Episode Transcript
[00:00:14] Speaker A: Hello.
Welcome to the call it like I see it podcast. I'm James Keyes, and in this episode of call it like I see it, we're going to discuss the recent outrage and calls for a boycott relating to chick fil a coming from right wingers. And consider the nature of the trend we may be seeing with this instance when it's viewed together with outrage and boycotts that we've recently seen, like with target and Bud light.
And later on, we're going to discuss the power of boredom and how our modern society and culture, the way we're going about things, may be preventing us from being able to tap into this anymore.
Joining me today is a man who can take you across the Tunde verse. Tunde ogun lana Tunde. Now, do you think people are ready for the Tunde from Earth 65?
[00:01:08] Speaker B: No.
[00:01:09] Speaker A: Well, don't go there.
[00:01:11] Speaker B: I'm not ready for him either. When I heard you say that, I was like, whoa, I think I'd have to get a tour guide to help me go through the tune. Diverse. So. Okay, that's interesting.
Never been challenged like that to think about what that would look like. So.
[00:01:26] Speaker A: All right, now we're recording this on June 5, 2023. And over the past week or so, we've seen many prominent right wingers express their outrage about their belief that chick fil A had recently hired a diversity equity and inclusion vice president and even called for a boycott the fast food giant over this. Now, their belief was partially incorrect in the sense that the VP of DEI, as it's called a lot of times, apparently has been on. On the job for over well over a year. But the position does exist. So if that's the kind of thing that boils your blood or boils their blood, they are barking up the right tree, so to speak, regardless of when it happened. But still, some may look at this and wonder, well, why is this something that boils your blood so much? But any event, Tunde, to get us started, what does stand out to you, you know, in seeing this outrage and the calls for a boycott coming from, you know, these right wingers about Chick fil A, you know, which, you know, seems in large part to be about them having a DEI executive and a program, you know, that is conscious of that kind of stuff. And then also, you know, if you want to kick in on that, the chick fil A's response so far, yeah, they've done.
[00:02:39] Speaker B: Great question. And I'll actually, the term you just used, which I know we didn't plan this code on the show where you said boils your blood. I think that's a great kind of thing because that's what I note. I mean, that's why I appreciate we stopped the kind of noise. I mean, they called the culture war noise. Actually focus on this one when I know we haven't focused on a lot of these kind of outrages and boiling.
[00:03:05] Speaker A: Seem to happen all the time.
[00:03:06] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:03:06] Speaker A: There's always somebody mad about something.
[00:03:08] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think, and that's a good point, right. The way you even say there's always somebody mad about something. That's very true about anything in our society. And we could say, you know, you know, could be people mad about whatever stuff that's going on in the culture in general.
[00:03:23] Speaker A: Could be religious, real, imagined.
[00:03:25] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:03:26] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:03:27] Speaker B: So I think it's. So I'd say I'm glad you kind of, we're starting out this way because it's like if we go 30,000ft, then we can say, okay, in any large society, especially one with the population like ours, 300 plus million, you got a lot of room for boiling blood and people being just outraged over stuff. And I think that why this one, to me, to get specific now, kind of was different because whenever people start behaving like this, where they start attacking everybody and then nobody's pure enough and all that, at some point they start attacking the people within the group that they claim to be in. And I think chick fil A has a long term reputation of being very religiously conservative and being very serious about that. And as we've discussed, right. They're closed on Sundays. I'd like to buy a chicken sandwich from them on a Sunday, but I can't because they believe that all their employees need a day of rest, so they actually do observe the Sabbath in that way and that those employees should be with their family and go to their places of worship and all that, you know, at least one day a week.
[00:04:32] Speaker A: Which just let me add something real quick. I find, I find that to be, and many people find that to be respectable. You know, like, it's like, okay, yeah, that's your principles you live by. You're not out here telling everybody else to do it, but you're saying, hey, this is what's important to us. We'll turn away business and, you know, because this is important to us. And, you know, like that's, that's quote unquote freedom, you know, so it's not that they need to go tell everybody else to do it, but they've decided to do it. And they, the pros and cons, they're fine with that, you know, so. But go ahead.
[00:04:58] Speaker B: Yeah. And as a non religious guy, I could say, but I want to eat my chicken sandwich on Sunday. How come you're not open? But remember, this goes back to, again, the nuances of that people keep mixing up, like saying that Twitter is violating freedom of speech or any other platform. Freedom of speech only deals with the government and the right of citizens to have their speech stifled or silenced by the government or not. Doesn't mean that private corporations can let people say and behave any way they.
[00:05:26] Speaker A: Want in the same way free market doesn't mean you're entitled to buy a chicken sandwich.
[00:05:31] Speaker B: The reason I just bring it up is to say that I'm not religious and I do operate on Sundays, and I would like to buy a chicken sandwich on Sunday. But I understand that as a business, they have the right and the decision to close their doors on Sundays. And I respect that.
[00:05:45] Speaker A: So also. But I think you're gonna look at from the other way, you don't have a right to a chicken sandwich from them on a Sunday either. It's not like they're violating. Now, if they gave, they would give chicken sandwiches to some people, but not you. Then we're getting into something else. But yes, they're just like, you know, they're not violating.
[00:06:01] Speaker B: I never thought of running for office until you just said that.
Now I have a reason. Thank you, sir. I want to get my chicken sandwich on a Sunday. I'm gonna legislate that thing. So, no, so the thing is, is that, so that's why this one kind of stands out to me. It's like, hold on. You guys are attacking actually one of the most conservative, at least publicly known. Right. Conservative. Through being good conservative christian businesses. And here's why I feel like this one also is different, because they're showing themselves so easily. And I'm going to read something. I actually went to one of these christian websites to see what are they saying about this? And because, you know, now there's these calls for christians to boycott chick fil a. And I'll read here, quote. Their DEi policies date back to 2020 and do little more than formalize their long held position that they do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, sexuality, physical condition, or a host of other descriptors. That approach is good for business, good for the gospel. And here's my favorite part. And also what every company is required by law to do when it comes to hiring staff and serving customers. And it's just like, common sense. Like, we have anti discrimination laws that have been on the books since 1965. So my point is, is that this is what I mean by these people are showing themselves, and I hand it back, which is, what are they really mad about? It's got nothing to do with religion. It's got nothing to do with sandwiches. It's. You're angry that, again, someone else is trying to include others.
