Do You Pity The Fool, Or Do Fools Pity?
Hello, everybody, and welcome back in to another episode of the 2 Parachutes Podcast. I am one of your co hosts. I am Scott Olson, retired FBI agent, and I bring the grandfather perspective to what we talk about, which is the hard work of interacting. And my co host is with me. Over to Sean.
Shawn:Hey, Scott. Hey, everybody. So I am Sean Baker Garcia, and I am indeed the cohost. I am the Happy Accidental CEO and human national global security enthusiast. So over to you, Scott, to tell us what we're talking about today.
Shawn:Where is our jump taking us?
Scott:Yeah, so this is finally us delivering on our promise to pick up where we left off on an episode. One of the things that we talked about recently was this idea of what do you do when another human being is struggling? Do you step in and solve or or do you not? And the example we used was the World Cup soccer incident with the US team where one of The US players was given a red card and a one game suspension, and The United States president Trump weighed in based on his personal relationship and got that suspension reversed. And our commentary at that time was that he had sort of robbed the United States team of the opportunity to rise to the occasion.
Scott:He didn't let them struggle because he felt bad. And so we have on several occasions talked about how we're ending our hour and we want to talk more about this and we'll pick it up on another episode. And so we're going to do that on this episode and I want to pull away from the red card story as we frame this issue and and kind of pull us back into it's the hard work of interacting. And we've talked about this a lot and we'll continue to talk about this that the fundamental interaction between people begins with recognizing that the other person is a human and the highest form of the hard work of interacting is treating the other person like a human but the challenge is what do you do when you see another human in pain? Most people don't want to see another human in pain and the instinct is to go help because we do not want to see somebody else in pain.
Scott:And so we're doing it to help them, but we're also doing it to help ourselves. And the challenge is particularly difficult when you're a parent dealing with kids or whether where you're an experienced person dealing with an inexperienced person where you see what that inexperienced person or that child is struggling with. You know what the solution is. They do not know what the solution is. They're hurting.
Scott:How do you find a way to let them have that growth experience? How do you find a way to set aside your heartbreak that they're struggling and in pain and let them have the growth? And what happens when you don't? What happens to a person who never has to struggle? Who never has to grow?
Scott:And how does that impact broader society if we have many people or a class of people or a generation of people, if the evidence supports that, who have not had to learn by struggle. What happens then? And so there's a lot you have to have, you know, a pretty big bite to be able to sink your teeth into this, but what's shaken loose for you on all this? I know I've given you a lot, so don't take it in one bite.
Shawn:No, not at all. The first thing that jumps out to me, Scott, which I think is super important to this conversation, is that when people tend to over intervene, or over maybe interact, or malinteract with another person in the context of compassionate assistance, is genuinely, or generally, sorry, because I think people are interpreting or equating struggle, pain, discomfort, as something to either be avoided or to be fixed. And I don't actually this humble citizen doesn't actually think that that's, you know, that that's usually the case. I mean, there are gonna be extreme circumstances where if somebody is in a clearly crisis situation, then those things do need to be fixed or, you know, should be avoided or mitigated, you know, if encountered. But I think that what humans haven't traditionally been super good at, at least not in the last thirty years of my adult waking life, is kind of walking that fine line of understanding how much pain or struggle or discomfort is enough to be beneficial, to produce a favorable outcome or circumstance or condition.
Shawn:Know, because, again, nobody This old adage, nothing worth having is cheap, easy, or free, right? Like, there's a reason why people kind of say that. And it's because for anything good to come about of anything, there's going to be sacrifice. There's going to be sort of not suffering in the context of, oh, woe is me, I'm suffering. But in, you know, you're going to have to suffer through something, right?
Shawn:You're going to have to, whether it's a hard workout, or whether it is you know, a college course, or whether it is, you know, a driver exam, you know, prepping for that and accomplishing that, or, you know, whether it's just your own personal spiritual or individual growth as a human being, and as a mature functioning part of society. So I think for me, that's the thing that jumps out automatically, is I think, to get to the root of what you're talking about, Scott, we have to look at how are people entering into these interactions? Like, you know, part of it, like you said, is they want to sincerely it's coming from a sincere place of compassion or care. But that can quickly turn into something that is anything but compassionate or caring. And you also have to be able to look yourself in the mirror and say, you know, am I really doing it for those reasons or at least fully for those reasons?
Shawn:Or is it because I need to do this because it is what makes me feel good or honorable or worthy or of value. Right? And those are all important things for us to feel. But sometimes we get addicted to those the need to feel those things. And then it becomes less about the other people that are in the interaction and more about ourselves.
