on and our
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Notebook and we're making notes of the people that are
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You know not doing the right thing without knowing the context of why those people might be in public like without knowing the full story
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and then be able to
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Tell the authorities about them and then let those those kids or
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You know
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People who often you know, it's often people who don't speak English or um
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You know from a kind of different background
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Just leaving them to the mercy of um, whatever like not huge nasty over inflated fine um
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That uh was part of the public health orders and and possibly kind of um you know ruining
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ruining their lives um
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There was one I was coming into my apartment in Sydney in the middle of lockdown and there was a delivery driver
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sitting um out the front and he was
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Almost in tears and he was saying I don't know how I'm going to pay the fine. I've been
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You know, it's two thousand dollars. I don't know how I'm going to pay um
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He uh, I think he was a Mexican guy. Anyway, he was really distraught. He'd been fine for
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Whether he'd been hanging out with another delivery guy or who knows, but you know these forums and um
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being kind of um
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Skipped up by the cops does have an effect on your life that reverberates
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sort of down the line and
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I just wanted to draw attention to
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What what dobin can actually do for people? Yeah, and I mean if you're a teenager like the calculus is different because we're expecting teenagers to abide by public health rules
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Purely for altruistic reasons like they're not at risk of the virus realistically uh, you know
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The risk to them is vanishingly small
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So you know if you're in your 60s or 70s then you'd have to be crazy not to take public health rules seriously because uh, you know
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It gives a there's a non negligible chance that you're going to end up in hospital or were still dead if you get the virus
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But if you're 15 or 17
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We're expecting them to put as much of a priority on rules that have nothing to do with their well-being
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As a 70 year old for whom the rules are lifesaving. I mean fair crack of the whip
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Also, I mean, I think if you look overall the um the way that young people in Australia have responded to
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You know really kind of two years about their their their prime being um taken from them
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They've behaved in remarkably good good spirit um with a great deal of kind of um
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Public service. I would say you know, I very rarely heard during the pandemic about
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I mean, there's the occasional party here are there, but there was also
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a lot of um
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Yeah, I think there was one crew of people who were in their 90s who were caught playing cards or
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Something like that
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Yeah, I think young people did us proud
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I love the nine-year-old card game. I mean just throwing caution to the wind. Let's go for a baby has plays him canaster
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The uh the the the illusion that you make in your piece about dobers is uh is to Jeremy Bentham Bentham's idea
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Panopticon. Can you just remind people who didn't do first-year philosophy what a panopticon is?
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The panopticon was a piece of 18th century architecture
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Designed by um a guy called Jeremy Bentham and it was essentially
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A building but also a system of controls. So think of a a prison tower
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Or a prison a prison with a watch tower in the middle. So
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The watch tower is in the center of all the cells and the cell doors are open to
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the watch tower
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So you only need to starve one
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Officer on the watch tower who just walks around and can potentially see into hundreds of of cells
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Um and the prisoners don't know they're being watched so that's the kind of psychological genius
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Evil genius of the panopticon wait the the prisoners know that they are being watched
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But don't know when they're being watched right so the guard is in the dark and you don't you never you know that
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That they could be eyes on you, but you never know that there are whether there are or not. Yeah, so what I meant to say was you are
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You could be surveilled at any point in time and so because you could be surveilled at any point in time
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You feel like you're constantly being surveilled
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Because you can't see the guard
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And when um we live in a
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Environment where um we feel like um people are
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Watching us um
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Or we move it in a apartment block where people might be missing first sounds of parties or people over
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um
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That person who might job on us might not be even home
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But if we feel like we have