[00:07:32] Speaker A: Yeah, no, that's actually. That's. I'm glad you ended there, because that's what it is. It's really saying that our issue is that we want people to be exclusive. We want you to exclude people who we deem to be not pure or not worthy of whatever it is. And so that, to me, is. Is a big piece of this. Is that. Yeah. They're saying it's not about some other overriding principle here. It's about. No, no. We need you to be about exclusion. You being about inclusion is a problem. And, I mean, I did just to say what you were saying in a slightly different way with the, like, Chick fil A is not one that has not been involved in controversy before, but the notable thing about Chick fil A is that typically, they've been the controversial, so to speak, from people on the other side of the political spectrum because they donated money to organizations that took anti LGBTQ positions. You know, like, so they historically was someone that was seen in a negative light from the other side of political spectrum. And so it's interesting now to see, like you said, to point out, like, okay, these guys have been kind of the darlings of people, whether it would be center right or further right, you know, of them. And the people that were further left, they've been the ones that have been the antagonist, have antagonized them. So it's interesting to see that inverted one.
But to me, actually, what stands out about this is the implications of the we want people who stand for exclusion. You know, it's kind of just like, well, you know, it's an interesting. In a country such as ours, you basically are taking out the position that you're anti a bunch of Americans. And some people would say, hey, well, if you're anti this people, this or this group, this group, this group and this group, that sounds pretty anti american because you're all these Americans. You're just anti. I'm not going to go that far, but it could definitely. It's a reasonable conclusion, but it's just like, how many, like, how these people have a problem with so many people, you know, and not just a problem like, oh, yeah, I just don't go over there and hang out with them. But a problem like, no, no, no. I don't want other people to deal with these people, if you see them, do not treat them with respect or with dignity. Do not give them dignity. And that, to me, is what really seems to be the push here is about, like, we don't want you treating people with dignity or with respect who we don't like. And it's like, well, we won't do it, but then we also don't want you to do it. So it's an interesting, and then I look at that, because generally speaking, and in this case, I'm going to make this point a little later on, I don't have a problem with boycotts. I think exercising your economic, the power of the purse, so to speak, is something we all, as Americans, should do. I decide who I do business with as an individual consumer or my family or whatever every day. You know, I'm deciding, like, what do I want to do business with this company or this entity or not, you know, based on things that they do or don't do. And so I have no problem with that in general, you know? And in this case, I might as well say it. I don't have a problem with the idea, even if it's for something trivial, of people say, hey, let's just not do business with this people, these people anymore. But I do find it interesting a lot of times what we've, when we've seen boycotts in the past, we've seen them organized around principles of where they were pushing back against the denial of rights or of dignity to people. And it's like, oh, if you're gonna, if you're not gonna treat these people well or just treat these people like everybody, you treat everybody else, we're going to boycott. And so in this case, it's like an inversion of that. It's like, okay, no, you're going to treat everybody not fairly. We can't have that. We have to boycott you because you're trying to treat everybody fairly. And I just find that to be fascinating, that that's the hill that these folks have staked out and said, no, no, you got to treat certain people well and other people. You shouldn't even acknowledge their humanity, or you should, you should look to not be inclusive with them and so forth. So it's just, it's a really interesting window into kind of the, where they want to try to push our society to by exerting pressure through the power of the purse.
[00:11:31] Speaker B: Yeah. And I'll kind of one up you on what you said, and I'll go there and I'll say, I do think these people hate America.
I wouldn't call them traitors in that way that they're there. Like, we're in a war like that. But I just think that, you know, we have a group of Americans, unfortunately, that really don't like and hate way that the country has evolved. And for whatever reason, and I think for many of them, they're actually just believing what they're told and not taking the time to get out of their own comfort zone and their own kind of their own culture and just look around and see that things aren't as bad as they're being told. You know, transgender people make up 0.003% of the United States population. And I'm not here to advocate for trans people because I don't really understand it, and I don't go down those roads. But I'm also not gonna be here to blow up my country because I'm worried about some trans person. Like, my point is that, to your.
[00:12:26] Speaker A: Point, it's such a small part of your life. Like, how often does this really come up in your life?
[00:12:31] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:12:34] Speaker A: You're not gonna be that passionate on it one way or the other if you're judging it based on how often it affects you.
[00:12:38] Speaker B: And my point is really saying, because that's why I read that piece of that article I found on a christian website about this approach is good for business, good for the gospel, and also what every company is required to do by law when it comes to hiring people and serving people like, you can't discriminate. So my point is, they hate. They do hate America, because what they want to do is what we're seeing in some state legislatures and some people who are aspiring to become the next president, United States, is they want to use the apparatus of the law, and they want to change these laws that do require people to actually not discriminate based on who you are. Right? And so they don't like the America of today, and they want to go back to America of pre 1965, when you had more of an authoritarian kind of caste system that said, you know, your worth in this society is based on either how you look, based on your skin color, based on maybe where you're from. You remember we've done those shows about how even they couldn't even figure out who was white from Europe because people from Russia and Czechoslovakia and Ireland that 100 years ago weren't considered caucasian white Americans. Right. And so, and were discriminated against. So this is why these laws were all created. And I guess we have to remind ourselves of that is because once you allow this type of bigotry to actually take hold in the culture of a society, then at some point it cannibalizes the society itself. So if we don't want to go down that road, we should ask ourselves why we have these guardrails to check power in the first place. And why did we go through a civil war and then 100 years of Jim Crow and civil rights to get to where we are today?