Scott:Yeah, it does. It's complex because the person that's trying to help can easily process that interaction as I'm being selfless. When actually if that person really scrutinizes themselves, they're doing it for themselves. They're doing it because it feels bad to watch somebody struggle. And so there's an aside here that is you can understand a person better by observing what they do.
Scott:You can also understand yourself better by looking at what you do, looking at your own behavior and then taking a step back from it in this way by saying what would I think of a person who did what I just did rather than get caught up in your reasons for doing it, extract the behavior and then make an inference about intent based on that behavior and use that to gain insight into the self. That's the aside. As I'm listening to you, I get pulled into this notion that the stress of a challenge is bad, and not just in our modern day paradigm, it seems that a lot of people think that the stress of ordinary living is a mental problem that needs to be fixed, and it's actually not. Mean sometimes something stressful happens and being angry is a normal response and there's nothing wrong with being angry. You need to own the consequences of it and it takes mature self control to feel anger without harming people around you.
Scott:But that's kind of the point we're trying to make is that if if you don't have practice doing that, you don't learn how to do that, then when it matters, you don't know how to do it. You're also I I love your notion that you know you're you're robbing the person you're helping. You're robbing them of the sense of accomplishment. I think anyone who ever received a soccer participation trophy, anyone who played any game, a soccer game or a baseball game as a youth where they didn't keep score. The intent was to make sure that the team that lost didn't feel bad.
Scott:But what that thought process misses is you're also losing the opportunity to instill a sense of accomplishment in the team that won. And it's not just the sense of accomplishment that hard work always pays off because hard work doesn't pay off. It's also understanding and learning in a very visceral way that sometimes you win because of luck and sometimes you lose because of bad luck and when you make everything even it's like you're cooking dinner for people and you're taking all the spice out of it because some people like spicy food but some people don't and so let's just have it all be bland and and that's that's a real problem and what's what's of concern to me is we're still seeing it in the Wall Street Journal of 08/11/2026, there is an article, and I will just read you the headline of this article. University of Michigan drops first semester grades to quote curb mental health crisis.
Shawn:Saw that. Saw that today.
Scott:What the University of Michigan which is a leading university at this still at this time in The United States is doing is recognizing that higher education, post secondary education is hard, and what they're trying to do is get rid of how hard it is. And my sense is that they're doing it, that the school administrators are doing it, because they don't want students to feel bad. But my quarrel with it is I doubt very much whether they could demonstrate it's a mental health crisis. The fact that 18 and 19 year olds are going to college and it's hard and they're responding to a hard thing by being stressed out and unhappy and wondering why they're even doing this. That's what happens when you deal with a stressful circumstance.
Scott:It's not a mental health issue. I would be shocked to see data which indicates being stressed out when you're doing something hard is an indication of a mental health deficit. Funny to me, and I'll give you this one, and I'm curious to see what you think. As United States society, still, we value hard work. Why we talking about grade inflation?
Scott:Why are we talking about how we're going to get rid of grades altogether? Why are grades a source of stressfulness to the point where we imagine it's a mental health crisis when it's actually not? Why? It's because we want people to do well. We want an indication of who's good and who's not, and we want people to work hard and get those grades.
Scott:So we value hard work, but at the same time, what are we doing? We're removing all of the mountains that need to be climbed. We're removing all of the barriers. We're removing the things that cause hard work and just giving the reward. Then we're wondering why the young people that are in these environments are confused.
Scott:Because they don't value an A, because they've never had to work for an A. They've shown up and done what they're told and been given an A. They've showed up and run around the soccer field for ninety minutes and been given a trophy. They haven't been given the opportunity to struggle and to work and to have a sense of accomplishment. So what do you think about that?
Scott:We value hard work, but we make it impossible to do hard work because we feel sorry.
Shawn:Yeah. So I think a couple of things stand out for me on that. First of all, I mean, you know, it's funny to me, and I don't mean to be trite on this, but, you know, millions of kids for the last one hundred years have gone through the K-twelve education system and haven't had collective mental health breakdowns over getting graded on their performance. So the fact that a bunch of college age students can't handle it is more a statement on those individuals and how they were raised than it is on what their actual sort of mental state is. You know what I mean?
Shawn:Because I do believe it's possible for them to have the kind of degraded mental or emotional state that they're claiming. But it's because of this sort of over assistance sort of worldview that you need to remove the hurt, you need to remove whatever is perceived as the harm. And somehow that's gonna lead to a better, happier society. Well, no. It's gonna lead to a chronically depressed, overanxious, mentally sort of degraded society because every harm or hurt is the greatest harm or hurt.