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We are in an environment where people dobb we internalize um the dobb up. So we place ourselves um
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And also with mobile phones like for the first day of um
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Sydney's mask mandate
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Myself and a friend were out um exercising in Bellevueville and
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We weren't wearing masks um and because we thought that exercise was a you know um
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A reason not to wear it and these two women came down the stairs and so one of them set the screaming
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That she's gonna call the police and she went to get a phone to film us about wearing these masks and um
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You know that's the thing you your you can be um
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Um
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Filmed by anyone at any point in time because everyone's carrying around
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um
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You know a camera
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So yeah, it's it's a way of it's a great way of doing social control if you don't have enough money to
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Um send actual place out you just turn your citizens into cops
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Yeah, and the i mean the beauty of the panopticon is you only have to pay for one guard and that one guard functions as a guard for
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500 people who are all prisoners in cells around because they never know when the one guard's gonna be looking at them
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So they can never miss behave and similarly. I thought that was a good
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analogy actually for living in a society where you only need one percent of the population to be dobers and because everybody might be
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You you live in constant fear of being
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Turned in in a way. I mean, I remember during the height of the lockdown
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You know, you were never in New South Wales at least it was different in Victoria
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But in New South Wales you were never not allowed to exercise at the beach and go for a surf and go for a walk along the beach and go for a bush walk and so on
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But you weren't allowed to do recreation outside and I was at the beach with my kids
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You know exploring rock pools and doing things that sort of border between exercise and recreation
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And the cops were wandering around and one bloke had just gotten out of the surf sat down on the sand to get something out of his
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Photo or something and the cops went over to him and started talking to him and I thought
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That is surreal that he's these he's miles away from anybody else. He poses no threat
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But he just breached
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subsection D of clause 17 a of you know some arcane public health rule that had been handed down
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And now
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He just got unlucky enough that he was in the one in the wrong spot at the wrong time and he's being moved along
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by the forces of the of the state and
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Yeah, I think everyone has a lot of people I've swam to have a story like that of either being the personal seeing someone who
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Was doing something innocuous like sitting on a park bench or you know
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One of my neighbors was sitting on a fountain eating food that he brought from a market and that's fine
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There's there's a lot of examples, but I felt very constrained
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um
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At the time about going on Twitter and complaining about it because you get all this
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blowback um, and I was speaking to another journalist yesterday a guy called Osiruki who tweeted a lot in the pandemic quite policing and
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He just said it was
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You know that the flip between the right and left was really strange in the pandemic. So um
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You know, you had sort of people like Andrew Bolt
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You know like speaking up against the India travel bar for example
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Yes, he's a right wing commentator. Yeah, and a lot of people on the left um, you know
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Wouldn't speaking up to the extent that I had expected they would about
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You know civil liberties infringement. So it's a
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And the question as to why is it is a really interesting one um that
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I think it's going to be um with us for a long time because this won't be the last big thing where we're going to have to
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rain in um
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Certain rights like i'm thinking around like if you have cut a topic climate change
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and you have a lot of
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Climate refugees suddenly wanting to come in you know do we do what we did in the pandemic and and shut our borders do we
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Do we become a fortress again and and what would
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Is there going to be a force from the left that will mobilize
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To advocate for
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Climate refugees or have we adopted this mentality that we we very kind of eagerly adopted in the pandemic
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Which was the fortress mentality. So that's interesting. Yeah, I wonder if the people
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Coming in were
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Poor brown people whether or not the left would be more sympathetic than
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Wealthy white Australians who are trying to return home from the UK
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Well, they weren't very sympathetic when um chinese Australians were detained at christmas island