[00:14:16] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and that's a, that's a good point you raise. I mean, you look at it when you talk about the authoritarian, and that can be in any form. I mean, like you pointed out, some of the middle eastern areas where they have a religious fundamentalist government. And we see people actually in this country now actually advocating for that. Like we see in Texas, you know, they're saying, hey, we need to bring religious officials into public spaces to be, you know, like we're seeing, advocating for, like, violation, well, you know, a complete violation of the first Amendment, you know, and they're saying, we want government. We want religious officials involved in state functions, you know, as their religious. Not because, not that they can't be a person who is religious, but they want them in their religious position as a part of the state government. And so, yeah, we're seeing this definite trend. And I don't know if it's something that has been obscured because Americans don't understand that religion, you know, that we have a secular government and so they don't understand it. Or if they don't care anymore or, you know, enough, Americans don't care anymore. But a lot of this stuff, you do see this overt push to make the religious, certain people's religion a part of the state apparatus. But beyond that, that's not.
[00:15:28] Speaker B: Real quick while you're on that religion part, before, I do want to point.
[00:15:32] Speaker A: Out, though, that that's not what we're seeing right now. This is something just different because this is, there's no, there is no conflict with using your religious affiliation to exert market power, so to speak. But go ahead and jump in before I. Yeah, yeah.
[00:15:44] Speaker B: Because I think what we're seeing here, remember that a lot of these cross currents, um, there's a lot of cross currents in our culture, right? There's, there's, there's racial stuff, religious stuff, um, you know, men and women, you know, kind of feminism and masculinity and all that kind of stuff that has been bantered around throughout history of our country, at least. And people have fought for rights, and sometimes it ebbs and flows. Sometimes there's rights are restricted. Other times they open up.
I think one pattern that we've seen throughout, I think most of humanity, like the recorded human history, is that anytime you want to create a boogeyman in a society, a lot of times they start with dealing with what is safe or not safe for children. Right? I mean, I thought about this in preparing today. Remember that Elvis Presley, remember the rock and roll star who everybody thinks fondly of now, in the 1950s, he was seen as, like, the brother of the devil. Remember, he was shaking his hips, and that was going to be lead to all kind of chaos and a ruining of Americans youth. So every generation there's been. And when you and I were kids in the nineties, we've talked about this. It was that gangster rap, remember? And then ten years later, it was video games. We're gonna ruin kids. And so there's always something in a society where those who, you know, there's genuine concern about kids. And I'm a parent, of course, I have concern about what's healthy and not for my kids. But I think that when we see the authoritarians come in and people, you know, that we'll get into, in terms of, in some of the modern politics, they use this broad brush to say, oh, well, it's detrimental for kids. We don't want to indoctrinate. That's what they use to get rid of black history courses in Florida high schools. Now, we don't indoctrinate kids. I didn't know that teaching american history was indoctrination, but okay, now then think about this. We.
[00:17:40] Speaker A: I do want to keep us moving, man. But even the thing with the indoctrination piece is that's actually a telling yourself, too, because they do want to indoctrinate. And honestly, for a nation, you do want to indoctrinate your people to a certain degree with the values of your nation. You know, we should be. Well, the issue with that, when you see that is like, okay, the issues that we want to. We want to put in people's mind, we only want one perspective of history is, you know, so that's kind of what's showing there. But before you get too far away from it, I want to like the thing that we're seeing here. And this. This is really how you can tell a lot of times whether someone genuinely has a concern about an issue or if it's kind of this gateway to. I'm going to tell you how to live. Like an authoritarian likes to do, is the selection of issues and how they approach it. Because what we really see here is if you go back, look at the gangster rapper, if you look at any of these things, it's always abstract or conceptual type things that are a slippery slope, but it's never the actual issue. It's never like we're afraid of kids being preyed on. So we can't let a happen, because if a happens, then b might happen, then if b happens, then c happens, and then eventually some kid is going to. Something's going to happen to a kidney, but then they'll, what doesn't animate them or what doesn't catch their attention is actually people doing things to kids. And it's like, okay, well, the Illinois secretary of state comes out and is like, yeah, we had 50, 60, 70 years of abuse from the, from, you know, church officials, and here's all this evidence that they see, and we don't talk about that at all, you know, and that's like, actually, forget all you.
[00:19:15] Speaker B: Send me the article. Why don't you say that? Yeah, about the amount of time that one. Cable news.
[00:19:19] Speaker A: We spend all this time on these slippery slopes, but the actual act that we proclaim to be concerned about that happening is not that interesting to us because that isn't conceptual enough for people to get up in a frenzy and start taking broad swaths. Then if we just actually see the issue, we just address the issues like, okay, well, the people who did it, we'll put them in jail. Let's make sure we have rules in place so people can't do it anymore. And you can't whip everyone up into a frenzy because the issue is defined versus abstract and conceptual. So I think that's a piece of it. And I want to say this also.
[00:19:51] Speaker B: That doesn't allow you to point to people that you already don't like. I think that's the, that's the actual vague. Yeah, these vague. Are these vague ways of putting it makes it like. Because that's what I was going to say when you saw, you sent me something that a certain cable news channel spent in one day, 2 hours talking about target having rainbow shirts on its. On its shelves or whatever, and literally 1 minute talking about that story you just said, which is a factual story, that the archdiocese of Illinois hid 2000 cases of pedophilia and sexual abuse. So the difference is the target of the people who want to keep ginning this up is not the catholic church, it's other Americans. And that's the thing. That's why they want to keep it vague.