Shawn:And so if you have no objective way to assess that harm or hurt, then you are always gonna on the side of more harmful or hurtful than less. The other thing that kind of, I think in tandem, again, this is the age of non common sense. We're starting to deviate from, I think, millennia old parenting techniques, right, that for some reason now are being thrown out the lived experiences in our heritage. What we learned from our families as we grew up as kids, is being thrown out the window for theoretical, you know, kind of post Spock, you know, parenting tips that are untried, untrue, and largely resulting in, I think, failed outcomes for for rearing kids. But I remember everybody always teases generation x about in fact, I actually have a t shirt that says this on the back, which is just like, you know, walk it off.
Shawn:Right? Or you're okay. Yeah. Well, if you see that, it's because when we were kids, you know, we'd stumble or or trip or something, and we get a bloodied up knee or whatever. And, you know, you'd be out the playground, your mom or your dad or your whoever's guardian is watching you, you know, just be like, hey, you know, shake it off, kind of walk it off, get up, you know, we'll clean it up and you're okay.
Shawn:You know, you're okay. You're okay. And I think a lot of people misinterpret that approach to child sort of injury to be like, well, it's just, you know, you're teaching kids that it's not okay to show feelings or that you're teaching kids that it's not okay to acknowledge hurts or harms when I don't think that was ever the case. Like, think what they were saying is, you know, this is a minor incident. It is that you need to give the child the tools to build the mental strength to deal with these types of minor things because that's how you build the building blocks you know, of dealing with big hurts, like actual hurts that are gonna be come later, and they will face those crises later.
Shawn:So it's not that it's dismissing the child's feelings or trying to teach the child. But think about it. Kids are looking reaction from you. Right? That's why they always say, like, when a baby first kind of, like, you know, like, you know, stubs this toe trying to, you know, walk or or is like, you know, maybe tumbles, you know, down and has a fall.
Shawn:It's like, don't don't, like, you know, like, jump at the child and be freak, you know, freak out. Just kinda try to stay calm and just be like, you know, okay. Come come on. Are you okay? Like, let's check it out.
Shawn:Like, you know, you don't wanna over overexaggerate the reaction because they're looking. They're scanning you for cues like, am I okay? Because you are who they trust be for themselves even. You know what I mean? And so what you're doing is you're teaching kids how to so not only are you building their mental strength for how to deal with life's bumps and bruises literally and figuratively, but you're also giving them the objective framework for how to adequately assess threat or danger or harm.
Shawn:And so I think all of this kind of is coming from this new way of child rearing, which is that the child's in charge of everything. The child is gonna tell you what it wants, when it wants, and how it wants it. And you need to be you know, you need to just be there to basically work for your child and let your child teach itself. You know? No.
Shawn:That that's I fundamentally disagree. Hard stop, hard no. Because kids rely on you to provide the framework for how they assess life and how they go through life. And part of that then comes down to what you're talking about, which, you know, again, if all hurts are the biggest hurts, then it's impossible for people to gauge the relative depth of their hurts and harms. You know, thereby, you know, it sort of skews their mental or emotional state as a result.
Shawn:And, you know, zero resilience. Zero resilience, you know. I don't know.
Scott:It's scary. No. And I agree. And there's so much there just in parenting. I mean, could do a number of episodes on parenting and I I raised three kids.
Scott:My my first wife and I raised three kids together and we disagreed on parenting and there's a lot to be said but I think that it is parenting I think a person could make a case that parenting is the beginning of it but I don't think it's it's the end of it and you know with with due regard to the truth that being a parent is hard and there are lots of abusive situations where parents are not thoughtful and not loving and are neglectful, and that is all a part of the commentary. It's also a part of what makes this difficult. Because if you feel so strongly bad that your child is at risk, are you now being neglectful to let them struggle? Or are you are you being supportive by letting them struggle? And then and then the debate ensues but instead of really going down this question as a parenting issue, I think there's another way we can go.
Scott:And it is how we interact with people that we are not in a parent child relationship with. I remember seeing it often at work when I was a FBI agent. Every year is performance appraisals, and performance appraisals are around the working world, and there was always a push to essentially not be honest. If you had an employee who was substandard, it was very difficult to get authority to say that because then you had to defend it. Then if you had a substandard employee then you needed to fix that or you needed to terminate them and of course that's very difficult and if you're giving somebody a performance assessment that doesn't reflect their actual performance.
Scott:If you have a low performer and you say that they're a low performer, you're now interfering with their ability to promote. And I can't tell you how many times I had senior executives in my presence tell junior executives and sometimes tell me, well, you can't say that about this person because it will interfere with their career development prospects. And my response always was, well, shouldn't be promoted because they're they have this performance deficit and at a minimum they shouldn't be promoted until they fix this performance deficit. And the instruction always was, don't put it in the performance appraisal review but work with them to get better and it was always a fail because they would look at the performance review and go well I don't have this problem so why are you telling me to work on it and it's it's the same thing It's the it's easier for me if I say you're doing fine. And it it reminds me as we were doing the prep work to for this episode.