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You know in the early stages of the pandemic. I don't know
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A huge hour over that so all when Indians were were kept out
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I mean, what did you make of the whole international border? Do you I think that if there was one the largest
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I mean, I've been the policy against which I've been the strongest could critique throughout the whole thing
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Is the shambles of the international border. I mean for me having a passport for a country and being a citizen of a country
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Means that you own that country that country is yours. It's your homeland. You're always entitled to seek refuge in it
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Maybe it's because I'm the grandchild of holocaust survivors who were you know
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Hounded across Europe and then homeless and you know were never accepted by any place they chose to live in
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But for me, it's fundamental that if you're an Australian citizen
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You get to come to Australia the like the government can impose
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Quarant if the government's going to impose quarantine rules and caps that make it difficult to get back
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Then it's incumbent on them to figure out a way for there to be an orderly process for people to be
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Processed you can't outsource to an airline revenue manager and doha
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The repatriation of citizens to Australia and for for a good 12 to 18 months
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It was total chaos and people could only buy you know incredibly overpriced business class tickets to try to get back
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And then they'd be bumped at the last minute when they got to the airport and
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It was functionally impossible for all but the super wealthy and well connected
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To get back home and that did not seem to be a priority for the government to address
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Day after day week after week month after month and then year after year like
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Why couldn't you have a
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An online
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Like visa allocation hotel quarantine allocation thing where people could could go online like you apply for your
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Your Esther or your ETA
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If you're a non-resident of a country when you're going to the if you're getting a travel visa waiver to go to the United States or something
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You hop online you pay 20 bucks you get it and then it's electronic
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Why couldn't you have that with a number that allocates you a place in hotel quarantine on a certain date or in a certain week or in a certain month
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And then you take that to the airline and that they they they are obliged to take that to the bank
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I mean, there are all kinds of ways that it could have been done and I wonder whether or not you think that I'm being
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Historical about the international border
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Very very reasonable Josh
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Too reasonable for the government. I think there's a there's definitely a political
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There's a political reason why a lot of the decision like some decisions that they made were obviously made you know
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Were a bit chaotic
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Others were I think much more deliberate about the base. So I've just finished reading
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Sean Kelly's excellent book on Morrison called the game. Oh, I can't wait. Yeah, it's really good. He talks about kind of
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Who does he want to help in the pandemic who does he want to reach out to it's
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trading is it's
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Meaning the prime minister. Yeah. Yeah, smaller medium businesses blah blah blah. So in the pandemic there was
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Support for certain classes of people but not others. So people who work in the arts
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casual workers
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migrant workers
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expats and the university sector were all groups
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That you know, they just it's like no one was was looking out for them or
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You know developing policies and their interests and
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Kelly makes the Sean Kelly makes a point in this book which is like they're not Morrison's people
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You know, there's always been this thing about expats being told poppies and
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You know, there's this kind of long thing. I was like make you live in the greatest country in the world
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Why would you you know, why would you want to
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Go and live you know
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They're dual citizens or and it doesn't and that's a very very old
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Stale but still enduring um, you know character trait whereas
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The reality for a lot of Australians is that they have partners that have born overseas
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They have a parent or two parents that are from another country
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Um, or they've traveled widely and they they you know their business or their friendship network or whatever it is
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Is in various countries so sure this old way of thinking about expats doesn't
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Click with the reality of a global society and I kept hearing bridged like you know
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Oh, they've had plenty of time to get back, you know
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It's been 12 months now. Why didn't they come back when the pandemic first hit? Well, I'm sorry
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I didn't realize that when I was born as a citizen of this country