[00:20:36] Speaker A: Yeah. When you can point the villain to someone who you're already trying to smear, then they, then these issues a lot of times are put, put up. If the villain is definite or if the villain is someone who you don't want to smear, then it's like, oh, well, let's not talk about that. And so to me, that's how, you know, it's the entry point for control, not necessarily a genuine concern about the actual issue. But like I said, not to go down that too far. Because again, this is not about necessarily like this particular issue. This chick fil a issue itself is not about something where someone is saying law like they're saying, hey, we don't like what you're doing company. So let's us and like minded people not buy from them, which again, I myself think we should all do that, you know, in terms of how we do business. And so I won't get them one getting, I won't knock them for that reason. Now, again, I look at the reasoning behind it like that's, you know, that says something about you. But all the same, what I will, what I do want to bring up with this, though, and because I'm going to ask you about the, just in terms of any through lines or trends that you see when you look at this in combination with what we've seen with target and Buddha light. But one of the things for me that I think is that we do need to call out because it's not, this is not market power. What we also are hearing is reports of threats and intimidation going along with this. And that cannot be something that we accept as a society that is like you were pointing to before going back to a different time in our history, that is going back to the thirties or the forties or the fifties, when these codes that people, codes of social and cultural conduct that people wanted to enforce, whether it be integration or, or segregation or whatever, they were enforced with extra judicial threats, intimidation and so forth. It wasn't just okay, you know, like they made laws too, but it was also people going well above and, you know, the law or whatever to make sure that people got the point and intimidate people to make sure they don't do it anymore, physically intimidate or, you know, violence and so forth. And so the report, I think as a society, we need to note, if we were here and we've seen reports of this, you know, target, part of their rationale was that they're getting threats to employees and so forth. And, you know, like, so I wanna make sure I call that out specifically, though, because that is not the exercise of market power, which again, if you wanna exercise market power, if you wanna say, you know, anybody who sells a teletubby, I don't wanna buy a store. I don't like. That's your right. That's your prerogative. But you cross a different line when you say, if your store sells teletubbies, I'm gonna start showing up at stores and start threatening clerks. That's different.
[00:23:05] Speaker B: No, I agree. I think that is different. And look, this is where. Cause I could see someone listening to us. Oh, yeah. But what about when they're paying, picking it upside of Brett Kavanaugh's house? Or do the, or they throw pizza at Mitch McConnell when he's eating dinner? That's wrong too. You know, in terms of people that use violence or intimidation against anybody for any reason is wrong.
[00:23:23] Speaker A: Before we leave, though, I do want to just get your thought on. Do you see a trend here with the like and if, do you see a trend? Or is this something that's getting more coverage now in terms of target bud light now, chick fil a? Because I do want to get to our second topic here pretty soon. But tell me about, you know, just, did you see your trend or is this just something we're aware of now because it hits the news cycle?
[00:23:47] Speaker B: No, I think it's a trend. It's probably a little bit of both. I think we're obviously aware of it because we can't get away from all this stuff no matter what. So that probably magnifies it a bit. But I do think it's a trend. I mean, clearly, think about it. I'm just going to rattle off. I know I'm going to forget a lot in the recent, just the last three years.
Well, even before it was started with kind of Kaepernick and Nike, then it was, and the NFL trying to boycott all that because, you know, this guy's kneeling. Then, then it was doctor Seuss, remember? Because they made a decision to take out some anti asian stuff in there and six out of, you know, 100 books.
[00:24:20] Speaker A: And it was just, let me, let me say this. It seems like around this time that you're pointing to, there was a flip from people complaining about cancel culture to all of a sudden there was a bunch of effort to cancel.
[00:24:32] Speaker B: Yeah, that's why I said it's fascinating. But I'm thinking of Mister Potato head. I'm thinking about M and M's this year. I'm thinking about Budwe light, you know, all of it. And again, whether I agree or disagree with any of these individual companies and what they did to cause this kind of public stir is beside my point. You ask, is there a trend? And I think that's evidence of a trend. Right. Just the fact I can rattle off a few, and I know I forgot a lot off that list. Now, that's where I find this interesting, because we have these different ecosystems of our culture, and we have a certain amount of Americans that have been checked out of our mainstream culture. Right. They, on purpose have wanted to be contrarian for whatever their reasons are, whether it's the religious reasons, and there's a.
[00:25:16] Speaker A: Lot of earlier, they don't like the direction of the mainstream.
[00:25:19] Speaker B: Yeah. And I'll say that, and that's why I'm not here to get into anything negative about religion, but I was here to talk facts. There are a lot of evangelicals, you know, Mormon, those types who. Part of their culture is to reject mainstream american culture, right. They feel like they don't want to, their kids and other people in there that they love being indoctrinated by the rest of us. So they choose to kind of just live in a separate bubble. Then you have the, you know, and.
[00:25:44] Speaker A: That'S why there are, by the way, America's founding principles. Going both ways allows for that. You know, like, America's founding principles. Like, people came here. You've made this point many times on pods. Like, people came here because when they tried to do that in other cultures, they were persecuted for. So in terms of that shit, that doesn't mean you get to tell everybody else what to do, but in terms of you want to, on your own, say, hey, look, we don't want to be a part of that. You know, the Amish have done that here for a long time. We don't want to be a part of a lot of what you guys are doing. We're going to do our own thing. That doesn't mean we're going to impose on you, which. That's where you get into trouble a lot of times we see in our society. But in general, conceptually, you know, like, that's not something that in America, you, you. You're not allowed to do in general. Go ahead.
[00:26:22] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I just was a little bit thrown off because I'm talking about religion. You talked about going both ways. But that's a whole nother discussion.
But, you know, the Amish is a great example you bring up because you're right. Look at that.
How different they are than the rest of our society's been. But yet we've all coexisted. Okay. Right.
[00:26:39] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:26:39] Speaker B: And you're right. We don't try and impose on the Amish. They don't impose on us. And, you know, we've been, you know, Amish have been, you know, coexisting with the rest of Americans for our history. So that's where I'm. That what I'm getting at with these comments is I think what happened in the recent decade, last 15 years, is that those Americans have been living in their own alternative.
You know, I don't want to say, like, alternate reality. That's their reality. I respect it. But they haven't. They didn't want to share the journey that the rest of us have been on for the last two or three generations.