Scott:You and I both sort of found the same quote from this author whose name is G Michael Hopf, H O P F, and in 2016, he wrote what is described as a post apocalyptic novel. It's called Those Who Remain, and it it's part of a a series of novels that he wrote that's called the New World Series. And and I haven't read them but I just love this quote. And so I I'm going to share it here because I think it's really appropriate. I am gonna edit it.
Scott:The first sentence in this quote is as follows. It says, hard times create strong men. And I am gonna edit this to replace men with people. But this is the quote, hard times create strong people. Strong people create good times.
Scott:Good times create weak people, and weak people create hard times. And so I think as we're talking about the hard work of interacting and what a human does when they see another human struggling, and start thinking about how hard is this for me? How hard is this for them? Do I help? Do I not help?
Scott:Do I help a little bit? Whether it's a parent child relationship or some other relationship, the point that I see here, and I'm quite keen to get yours as your view on this as well, is that this is something that is driven by the fact that we are human and actually is not something to be fixed. It's something to be recognized because it is a cycle, and since it's a cycle, it's inexorable. The planet warms and cools. Bring on the hate mail about global warming being driven by humanity at this point in time.
Scott:We had ice ages, we had many ice ages, we had global warming not driven by humans. We live on a dynamic planet. We live in cycles. And this is one of the cycles that we're in. When things are difficult, people get strong.
Scott:When people are strong, they create good times. They create easy living. When there's easy living, people get weak. And when you're weak, you create problems. And what I see right now is we have a lot of weak people who think that the solution is to take everybody else's money and buy stuff and yeah I'm attacking socialism because I see where we are in the cycle.
Scott:We had socialist experiments a hundred years ago, they failed and they've always failed and the way that I am understanding why folks think this is a good idea now is because what I see is a lot of folks that came through school and did what they were told. They showed up and got a participation trophy but they didn't learn how to struggle and they didn't learn how to succeed and they went to college and they weren't graded and they got a degree in something that does not generate income and now they are in their 30s and 40s and they are living in places where a lot of other people want to live in big cities, they've followed all the rules, they've done what they were told, and what they were told essentially was a lie that if you show up and the authority figure approves of you, you will succeed. And that is a weak person. And so what are these emerging weak people doing? They're doing what we can only expect them to do, which is to say, oh, the system is rigged.
Scott:And it's very easy to not have that viewpoint and to look at a person who thinks the system is rigged because they did what they were told and it didn't work, tell them, you were lied to and this is actually living as hard and it's hard to make money. And money isn't a zero sum game. Money is like love. You know, I learned this when my second child was born. I learned this when my first child was born.
Scott:Didn't love my wife any less when my first child was born. Didn't love my wife and my first child any less when my second child was born. You can have a billionaire and become a billionaire yourself without that first billionaire having less money. Yeah. And but we get we get trapped because we think I did what they told me to and I now do not have the life that I want and so, it's their fault.
Scott:And what I would propose is that it's nobody's fault. But if what you've done hasn't produced the outcome that you want, try something else. And that's what we get that, you know, as insanity, that's real insanity
Shawn:yeah
Scott:the real definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result you know seizing the means of production doesn't provide a generous successful society, it never has. Public healthcare and public food, 100% of the time creates long lines and misery. So the idea that it'll be different now, that is actually insane. Working for a grade, that is not insane. That is not a mental healthcare kind of stress.
Scott:So I need you to pull me back, Sean. I'm kind of getting on my sofa, maybe I'm And getting on the I appreciate you listening to me, who knows how many people are shutting off. But what do you think?
Shawn:No, I think that it's very understandable how you got to where you you landed there. I just kinda go back to the the the beginning of the story here, which is that, you know, we can't, as a society and as human beings, interpret every single inconvenience, discomfort, struggle, or challenge as something to be avoided or to be afraid of or to avoid. You know what I mean? Did I say avoid I think I might have. But, you know, or to fix, I guess, is what I was trying to say.
Shawn:Now, know, because again, going back to the education thing, it's silly. Like you're not gonna be, you know, and the example that people gave a lot when they're talking about this debate, you know, because this isn't the first time this has come up, by the way. You know, I went to an undergraduate college back in 2003 who didn't give grades. So this isn't new. You know?