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I was obliged to like get on the next plane home the instant any international
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Crisis happens like what where is that written? Why did I have to come back in March of 2020? Maybe I had a job that
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I wanted to keep in London. Maybe I had family as you say maybe like
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Who cares when I'm coming back? It's not it's nobody's business when I come back
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It's my choice to be able to come back
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And now you're seeing the same dynamic that you're talking about there it being it not being the PM's people
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And I don't want to put all of this on the PM by the way because I think the left completely completely failed to
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stand up for the rights of people to come home as well apart from I mean just now
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I'm seeing the Labor leader Anthony Albanese
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Getting stuck into the government for not having built massive quarantine
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Facilities purpose-built quarantine facilities so that we can start housing people in them now that we've got the Omicron
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Variance like that's the liberal position now. I mean the small little liberal is that the human rights part the party of human rights and the little guy that we should be building vast quarantine camps
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To to house people in
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Anyway, so now the the dynamic that you're talking about I think is being seen with our attitude towards temporary residents people Australians like I think
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So temporary residents for people who don't know and are not allowed to come into Australia
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So you have to be a permanent resident or citizen at the moment the border has opened but only for
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permanent residents. I think people
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Think that temper that people on temporary resident visas in Australia are just
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Willy-nilly fly by nights who have parachuted in temporarily and you know a hopscotching back and forth
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So let's not let them leave and come back yet
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So they can't even come back in even if they test negative and are fully vaccinated
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Once you go you can't get back in and
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And having spent almost a decade living in New York on temporary residents visas
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That was only because I couldn't get a green card
29:07
I mean they hear most people on temporary residents visas here would love to become permanent residents
29:11
And love this country and they're passionate about living here
29:14
And if anybody has collies outside of Australia that need to be the deserve to be
29:19
sustained and rekindled after the pandemic
29:22
After the worst of the pandemic has subsided
29:24
It's people who are temporary residents who obviously by definition have lots of connections to another country
29:29
And they're presumably trying to jump through all of the arcane bureaucratic hopes
29:33
They need to jump through in order to become permanent residents or maybe citizens one day
29:37
And they're the people who are trapped
29:39
He and we still it's not even in the conversation. I mean how often do you even hear about
29:43
That crisis there is no there's no lobby group. There's no
29:48
Like no one is going into bat for
29:51
Basic human rights as I as I see it
29:54
It's like it's public the public health side of things is the only argument that's that people regard as being a valid one
30:00
To have and anything else they think is a luxury including
30:05
Like individual rights that we would have taken as
30:08
Sacrissant two years ago
30:10
So in the public health arguments, you know should have should be more sophisticated now that where
30:16
Where 20 months into this so you can understand there was a blunt approach in the early days
30:23
Whilst we were still developing vaccines and trying to understand
30:26
Exactly what the virus was but you know, there's a there's a lot
30:30
Which should be a lot further down the road even if it is just to build a few Howard Springs
30:36
About about the place
30:37
I mean a lot of I guess the similarities between that call to get Australians back home in
30:44
April last year and
30:46
the temporary
30:48
Migrants is is about I think it's this kind of loyalty theme which is your either
30:55
You're either with us or you're not you know, it's a it's a binary thing and so
31:00
The idea that someone's a temporary migrant puts them in the not care
31:05
The idea that someone might have
31:07
A mortgage and a job in New York and be a dual citizen or have a green card
31:14
puts them in the not not one of us can so it's
31:18
The thing of you know to be to be Aussie in Morrison's Australia is you know to be all in to wear the
31:27
Australian flag face mask
31:30
To think that this is the best in the world
31:34
You know
31:36
You're and you're either with us or you're you're against it and I I hope that you know this moment passes and we I think we were in a position
31:45
Definitely 10 or so years ago where you know overseas travel was inexpensive
31:51
People people moved around the world really easily
31:56
And fell in love form relationships had kids built businesses
32:01
And Australia despite its distance was really part of the globalized world
32:07
Um at least kind of culturally and socially
32:11
And now I feel like we're we've taken a big step back and there's kids that
32:16
probably should have been backpacking around Europe for last couple of years that
32:20
Yeah, we're home with mum and dad. Did you do a backpacking thing when you were younger?
32:25
Well, um, I finished university in the late 90s and Plain Tug it's cost as much then as they do now so
32:34
Um
32:35
Which is what like 25 years ago
32:37
So I had to I had to work about four jobs saved up all my money and
32:42
Did a trip around Europe for six months and then I went and worked in Ireland in a hub in Dublin in the temple bar
32:50
And I had these very romantic kind of notions of Ireland because um
32:55
You know 100% ethnically Irish both sides of my family are from there and I went over there and just it just was
33:03
Tough and rough and um, you know
33:08
There was a lot of boozing and then there was a lot of
33:12
In Ireland in the island
33:16
About the place as well and um and I couldn't get a good coffee
33:21
Uh, I
33:24
I have been returned and I appreciate it more but it was one of those things where
33:29
It's one of those countries where you you romanticized to the point that you know
33:34
All your illusions are going to fall apart on first. Yeah, it can't possibly live up to it
33:38
Yeah, what about you um?