I don't think they appreciate that the change is so deep that it set in to where these corporations now, it's to their economic benefit to court all these other groups. And I think that's what we have a lot of this tension, too. That's why chick fil a is not gonna back down from this, because they're selling sandwiches to everybody that these people want to cancel. And so. And so. And. And that group of.
[00:27:35] Speaker A: They don't want to exclude their market correctly. I've seen reports that they stop donating to the anti LGBTQ groups. Like they. Like a few years ago, three, four years ago. Well, they don't want to exclude their. Their customer base.
[00:27:50] Speaker B: And we said this on a show a long time ago when that guy John Carlos stood in the 1968 Olympics and did his fist on the podium when he got his gold or silver medal, Ford and General Electric and at and t. And the big companies of that time weren't rushing to give him endorsement deals.
[00:28:07] Speaker A: Right.
[00:28:08] Speaker B: But fast forward to 2017, almost 50 years later, when Kaepernick kneels. Not only does Nike give him a massive endorsement deal, but he also wins a lawsuit against the NFL and makeshi ten times more money than he would ever made plane.
[00:28:20] Speaker A: So what I'm saying is that's overstating it. But he got tens of millions of dollars. Yeah. From them.
[00:28:24] Speaker B: Maybe not ten times, but he got a lot of money. My point is, that is upsetting a lot of Americans who don't. It's going against the grain of what their, they were taught in their culture about the rest of us that, you know, somehow it's either some handout or we stole it or something like that. And I think that's why there's a kind of cognitive dissonance wherever. They just don't understand that this stuff is happening.
[00:28:49] Speaker A: No, no, I get what you're saying. And now, in terms of just the question at hand, as far as, like, I would agree with you, I typically am a person that when you see something like this, my first inclination is, I think it's probably just getting more coverage. It's probably not more prominent people are people, you know, type of thing. And generally speaking, what we see now is probably analogous to what we would have seen 30 years ago if we, you know, if the spotlight was shined on it. In this case, if we had the Internet. Yeah, in this case, I waved the white flag on that, you know, and, like, I got a piece, I'm put into the show notes with this because. Yeah, yeah, the Internet, the culture wars, the social media, you know, and then our media coverage that this kind of coverage is the kind of coverage that draws more, creates more emotion, and creates more viewers, I think it all becomes a self fulfilling or self feeding cycle where it's good for the media business, it's good for the social media business, it's good for the Internet, you know, like, engagement and so forth, for people's blood to boil. And so I actually think this is a trend that we're going to continue to see. Hopefully you get to a point where a critical mass of people are just tired of it and say, look, people, you guys are always mad about something. Yeah, but the difference, though, is, is that, and this is where it gets into the social media and the culture wars. The culture wars, why that's significant is that the culture wars, generally speaking, ask you to take a side. You and I push back on this a lot of times because it's like, well, hold on. You know, like, in any context, we're like, okay, everybody should be, you know, like, given a certain level of dignity, respect, and so forth. But that doesn't mean that everybody should be able to do whatever they want all the time. You know, like, there's. There are bounds in terms of that. Our society should have, we should know, we should protect children, we should do like, there are things that we should have in place in society. That said, we are trying to lean more towards a free society. But nonetheless, culture wars, because they make, generally, they try to convince you to take a side and then you're always supposed to come down on that one side on every single issue because of that, because of the way media is driven by passion issues that are going to keep you watching social media, same thing. They're driven by engagement. I don't know, even if it's only a small percentage of people that are actually having their blood boil and wanting to do all this stuff, they're going to constantly infect others with this mentality. And, you know, like, I think it's going to continue to, it's not going to stay confined. Like it.
[00:31:22] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:31:23] Speaker A: And this is, you made this point in other shows when it was like, when people had to write letters or like, it was hard to stay in a remote group. Like, oh, it's, it's a 30 of us spread across the country and it was difficult to keep up. Yeah, this kind of stuff would peter out, but now it's easy. Every time you open up your phone or turn on the television, whatever group you have subscribed to is, if they're an outrage type of group, if they're a group that always wants to be mad about something, they're always going to be feeding you something to be mad about. So I think actually this is a trend and I think it's going to continue to grow. And how we end up dealing with it, I'm not sure. You know, I'm not sure dealing with it. But again, where we have to draw those hard lines is it has to be anytime. Like boycotts. Yeah. You know, that's your right. You know, like it's free association. You get in groups. Once violence, once intimidation starts coming. This is why we looked at January 6 is not just a legitimate political exercise like that involves violence and intimidation. Once that stuff comes in, there needs to be a hard line. People need to go to jail. People who are doing acts of violence or intimidation. We need to start locking those people up because that kind of, we slip into, we slip out of rule of law and a civilized society, once the violent and those who like to intimidate start being the prominent ones at the.
[00:32:36] Speaker B: Head of these discussions and to follow up on that, you know, and we say that with anyone committing crimes. Right. It's not like we're picking sides, but just to finish up and then I know you want to jump to topic, too, is you bring up a great point, and I think that's where we can settle on the idea that you're right, this trend is only going to increase, especially as technology allows for, like you said, more people to touch each other and to kind of get into.
[00:33:02] Speaker A: Their own little groups and.
[00:33:04] Speaker B: Correct. Yeah. And gin, people love, like, all the emails we've seen since, you know, let's say, the 2020 election, to get people fired up and angry. So I think for those of us, let's just say, like you and I and probably many people that listen to this show who may be not as comfortable with those type of attitudes and would like to see, make sure that they remain checked and that we don't go back to an environment that we saw pre 1965, wherever.
[00:33:27] Speaker A: Legally, you don't speak about the animal spirits, man.
[00:33:29] Speaker B: Yeah, well, people. Well, we're. Legally people can hurt other people for just being different.
[00:33:34] Speaker A: Or at minimum, the law wasn't going to show.