Shawn:Now I was a, you know, social sciences major. I was not a a technical, you know, sort of STEM person, but I have to assume that the people in the STEM classes, you know, are gonna have to get some kind of objective, you know, rating because you can't go be a doctor if you aren't, like, able to prove that you know what you know to do the thing that you're being asked to do. Same with a You can't give somebody a law degree if they can't pass the exam, if they can't pass the LSAT, if they don't know how to lawyer. Like, it just doesn't you know? So so I think that the first mistake that's being made is just how people are interpreting what is otherwise a very reasonable, objectively, you know, defensible system for assessing aptitude.
Shawn:It's essential. You know, and I just don't understand. You know, I mean, again, back at when I went to UC Santa Cruz, which is probably like the most liberal college in all of The United States, and I say that big, big L, liberal, not, you know, is that it you know, I did fine. And, you know, arguably, I turned into a productive member of society. And I think I did end up having a GPA or something like but but I I just don't remember.
Shawn:All I remember is that I I was joking the first semester because I was like, oh, hugs not grades, I guess. Okay. Like, you know what I mean? It was it was kinda funny. I was like, you know, but as a kid, I mean, loved grade.
Shawn:It was almost more anxiety inducing for me to not have the grade because I wanted to know where I stood. You know, I wanted to be able to measure my own success or failure against what the accepted framework for evaluating such accomplishments was. I didn't have that. It was kind of annoying.
Scott:I love that. And that's the point we've been trying to make here, or at least one
Shawn:of the
Scott:points we've been trying to make here, is they robbed you of your sense of accomplishment.
Shawn:Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, you know, I still graduated, and that was still an accomplishment. I ended up with a GPA, and that was an accomplishment. I don't remember how they sorted out the whole GPA thing. Maybe it was just my first year that they didn't have the grades.
Shawn:I don't remember. But again, I think that what all we're trying to say here is that life is struggle. It always has been. It's only been in recent history that we have lived in such an affluent way that it feels like we don't need to struggle or that it is something that can actually be avoided And that that should be a goal we should set for ourselves. I don't think I think kids and adults need to go through the challenges of being told the honest truth about performance, about pain, injuries, about, you know, how they are interacting in the world with you, with others.
Shawn:Like, I think we owe it to people to be loving in how we communicate these things, but also very encouraging, you know, but but at the end of the day, very truthful. And one video I came across a couple of days ago as one does when you're doom scrolling through Facebook or whatever you're of course, I'm dating myself. I enjoy short reels. Not to the extent of TikTok style, which are like to me, those are epilepsy inducing. They're so it's like thirty seconds.
Shawn:Like, I'm like, I can't handle it going so bad. I'm a good, you know, two to ten minute, like, clips of something I like to absorb and and, you know, get into something. But there was a clip of a dad, and he was with his I don't know, maybe the kid was between seven and nine years old, it would be about, young boy. And he clearly had a physical disability, and he had this, like, kind of a walker thing. But it was like I think he might have had, like like, some kind of a palsy because his legs were in, like, the braces and he you know?
Shawn:Well, the dad was they were outside on the street, and he was trying to teach the boy how to maneuver the device to get up on a curb because he was like, you're not always gonna have a ramp. Yeah. There are going to be circumstances where you don't have a ramp. And, like, even just recalling the little bit that I just told you, my nose is like you know, I can feel my tear glands, and it's like, just ugh. Like, it's so emotionally overwhelming, you know, because, you know, you don't want kids to to or even adults.
Shawn:Like, you know, you want them to be okay and and you don't want them to struggle. But but we can't pity them. We shouldn't pity them, and the dad didn't. And and kudos to the dad because what he did was, you know, he was brilliantly, coolly, calmly, but firmly coaching him on on the maneuver. He's like, we practice this.
Shawn:We practice this. You gotta like, you gotta you gotta trust fall. You gotta go back a little bit to get it up over the thing. You know, trust your strength. Trust the device has you, and then push it over.
Shawn:And, you know, and and he ultimately, he didn't make it up. Like, he he did make it up, but the dad eventually, like, you know, kind of helped him get up there. But he's like he's like and and the boy just had a beautiful attitude. He was trying so hard, and he was you could hear him just like, okay. And he was talking himself through it, and he would go.
Shawn:And that to me, that's compassionate care. Because he's telling them straight out, it's going to be hard. This isn't going to be easy. We may not get it today. We may not get it tomorrow.
Shawn:But also life is going to be hard. You're going to have to solve this. You're going to have to solve it when I'm not there. When when, you know, as you get older, he's like, so this is why we're doing this. And this is and and I know it's hard and I know you're trying hard and that's great and it's okay if you don't get it.