33:41
Yeah, no, I did I did I mean say the same story uh, yeah, it was um
33:46
Yeah late 90s worked four jobs uh and traveled and saved up money and traveled around and just backpacked
33:53
Through yeah, Asia, Europe the states
33:57
Uh, it was fantastic. I mean best best thing I ever did between this was between high school and and before going to uni
34:02
I got uh my got into uni and then deferred for a year. So I knew what I was coming back to
34:06
Um, uh, which was yeah terrific and isn't it amazing how much um when you that age like how much kind of
34:13
This comfort you can put up with
34:15
Yes, well you can you know in a room with 30 other people and a terrible bunk bed or someone vomiting and another person knew he was having sex and
34:27
You had four hours take the night before and
34:30
You know, you've had a sandwich all we've eaten all day the sandwich and that's all fine. Um, absolutely
34:36
Yeah, it's exciting. You've got a very high threshold
34:40
Uh, and also we didn't have we didn't have devices and social media
34:43
I mean, I don't want to sound like the cranky old man, but like it was different when you were completely alone
34:48
I mean, I was I think there was something
34:51
Bracing and character building about being truly disconnected, unconnected
34:59
You know, even just the global financial system was not such that you could just walk up to any ATM and just draw money out
35:05
Your things were sort of complicated yet to find the right bank and there were still travelers checks and no
35:11
No mobile phones and I think that was
35:14
Just so much more exciting and so much more electrifying than the way that we can travel today
35:20
I think because we didn't know any different like I remember meeting. I was kind of months deep into a trip and
35:26
had picked a bath and the lonely planet in Madrid to meet some friends from Melbourne um, and
35:33
You know, the arrangement was made months and months and months ago and they they turned up. There were about four hours late
35:41
And I was very very anxious that they they turned up and now of course you just check where they are you because like where are you?
35:48
Yeah
35:50
So there's I mean, there's been some interesting pieces written about what that does um
35:57
What the ability to be in touch always does to your sense of you know self and autonomy and
36:05
resilience and you know there's
36:08
There's a lot to be said for not having a device to rely on of being alone as well like being um
36:15
You know in a public place with nothing nothing to do. You're just sitting there and waiting and not sort of looking down at your phone
36:22
Yeah, well, there's being alone and then there's being bored. So I mean it being alone
36:27
Is interesting and I was I mean, I was remembering the other day
36:31
when I was 15
36:33
Me making a
36:35
arranging with someone with a friend to go to the movies and you'd be arranged to meet them outside the movie theater at two o'clock
36:42
And you'd get there at two o'clock and if at two oh if at two ten they weren't there
36:48
There was nothing you could do. I mean you you just stood there
36:52
Waiting for ten minutes and hoping that eventually they would show up or you would just look at the clouds
36:57
And you'd watch people going by and it's amazing to me that I now find that amazing
37:03
Because it seems like such a simple and obvious thing, but now I would be
37:07
Incredibly fidgety and impatient if I didn't have a way of asking them
37:12
You know when I should expect them and should I go inside and buy popcorn already
37:16
uh
37:17
so
37:18
The the aloneness I think when you're away from your familiar environment and away from your loved ones
37:25
Is something we've lost
37:27
But the incapacity for boredom
37:30
Is something we've lost and this brings us to the other fascination of yours, which is stoicism
37:35
You're writing a book about Stoicism
37:39
What is it and why?
37:42
So it's say
37:44
It's not to be confused with the
37:47
You know the the common sort of
37:50
usage of stoic which is to to bear things um, you know in an unemotional way
37:57
Stoic philosophy was an ancient Greek and Roman philosophy
38:02
that
38:04
Essentially I was having a bit of a renaissance at the moment with Silicon Valley and people like Tim Ferriss
38:10
Um
38:11
Very pro stoic and I've got the message out there, but I mean
38:16
Stoicism's about how to be in the world
38:20
Um at how I really kind of fall social professional, you know
38:26
spiritual life, but not
38:28
suffer more than you have to so
38:31
A lot of stoic philosophy is about
38:34
How to suffer less and there's rules around how you do that and it's being really
38:40
Interesting learning those rules and seeing if they can if I can apply them
38:44
Some of them are very difficult to apply but
38:47
It's a very good
38:50
And it's also cradle to grave so um, and it's a fully intact
38:54
System that you can integrate into your into your life um
39:00
And it's it's been my kind of
39:02
fascination for the last few years and I'm doing a book on it and I feel like I've read nothing but stoic text
39:09
For that
39:11
So the manuscripts do you want a couple of weeks and
39:15
Yes
39:16
Wow
39:17
Is this all are you are you pouring over the markets are really as and um the ancients?