[00:33:36] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. So what we need to just remember is that this is an ongoing, constant struggle. And it's, and like you said about, because it's a good way. You said it, people that behave this way are going to keep pushing this stuff out. It's going to touch others that are on the periphery and might draw them in to being more cynical, more, more, more tribal, so on and so forth. So we need to keep these conversations going, reminding people it goes back to civics, too, like we've talked in other shows. Why was freedom of speech, separation of religion from the state, all that put in the first amendment, not the fifth or the 10th?
[00:34:11] Speaker A: 1St.
[00:34:11] Speaker B: Yeah, because the founding fathers knew those are the first thing that someone tyrannical is going for.
[00:34:16] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:34:17] Speaker B: And those made the things that would.
[00:34:19] Speaker A: Most quickly unravel what it is that we have.
[00:34:21] Speaker B: Correct. And the point you made earlier, that one of the founding reasons of this country was for religious refugees and political refugees coming out of Europe. So this idea that everybody should be free to do what they want and be left alone and leave others alone, more importantly, is something that's rooted in.
[00:34:38] Speaker A: And that's that we're not seeing right now is, yes, you want to live by your religious principles. Our country allows you to do that, but it doesn't. You don't then try to take a hold of the apparatus of government and say, okay, now everybody lives by my religious principles. Like, that's not what we're here for.
[00:34:53] Speaker B: And that's where the myths of whether you hear people saying christians are being persecuted in America, that's not true. I heard a guy overheard, he got, he had to resign from his position as some Texas councilman of the city because he was on tape. This is this year in 2023. He said on tape. He said somebody said something about some black residents in his municipality. And he said, well, we used to be able to hang them back in the day, but you can't even do that anymore. They have more rights than us. I'm like, damn, were you really?
[00:35:25] Speaker A: That goes back.
[00:35:26] Speaker B: No, just thinking like, damn, that's where your brain went. But this idea that they have more rights than us. No, we don't. We just have equal rights. No, but that's what I'm saying.
[00:35:35] Speaker A: Like, yes, that's always something that I see. And in these certain mentalities is people have a kind of thought process that if they are restrained from doing stuff to you, that is an infringement of their freedom. It's like they come from a place where I should be able to do what I want to do to you. And as soon as the laws tries to step in and say, no, no, no, you can't. You can't go over and just hang somebody.
You're taking away my freedom.
[00:36:03] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:36:04] Speaker A: My freedom to not be hung. It's always, it's.
[00:36:07] Speaker B: Or if you're going to say happy holidays to a hindu guy that somehow it's infringing on your Christianity, that's a more tame example.
[00:36:14] Speaker A: It is.
When people said there was a war on Christmas, nobody was saying you had to get rid of Christmas. They were saying, let's bring in everybody, bring in other stuff. It was the end of the exclusivity of Christmas. And that's it. And people took the end of the exclusivity of Christmas as the only thing as a war on Christmas. You still see this now and it's like, no, nobody's saying you got to get rid of your Christmas tree. They're just saying you got to put up something, you know, like whatever other religious symbol up by it, too.
[00:36:42] Speaker B: They're not even saying you have to. Some people choose to do it and then get, get criticized. And that's my point. Like, do I want to see Merry Christmas to someone who's not Christian? Why would you do that? You know what I mean? Like, they're not Christian. They're not celebrating Christmas. So you might as well say happy holidays because it's the holiday season.
[00:36:58] Speaker A: But I think, but that's kind of the thing. It's like if this concept where certain people feel attacked, if they aren't on the top of the mountain and everybody else is under them anymore, which is just, again, that's a mentality to watch out for if you purport, purport to appreciate equality and freedom. So our 2nd, 2nd topic today, I want to get into is something that hopefully won't come up over the next 15 minutes as we finish up the show or come up in the first.
[00:37:25] Speaker B: 45 opposite of boiling blood. So, yeah, no, for sure.
[00:37:29] Speaker A: It's. It's the idea of boredom and how boredom itself can be something that is. Can be good for you and can be good for creativity and all that. And then just getting into how so many of us, because boredom can be unpleasant. So many of us do our things, what we have to do, social media or, you know, podcasting or, y'all listening to podcasts, watching shows, whatever, videos, to avoid boredom. But, you know, and then we may miss out on some of these benefits of boredom. So what do you think? Would you think? What was your take on this kind of premise and how they laid it out?
[00:38:01] Speaker B: I thought it was great. It reminded me of a joke I heard years ago where, I can't remember from where, but I definitely did not make this joke up. And it was one of those funny, because it's kind of true jokes. And the joke goes, if Steve phone had an iPhone when he was in high school, he would have never. Sorry, Steve Jobs, if he had an iPhone when he was in high school, he would have never invented the iPhone.
[00:38:22] Speaker A: No, that's real. That's real.
[00:38:24] Speaker B: Exactly. That's why I laugh. I'm like, yeah, make sense. So you're right. It's this idea that, you know, we actually don't allow ourselves to be bored, not because we don't want to or because we're conscious of it. It's just because, as we said, you know, alluded to in the first part about things like the Internet and these distractions. And I'd say this is deeper than just the information that's shared on the Internet. Now we can get to things like how our phones are designed to maximize us, to want to constantly keep our head down in them through the notifications.
[00:39:01] Speaker A: The colors, games, candy color, candy crush, or, you know, whatever.
[00:39:04] Speaker B: Like.