Shawn:But we're going to keep doing it until you do get it. And it's and it's gonna and it's gonna be hard work. It's gonna be hard. You know, he didn't sugarcoat it. You know?
Shawn:And and the kid, it was just a beautiful just a beautiful little snippet. You know?
Scott:And what a wonderful story that makes such an important point, which is the pity piece. And we talked about this in a previous episode about how most animals don't feel sorry for themselves. They don't have that pity. We talked a lot about pity. And, you know, we we
Shawn:You haven't met my dog. I digress. Go ahead.
Scott:We, you know, we we jumped, talking about today, jumped talking about how humans interact to help or not help when they see another human being struggling and how important it is. But I wouldn't have thought that the air current of pity would come back to us. But pity is really a harmful thing.
Shawn:It
Scott:is. And I think that it's not an all or nothing. It's not a one or a zero. It's not a a a computer binary issue. It's it's not that you either have pity or you're heartless.
Scott:It's it's not that. It's understanding that pity is a distraction from doing the work and self pity is too. I have a wonderful sister-in-law. And I'm not going to give her name because this story came to me and she listens to the podcast. Hi, my dear.
Scott:But I'm going to share this story because she shared it with me, and I think that it is useful here because she was listening to the episode where we were talking about how animals don't pet each other, and she had, I'm going to get this wrong, but she had cancer. She had lymphoma, and she was in her late 60s, so not a young person. The treatment was a huge hit to her system, and she felt sick a lot. And what she shared with me was, you know, she felt sick and she felt awful and it was a struggle and she felt sorry for herself. And what she chose to do was she said, I'm gonna feel sorry for myself as long as I can sit on the edge of my bathtub.
Scott:And when my ass can't stand being on the edge of the bathtub anymore, then I'm gonna get up and I'm gonna be done feeling sorry for myself. So it's not that she didn't feel sorry for herself. She didn't try and fight against that but she recognized it, she accepted it, she allowed it to flow through her and then when it was done it was done and it was time to get on work time to get on with work and and this goes back to another one of our themes about how we throw this word fighting around without a discipline or understanding. We want to work hard, we want to fight against the blocks that are stopping us from doing something, maybe fight isn't the way to go. You know, it's the story of the oak and the reed in the windstorm, and the oak talking about how, you know, it was stronger than the reed, and then the wind came and the oak pressed back against the wind until it couldn't anymore and then it was uprooted and the reed just bent with the wind and bent with the wind and bent with the wind and when the wind got tired the reed popped back up There are so many metaphors out there.
Scott:Listen to the great martial artist Bruce Lee talk about water, about how water can flow and crash and be still. You know, be like water, my friend. But it is understanding that we live dynamically. We don't live statically. The way anything is today, the level of the water, the number of trees, the number of people, it's going to go up and down.
Scott:Uh-huh. It just it just does. You know, hard time creates strong people. Weak people create hard times. It it is this cycle and so the the purpose is to be the read to let the things that are happening happen without getting wrapped around the axle of oh this is bad.
Scott:Oh this is a mental health thing that needs to be solved. This is unfair. I did what I was told and I don't have what I want.
Shawn:Do
Scott:something different. And it's noticing the world around you and noticing that it's dynamic and not static actually requires courage. And I'll read you something that I wrote the other day. It's the story Part of noticing things requires courage. It's the story of the kid who said the emperor has no clothes.
Scott:If you don't know the story of the emperor who has no clothes, Google it up. It's a nice little story. None of the adults had the courage to speak an obvious truth. Children know truth until adults lie them out of it. And so it's when somebody's underperforming, you don't have to be aggressive.
Scott:You don't have to make it about you. But saying what you see and then listening to what they see is part of immersing yourself in a dynamic process, and also having the courage to notice what's there, and to notice it in yourself as well. We all suffer from the problems, the negatives that we see in others, and it's not wrong. It's just wrong to claim moral high ground. It is wrong to say, well, these idle rich people are bad.
Scott:We're going to take their money away. In my opinion, what's going to happen? You look at what Mandany is trying to do in New York, you look at what Wilson is trying to do here in Seattle. What they're trying to do, and they're actively trying to do this, is make a class of idle poor. And the problem isn't the richness or the poorness.
Scott:The problem is the idleness. The problem is the lack of self worth, which is what you were talking about.
Shawn:Well, that actually is a nice kind of bookend to the pity sort of observation. Because I think, you know, if you thought about it long and hard enough, none of us like to be pitied. Right? And why is that? Like, what's That's wonderful.
Shawn:Right? Ask yourself that question if you're listening here on this session today. Because I think this has sort of an evolutionary aspect to it, which if you drill down to its most fundamental root, like instinct, is because somebody being pitied is somebody that the that the tribe sees as weak and therefore potentially expendable. You know what I mean? And so I think what we have to do is stop.