39:23
Yeah, so the main the three main
39:25
Stoics that I've been engaged with are the ones that people kind of the most people
39:30
Read about because their work is the one that is the most intact um that's Marcus Aurelius
39:35
Seneca and a guy called Epic Tetis
39:38
And why these three are really interesting is that um and firstly their work survives so we can study it
39:45
Um, but secondly, they're all from different they come at storcism from very different life
39:50
You know experiences so
39:52
Marcus Aurelius most powerful man in the world um Roman Emperor
39:57
Um incredibly
39:59
privileged incredibly wealthy very very powerful
40:03
um Seneca was more like a kind of milk and turntable sort of character like a
40:09
A self-made you know self-made um became very very wealthy and
40:14
Was involved deeply involved in politics um, but also was a bit of a renaissance man so
40:20
wrote plays um was involved in um, you know, big philosophical debates of the time
40:28
And his work survives and then the third one was a guy called Epic Tetis who was a slave and was lamed by his master
40:36
So it was um
40:38
differently abled and
40:40
He then once he was freed set up a he set up a philosophy school and his handbook on storcism still survives to this day
40:48
And those story provide a really interesting picture of
40:52
Of the Roman aspects of of the philosophy and um
40:56
Yeah, they they're particularly during the pandemic. They've been great to read
41:01
Yeah earlier in this conversation I asked you how did you take the idea of oh that would be a nice thing to do
41:07
It would be nice to be more present and to spend more time with myself rather than being distracted all the time
41:13
How did you take that and actually put it into practice? Is this maybe part of the answer to that?
41:19
I mean, I think there's a big part of storcism is contemplation so um, they had a journaling
41:25
Well definitely Seneca and Marcus Aurelius had journaling practices, which is
41:30
Um at the end of each day
41:32
Taking their journal and saying okay, well how did today go um could I have done better? You know, did I handle everything?
41:41
appropriately
41:43
um
41:44
Was it a good day was I a good person in the world today and
41:48
You know, that was a that was a nightly practice um
41:52
I think it you know still valuable even now
41:56
Hmm
41:58
What are the big takeaways for you apart from that from storcism because I there there seems to be an intersection
42:04
uh
42:05
between
42:07
I mean, I think maybe this is a mishmash that is partly the responsibility of the fault of of silicon valley types who
42:14
Who blended all into a into a kind of new ageism, but I regard the sort of secular Buddhist
42:20
tenets of the east and the tenets of storcism as interlocking in a kind of
42:26
exaltation to be more mindful more presence less caught up in
42:32
regretting the past and fearing the future
42:35
making friends with the possibility of total tragedy and calamity uh rather than
42:40
Rather than fearing it like there is there is there a is there overlap there? Yeah, there's definitely overlap
42:47
I mean a lot of the overlap comes from attachments. So there
42:51
I mean, this is a heart one of the hardest things to master in in storcism and I'd say Buddhism as well, which is desire. So um
42:59
The stoics say there are only three things that are in your complete control and those are your character
43:05
Your reactions and how you treat others and everything else is out of your control
43:10
So you shouldn't concern yourself with things that are out of your control
43:15
Now that's great advice, but when you desire something so say I really desire um
43:23
I desire a place on city heart. I want to buy an apartment on Sydney harbor and I I have one that I really desire
43:31
But it's far too expensive. So it's out of my control, you know, I can't um
43:37
You know an apartment may not come up. That's in my price range
43:41
I may bid on it and I may miss out. You know, there's all sorts of things about that desire that are out of my control
43:48
So in desiring it, I will only suffer and so they're really all about like how can we just kind of lessen this suffering thing
43:56
Well don't don't want the apartment, you know like if you get it great
44:00
So last after it and that is a very hard lesson and it that does cross over with Buddhism
44:08
Um and it's also the impermanence of life kind of lesson and um
44:14
Also the thing that they're really into which I find fascinating is
44:18
um change and how
44:21
How much things are constantly changing that we're not even
44:24
Particularly aware of but we're all aging the seasons are changing the politics is changing
44:30
Just when we get used to one reality it shifts and um
44:36
Both storcism and Buddhism um but particularly storcism is really great on
44:41
I'm moving with the change on I'm not um being resistant and um
44:46
Yeah, not getting
44:49
When some people
44:52
Here the the point about not wanting the apartment on Sydney harbor not being attached to your wants
45:00
They can misunderstand that as being a lack of motivation a lack of aspiration or lack of stretching oneself like
45:06
But you know if I don't really want things then I'm just gonna I could just lie around on the couch and just watch TV all day
45:12