[00:39:05] Speaker A: Like boredom. I mean, one of the central premises here is that boredom can be unpleasant. And so, therefore, if we have the option, if we have the ability to, we'll avoid boredom. And so, but if you go back through time, people didn't always have the ability to just snap their fingers, you know, literally on your phone and touch the screen and then alleviate all of their boredom. And so, you know, but boredom also leads to creativity. It allows your brain to do things that it wouldn't ordinarily or wouldn't have time to do if it's occupied all the time. And so, yeah, that's the joke. The Steve Jobs joke is right on point because it's like, yeah, he came up with these ideas a lot of times, probably wouldn't have anything else to do, and if he had something else to do, it wouldn't. It's not sinister. I mean, there can be sinister ways that people try to steal your attention and, you know, all that commoditize your attention and so forth. But it doesn't have to be that for this discussion. It's just like, well, yeah, I'm sitting here. I don't have anything to do. Let me pick up my phone. Let me look at the news, or let me pick up the phone. Let me play this game. Let me do it. And, and I, in 30 years ago, we might have just been sitting here, nothing to do, and then come up with some great idea, you know? And, like, I look at it from, like, there are two ways I look at it, and I'm gonna kick it back to you after the farm. I'm gonna go to the first one first. But just in terms of, like, work and, you know, like, now, you and I both, you know, we work, you know, you work, you know, you have your own business, I have my own business, you know, so we work, you know, in our kind of a very independent setting. But I remember working back, you know, when I worked for companies and so forth and in an office setting. And just the introduction of computers, which came in, you know, around the time I started, but there, but when I first started, there were still setups where they didn't have a computer. And the introduction of computers, it's like, like computers that could actually get on the Internet.
[00:40:44] Speaker B: I guess I should distinguish, you could.
[00:40:46] Speaker A: Never, you could never be, you would never had to be bored. Like, if you don't have anything to do, you could just surf the Internet. You read something, you know, read. Go to the New York Times or go to, you know, the sports, ESPN or whatever, and read about stuff. Like, and so I remember, though, the first couple of years when I would be working and I couldn't just hop on the Internet at any time. It'd be like, yeah, like, you'd be bored and you'd be sitting around doing nothing and you might come up with some good ideas. And so I just look at that, and then now I know, like, with, with businesses, like, they try to keep people off social media at work and all that other stuff, but it's like, yeah, people don't, you don't have to be bored anymore. Like, I remember getting a sports page was like word. They got something to read when I don't feel like doing something like the actual physical newspaper. But it's boredom. With a computer, there's. The boredom can be gone forever. Well, Internet.
[00:41:30] Speaker B: So this is a good timing of us picking this topic because I just came out two weeks ago. I was at a conference in another state, just industry conference. But one of the cool things, they had this team of psychologists, and they spend one of the presentations, they were on the stage for about an hour going through what they called that. Most of us in our today's world, especially at work, have what they call poor digital hygiene. I found it very interesting. Yeah, it was fascinating. So right now, I have my phone on black and white, on grayscale, my actual, my, this is my iPhone. Because what, what the researcher, what she was saying was just by going into your settings and putting your phone on grayscale.
[00:42:16] Speaker A: Mm hmm.
[00:42:17] Speaker B: They found they already did all these studies because they have, you know, Fortune 500 executive clients.
Those executives, I think about, these are busy people. Right.
[00:42:28] Speaker A: Spit it out, man.
[00:42:29] Speaker B: No spit.
60 minutes less per day.
[00:42:34] Speaker A: Really?
[00:42:34] Speaker B: Their smartphone. Yep. Just by turning it to black and white. Because she said, think of a casino or a Christmas tree.
[00:42:41] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:42:42] Speaker B: That's what they do with the colors and the phone to try and get it. She said, imagine a casino with no lights.
Yeah. That would just be boring. Right.
And so what's interesting is I. So I did it. And it's interesting, if you have an iPhone real quick, you go to settings, then you go to accessibility, then you go to display text and text size, and then you go to color filters, and you turn on grayscale. I did that number one. It's annoying as hell. So, I mean, a lot of people that did it that day or back to color, they've told me, but I forced myself to stay on it. And what I found, I was telling my wife this. What I found is that I don't really want to look at my phone for more than I have to.
[00:43:20] Speaker A: Really.
[00:43:21] Speaker B: Now, it's annoying. If I'm trying to look at a photograph or trying to show somebody a picture, I gotta go back to the world.
No, but it, but it's. But it's. Because what I realized is I'm looking down at this black and white thing, and my eyes want to see color, so I look up more.
[00:43:33] Speaker A: Interesting.
[00:43:34] Speaker B: Just don't stare at my phone as much.
[00:43:35] Speaker A: World more engaged.
[00:43:37] Speaker B: Exactly. Very interesting.
[00:43:39] Speaker A: Interesting.
[00:43:39] Speaker B: Yeah. And they had all these other studies, like, basically, long story short, like, I know, we don't have time to get through it all. She said that because of our poor digital hygiene and our inability to focus at work, most of us, that most of us spend 2 hours more trying to do the same work tasks in a given day than people 2025 years and prior did. And so what she said is, what that eats into is that 30 minutes I was supposed to spend walking or exercising, I can't do. Getting home early to be with my kids. I can't do getting home in time to cook a home cooked meal instead of eating out fast food. I can't do. And what they said is people are beginning to blame their employers for that, that lack of personality.
[00:44:22] Speaker A: Interesting.
[00:44:23] Speaker B: Instead of recognizing it's all of us and how we're being. And so it's creating these issues in the workplace that's fascinating, how we only have focused on how the Internet and these technologies disrupting, like our, like in our first conversation today, like our society and how we relate to each other. It's the first time I heard of it's affecting productivity at the workplace, but the employee is ire is going back at the employer. It's misdirected.
[00:44:50] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:44:51] Speaker B: Instead of saying no, it's the whole tech ecosystem that keeps killing us. So it's just fascinating.
[00:44:56] Speaker A: You had me on the edge of my seat, man.
[00:44:57] Speaker B: Yeah, you were, you were winding that one up.
[00:44:59] Speaker A: I'm like, whoa, what is what?
[00:45:01] Speaker B: So I'll wrap it up here and pass it back. So what I've done is, I mean, I took, I had my wife watch the replay of it with me at home, because here's one thing I thought, so. My youngest kid is twelve, and I think I've talked about this on the show. As opposed to my kids in their twenties, the best my 24 year old son had would be 25. This year was a color Game Boy. Very two dimensional, very kind of static, right? My twelve year old's got an iPad, an iPhone, ps five, an oculus.