Shawn:We have to as human beings, when we say, let's do the hard work of interacting, when we call on everyone you know, who hears this to do the same in their world, the next time you go to wanna assist somebody or to help somebody or to help a cause or champion something, ask yourself what your motivation is, first of all. But then secondly, ask yourself, am I doing it in a way that protects the integrity of the person or class of persons that I'm actually trying to protect, you know, or to support or to help? Because when an individual or an entire class of people are perceived as chronically dependent or victimized, then you may actually be harming them in a much deeper way than the superficial quick fix of being their champion. Like, for the five minutes you're ranting on Facebook or something. You know what I mean?
Shawn:Like, you you may be eroding their, you know, kind of overall worth to the tribe perceived worth to the tribe. You know what I mean? As saying this is this is not something this is not, like a condition we want to kind of prop up within the community. Right? And so, the alternative expression of that care would come by way of somebody who's super capable, very much useful, worth protecting, but who's temporarily vulnerable to something.
Shawn:You know what I mean? That's a very different condition. And it doesn't then warrant pity because you wouldn't look down on somebody and be like, oh, you know, that soccer player just like, you know, pulled his Achilles. You know what I mean? Mhmm.
Shawn:Or guy, he'll never work again. Well, they'll we'll be like, oh, he'll go. He'll get his treatment. He'll be back on the pitch in six months. Or you know what I mean?
Scott:Yeah.
Shawn:You know? So I just think that potentially and I don't I actually lost track of when we started, Scott, so I don't know how close we are to getting towards our end. But
Scott:We got about maybe ten minutes.
Shawn:Oh, okay. So anyway, I would just say, we should be working really hard to protect the agency of ourselves and others. Obviously, we wanna be caring and compassionate to our fellow humans and to ourselves, but not to the extent that it becomes like a sort of institutionalized pity or chronic pitying of an individual or a class of people because that undermines, one, whatever advocacy goals you think you might have. And it undermines your, what I would imagine is otherwise benevolent goal to be in solidarity with this individual or these people, because it actually puts you in a hierarchically higher position. And that is a very alarming thing for a lot of people.
Shawn:And a lot of people who receive aid or assistance, you know, we talked about my sister Trisha and her two months, you know, homeless kind of, you know, experience. It's, they don't want your pity.
Scott:Yeah. Yeah, they don't. And the thing is, if a person hears pity enough and it doesn't take that much, they begin to believe it. And if a person is drowned in pity for whatever the reason might be, they begin to believe it, and robs them of their humanity. And there are are voices in the world who do it on purpose.
Scott:I want to be better. I want political power. I want office. And so I pity all of you who are struggling with things that aren't your fault and really shouldn't be your problem. Vote for me and I will fix it all.
Scott:That's why we see that across conservative, liberal, across history. It is the intentional creation of an underclass by using pity. And it's funny how it jumps up and bites you. I mean, am not supposed to be the poster child of pity because I'm white and I'm male and I'm college education, I went to law school and so nobody feels sorry for me but you know what's funny is I find myself feeling sorry for myself because I'm 64 and I go to the weight room and my shoulders hurt and my knees hurt and when I go to do a workout whether it's you know going hiking or running intervals or lifting weights which are all things that I love to do. If I get in this mindset of god, my knees hurt, my ankles hurt, my back hurts, and it's you know, there's nothing I can do about it because I'm 64.
Scott:I have a bad day in the gym and if I just put that aside and go it's not that it doesn't matter because I am 64 but two weeks ago I was still 64 and I could pick this thing up. So I can pick it up today. Yeah. And I've had injuries my entire life, and those injuries make it so you can do less, and then when it heals you can do more. And that word that I speak to myself has a huge impact on me.
Scott:And I'm not sharing that because I think it will have an impact on anybody else. It's my internal voice that I have to say, you know what dude, just quit telling yourself you're old and you know put the weight on the bar that you're going to do today and do that and see what your body can do. But the concept matters because if I'm telling myself I can't do something simple like pick up a barbell because I'm old, imagine what it's like for somebody who's forty years younger than me to say, Well, I can't go to law school because I'm this gender or this skin color or I'm this religion. Come from this part of the world. That is so much more damaging when the reality of it is, is all of those things are a part of what makes up every individual, but none of them are limiting unless that individual believes an external voice that says it's limiting.
Scott:Data is king. The data clearly indicates that where you come from and what you look like and what your opinions are do not drive intelligence. They just don't.
Shawn:Yeah. I think we need to just find the of the space between toxic optimism and despair. Right?