That would be that wouldn't be a great way of living and one distinction that
45:17
I found really useful is the difference between being attached to a goal and being committed to a goal
45:22
I think this is I think this comes from the landmark education
45:25
Outfit which is which is an outgrowth of the old hippie 1960s um s
45:31
Movement which is sort of a form of secular Buddhism re-packaged for like modern corporations and individuals to have break through the
45:38
Breakthroughs and things and they have some wonderful
45:42
Wonderful ways of packaging it which is you can be
45:46
Committed to an outcome and to producing that outcome and you can give
45:50
110% to make it happen, but don't be attached to whether or not it does happen in other words don't
45:56
Find yourself
45:58
Find your emotions on a roller coaster that is contingent on things that are outside your control
46:03
So have the commitment that motivates you to do everything that you need to do
46:08
To make the world change and then whether the world changes or not in the way that you want it to be unruffled
46:15
By the outcome don't be attached to it and I like that
46:18
Yeah, that is precisely um what stores themselves as well like uh they would
46:23
They would be horrified
46:25
Marcus really should be horrified if he thought he's so
46:29
His meditations meant you know, well, I'm on the couch all day um these guys were very
46:34
Active in public life. They were very successful. They were very ambitious
46:39
But they had this concept of it's called preferred indifference, which is
46:44
You would prefer something to happen, but you should remain indifferent and
46:48
Wealth comes under that so um it's preferable to be wealthy you haven't you tend to have a better life
46:54
Um, but you should be indifferent because wealth is outside your control
46:58
And it can be taken from you at any time you could
47:02
Get sick and you know lose it or you know lose your job or
47:08
Someone can rob you you know, there's there's so many things um that can affect can affect wealth
47:13
And so great to have but yeah, don't get too attached
47:18
We briefly mentioned devices and the virtue of loneliness and the virtue of boredom and how devices are robbing us of them specifically
47:26
Social media on devices is the last thing I'd just want to pick your brain about because you've mentioned a couple of times that
47:33
That Twitter is a
47:34
assess pool that will be extreme that will extremify any uh of your opinions and and lash back at them
47:42
What do you think is the impact of social media at the moment?
47:48
I mean, I think social media at the moment um depending on what platform you're on but
47:54
I
47:55
I see a lot of negatives in it right now um, I haven't the past had really great
48:01
Really enjoyed it, but the moment the emotions that come up for me with Instagram is envy um
48:08
And with Twitter it's fear and anger. So those are the kind of two dominant um, and I'm not I don't use Facebook, but
48:17
Uh, you know, they I think noticing the feeling that you have when you're on social media is a really important signal
48:24
So it's like how am I feeling after 20 minutes on Twitter like do I feel energized do I feel
48:29
excited by the debates have I had a good laugh, you know, seven some funny tweets or do I feel um
48:37
Do I feel angry or do I feel um the fear thing is when
48:42
You know you have an opinion that people disagree with and you get um, you know people go for you in a way that can feel very
48:50
Intense
48:51
So yeah, I'm having a break from both those platforms at the moment and really enjoying the break
48:58
Hmm, do you think it's having an impact on I mean, I know that it's having an impact on my attention
49:03
So maybe that's the way that I should frame that that the the
49:07
There's a line by uh, I think it's cowl. It's not Cassostean. It's cow newport who wrote who wrote deep work
49:14
Yeah, yeah, uh, and I think it's cow's line where he says something like
49:21
Social media is fracturing time or fracturing attention into shards too small to construct a
49:29
A purpose driven life out of something like that and that resonated because
49:34
The the bitty bitty drip drip dopamine hit of whatever's the latest most interesting thing to happen in your feed
49:42
Is dramatically impeding my ability to read long novels, uh, you know focus on
49:48
more meditative ways of thinking and
49:53
I
49:53
I shudder to think what it must be like if your brain is growing and evolving as an adolescent with that being the pace of distraction
50:02
Mm. Well, yeah, it's um you realize well, this is what I've realized when I got concussed which is
50:10
I've got like two brain cells left
50:12
You know, I can't waste them on on Twitter um when you
50:17
When you realize that your your mental energy is finite you very quickly work out what's important and um
50:25
Social media's first thing to go um in terms of small brains um
50:31
Or developing brains
50:34
You know, it's it's like the iPhone is not that old
50:38
It's 2007. So I look forward to
50:42
Studies um as to what it's done to um
50:47
You know attention span over the long term, but I know that
50:51
Like two of my favorite novelists or zadie smith and Jonathan france and
50:55
Mm-hmm. Is it my two favorites? Oh, they're great aren't they?