You know, I don't even want to name him. Cause now I feel like he's too spoiled, guilty. But the point is, is that. So I told my wife recently, I was like, you know what? I'm gonna start meditating with this kid about ten minutes a day. And she's looking at me like, why? Like I'm crazy. I said, because we, at our age, we don't appreciate what it's like to grow up in this environment. We still can remember, and our brains can recall a time when we could sit down in our bedroom at 1213 years old, bored off our ass, staring at the ceiling and thinking about stuff. Daydreaming and all that. These. My son doesn't do that.
[00:46:01] Speaker A: Yeah, he's literally. Because that's less pleasant than just hopping on a game and doing something, you know.
[00:46:06] Speaker B: Yeah. Or it just addicted him now to just always pick up a device.
[00:46:10] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:46:11] Speaker B: So I figured I actually have to be proactive and now teach him how to be alone with his thoughts.
[00:46:16] Speaker A: No, that's. That's interesting thing, actually. And I, like, I've done that for a while, actually. Like, the. My kids tell me they're bored, and it's like, well, that's good. You know, I want you to be bored for a little bit. Go entertain yourself without any kind of screen or anything like that. Because that, to me, I didn't even think about it. From the standpoint of actual boredom, you can't do anything. Like, I'm like, no, go grab a toy and entertain you come up with your own scenario and do it like that. So that, that's an even further step. But, but no, I think the. It makes sense when you think about it, though, the concept of your mind, because we all have heard of kind of, like, good ideas coming in. Eureka moments. Well, a lot of times, eureka moments aren't happening, and you wouldn't think it would happen when you're in the middle of something else. Like you're actually engaged doing something else. So it's really like giving yourself that space, your brain that space to do what it does, essentially. We don't understand how the brain works, of course, but to do what it does and to come up with, just go back through what's already been and looking at things from different angles and so forth. And, yes, the idea of boredom, like I said, going beyond, I've looked at it in the concept context of imagination previously, but now I can see even more than that, just in the context of, like, I want to look at this, I'm gonna have to adopt that, the black and white idea. And then also just other. Just give myself space a lot of times, because when I'm writing for work, it was like, a lot of times you get kind of just stuck in your thoughts and it's like, okay, so maybe sometimes it's, you don't go and sit down and look at your phone. You just go and sit down and, you know, don't look at anything and so forth. So, I mean, I think it's something that we know. We'll have this piece in the show notes as well. But I think it's something that everybody can take something from because it's the concept of meditation, as you mentioned, like quieting your mind, giving your mind a chance to breathe, basically. And so to hear that that does, in fact, have lots of benefits and, you know, that it can be do something that can help you be more productive is, you know, it's something that you can imagine. But to hear it, I think is helpful in terms of. You want to try to incorporate it.
[00:48:14] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think just to finish up here, you know, as we talk about it, makes me realize that with all these pings and this is just like I said, that this researcher that I watched at this conference kind of identified another negative to society when it was, you know, this idea of the employer employees, you know, being resentful to employers over things that are not the employer's fault, that are the fault of the kind of digital media world we're in. And it also kind of makes me realize as we're talking that this is also probably one of the root causes of why we have so much anxiety and people are just medicated to the max on Prozac and Xanax and all this because you're right. Like, without being bored and without your, you know, most people are so just consumed now with being constantly on some device or checking their social media, they never really give their mind a chance to just rest.
[00:49:05] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:49:05] Speaker B: Like this idea of just decompress. Yeah, exactly. Like hanging out in the middle of us on a Saturday afternoon and just like, let's say, I mean, I know people take naps and stuff at a certain age, but let's say someone in their thirties or forties who's not old enough yet to be taking NAPDA just to sit down for an hour or two and do nothing.
[00:49:21] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:49:21] Speaker B: And not be constantly on something, you.
[00:49:23] Speaker A: Know, and we, but that's kind of the piece is that we look at that, and I think this is a natural human thing. We just have more options now, but we look at that as unpleasant, and so therefore, we try to avoid it.
[00:49:34] Speaker B: But, or I think we've been, 50.
[00:49:35] Speaker A: Years ago, we might not have had an option to always avoid it, but now we can. We can always avoid that if we choose to.
[00:49:41] Speaker B: And I also think for some of, we've done this on the work culture. I think that I felt this when I was in corporate America. There's a part of you that is in an american worker that is conditioned to feel guilty if you're not always.
[00:49:52] Speaker A: On, if you're not always busy and.
[00:49:53] Speaker B: I felt like, yeah, so it's. It's. It's almost something I've had to train myself sometimes just on a weekend, sit down and literally, like, I'll turn on the PlayStation and start playing on purpose just to say, okay, I'm not gonna think about work. I'm not gonna do anything. I'm just gonna do something totally mind numbing and chill out, and, you know, that's. Force ourselves to do that sometimes.
[00:50:13] Speaker A: So now, yeah, now you got to take it to the next level and just sit down. Don't turn on the PlayStation, and, you know, look out. Look out on the. On the horizon or something.
[00:50:22] Speaker B: That'll be when I'm ten years older.
[00:50:24] Speaker A: There you go.
[00:50:25] Speaker B: We'll work towards that.
[00:50:27] Speaker A: Work. Yeah.
[00:50:27] Speaker B: That's gold.
That'll be great.
[00:50:30] Speaker A: Yeah. We appreciate it.
[00:50:31] Speaker B: Right.
[00:50:31] Speaker A: For joining us on this episode of call. Like I see it. Subscribe to the podcast, rate it, review us, tell us what you think, send it to a friend. And until next time, I'm James Keys.
[00:50:40] Speaker B: I'm tunde with Lana.
[00:50:42] Speaker A: All right, and we'll talk to you next time.