Scott:Toxic optimism and toxic pessimism. Maybe feeling sorry and being toxic are the things to look for. And again, we're not And this is what I love about us and what I love about you, Sean, is that we're not trying to be the solution to everybody. We're trying to live in this dynamic world, and part of it is recognizing that the highest and best way to interact is as a human to other humans, and seeing the humanity in other people. And the other thing is having the courage to notice things.
Scott:The courage to look into the world and see things and identify what you see. And then as you're interacting with other humans, those things, forming opinions. It's another thing we say, right? Have opinions, be thoughtful, and be open to having your mind changed. Maybe you didn't notice something that somebody else did.
Scott:That's important. You're never going to get that if you don't go out. It's funny, a young fellow, and from time to time I'll have relatives who have a young person that wants to be involved in the FBI, and I talk to somebody. I talked to this fellow the other day, a interesting dude, wants to be a forensic accountant, wants to be an FBI agent, and I could tell that he really struggled with he just has that introverted personality, hasn't learned to speak to people, and one of the things that I realized as I was, you know, telling him that part of the skill set was to of an FBI agent is like a journalist. You go out and talk to people, you talk to them about things that they know that you don't know that you want to know, and then write it down.
Scott:And after I hung up with him, I realized, you know what he really should do to develop this part of his skill set? Is be an Uber driver or a Lyft driver. What do you do every time you get into an Uber or a Lyft? Absolutely. You're talking to somebody that you've never talked to before.
Scott:And what a wonderful thing that is. What a wonderful thing it is. Just go out and ride Ubers.
Shawn:That's I'll the tell you
Scott:way you're interacting.
Shawn:Hey. I'll do you one better. Like, you don't even have to go do that. You just have to pay attention to who you're interacting with in the course of a given day. And and, you know, at this point, we're probably just spinning our wheels on time here.
Shawn:But, you know, I just have to say, I'm super like, I'm paying attention to our podcast, and I'm paying attention to our conversations because I I you know, in the last few months, I've been challenging myself regularly to improve the quality of my interactions with every single human being that comes across my bowel. So whether that is, like, if I'm in an Uber, as you say, or whether that is at the doctor's office today, you know, with the staff or the late there was two lady. I like boy, I had ladies on going into the elevator and I had them coming out. And, you know, and I I made a point of acknowledging them offering instead of just moving out of the way like, you know, because one of them had a walker, you know, so that she could II just ask. I said, ma'am, what floor are you going to?
Shawn:You know what I mean? Let's get you there. Like, you know, just telling somebody to have a great day. Like, you know, I I I'm doing it, you know, making small talk with the receptionist. I'm you know what I mean?
Shawn:But not in a superficial way. Like, in in a in a real way. Like, you know, I I don't remember what the today that the receptionist had said something that triggered a thought in my mind. And I just before I would have just let it go. And this time I was like, I went I went in after it, you know, and I said, oh, let's talk about that for a minute.
Shawn:And, you know, and she ended up start she ended up having a laugh at at the end of it. And and again, that wouldn't have happened.
Scott:Yeah.
Shawn:That wouldn't have happened if I hadn't, like, waited for her to initiate something. You know what I mean? Like, I I took the initiative to engage because I'm still gonna be standing there whether I do or not. You know? So why not try?
Shawn:You know?
Scott:Well, and that is it's it's being humane. It is being a human to to do that. And it's it's not that the little things are important. They are The big things are important too. But it's it's the humanity of it that
Shawn:100%.
Scott:Will will make us better off because that's what we are as humans.
Shawn:And how about this for a closing line? It just came to me is, you know, when we as human beings go the extra half mile, not even a full mile, to meet our fellow humans where they're at, even if it even if you don't have to, that just might be the thing that gives that person a good feeling that leads to a good moment, that leads to a better day, that leads to them feeling less victimized or less incapable. That optimism, that positive interaction can be very, very motivating for people. It can make you feel good. It can increase all those good chemicals that I don't understand that are floating around your brain, dopamine and all the things, serotonin, like, so that you you know, again, we've got to practice this kind of behavior because it's not just a question of doing it to to, you know, kind of ourselves feel better, but we're making our entire society better when we do this because that's one less horrible thing that went wrong in her day.
Shawn:You know what I mean?
Scott:Yeah. And and that, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls in the listening audience, is who I like to call the great Sean Baker Garcia, giving us our closing
Shawn:for the Closer.
Scott:Yeah. Closer and above average in nearly every aspect. I give you Sean Baker Garcia. Thanks for sticking with us for another episode, for those of you that did, and we will see you the next time around. Bye, everybody.
Shawn:Thanks, everyone.