50:59
They're so good
51:00
In fact the novel that I that I'm just finding myself challenging
51:03
Try it myself to get into his friends and you novel. Oh, it's wonderful
51:08
Yeah, which I'm loving, but it's just I don't have like time to carve out the
51:14
Soon so yes, that's right exactly. It's a big book though
51:18
So it's gonna be heavy in the in the luggage, but that's the one I'm taking. Yeah, yeah, it's it's really great
51:23
And you know, there's there's something about the fact that those two consistently put out you know
51:30
Really good really deep work and they're not on social media and
51:35
You know something I said to myself all the time
51:38
Which is like time to put the toys away, you know like if I want to like I'm about to go into a new novel
51:44
Like if I want to go into that in a deep way. I have the toys away and the toys are
51:50
Instagram
51:52
And Twitter like you know, it's it is an either-or thing
51:56
Some writers can do both but
52:00
Yeah, increasingly that the people that I really admire um
52:04
Who do a lot of really great work um writing wise
52:09
They're not on Twitter anymore. Or they've just got like one like kind of a PR account that just tweets out
52:15
Letters book, but yeah, it's um
52:18
And I think for journalists as well like you know every journalist in Australia is on it
52:23
But increasingly you see you know, there's reputational issues. So
52:28
You see you know journalists who's worked your admire and they do some insane tweet
52:32
You think oh god like um
52:35
Yeah, I know like either think less of that person or I'm worried they're gonna get sued. It arranges us
52:41
I mean it arranges us clearly. Yeah, I mean I a friend and mentor of mine lost his job because of a
52:49
stupid tweet that he
52:51
Sent and uh, you know, it was indefensible, but it was just a momentary you know slip of the finger telling someone to fuck off
52:58
And that was that
53:00
That's um
53:01
What's a lesson for all of us
53:04
Apropos of nothing as the final note have you read Zadie Smith's piece in the New York review of books um about the beach
53:11
Find your beach. I think it's called. It's about a bitch about a billboard
53:14
It's an essay about a billboard across the way from her, which is advertising a beer or something. Yeah, I have I have it's in one of the
53:22
Yeah, so good one of my favorites anyway
53:27
I encourage people to go and look it up. It's too. You can still read it online
53:30
Uh, and I encourage so can we get your stoicism book yet Bridget? No, it's still being written
53:35
But um, it's being published by Alan and I'm one and um, it'll come out sometime
53:41
next year
53:43
2022 I think the the publisher was concerned that um, it wasn't written super quickly in time for the pandemic, but I feel like
53:51
The world will need stoicism
53:54
I think if it's longer yet, we're not I think if it's longer for a few thousand years if it's like if stoicism has made it a few thousand years and a couple of months
54:03
I'm gonna hurt
54:04
Uh, thank you Bridget's great to talk to you. I appreciate it
54:13
Uncomfortable conversations is produced by Stefan Postuma follow me Josh Zeps on Twitter and Instagram for all the latest
54:20
May your day be fruitful your mind humble your enemies generous and your conversations perfectly sparklingly
54:28
Delectably uncomfortable