VIDEO TRANSCRIPT :: Good morning. It's Monday. That means you have a whole new week to try something different. I've been thinking a lot lately of Christopher Hitchens and his very clever words that he said, I believe it was in 2010 at the Munk Debates. He was talking about the Israel -Palestine conflict and he said, why can't we ever have peace in Israel? He said, it's pretty simple, “because the parties of God have a veto and everyone knows this is true”.
That's basically it. And the more we get into this whole situation, the more I have come to appreciate Christopher Hitchens. And I just want to tell everyone, like, wow, step back and look at the situation. Last week, on Facebook, Lee Weissman aka jihadi jew, like the nicest guy you will ever see on Facebook who never endorses anything mean or like any violence or extremism of any kind. This guy is like everyone's friend, okay? He literally just reposted the Banksy thing that said, you'll never convince me that the solution to a problem is to kill children. He didn't say anything about anything. He just reposted a thing. Like automatically everyone assumed that he was talking about, you know, Gaza and, you know, Israel and shit. And like people just started to bring their fucking baggage to that post. That was just like a Banksy thing. And like something that said killing children is never the solution to a problem.
Literally, that's it. There was no mention of anything and people brought their own threat states and their own states of their nervous systems and stories told through those lenses to that thing and last check which was you know this morning there was like a hundred and fifty three comments you go and you look at some of that shit is so wow it's absolutely wild it's super wild it's like the one of the most fascinating studies in human behaviour. And like, there's some like people got really upset and they like made multiple posts and they like went to all sorts of lengths to have, you know, make screenshots of Instagram stories that they posted in the comments and accusations about, you know, moral narcissism and all of these things. And like multiple times these people are really, really upset. And they just came and they just like, vomited all over the comments and Then you know, so there's like, you know the pro-Israel side and then there's like the pro-Palestinian side that comes in response to that and they just Spiral down into this big blame and shame thing and then you know this thing that was like it's wrong to kill children ends up being all about like, you know genocide and like decapitating babies and murder and like racism and like evil Zionists and like.
You know, all this stuff is like, whoa, like Lee literally just said, let's stop killing children because we're mad at each other. He literally just said that. And so. Like, I don't know how we can like have peace if everyone is becoming so dumb that they're like triggered. By something like that's like a neutral thing, like this is like a neutral stimulus on social media and people are like unable to accommodate that like in their world they just have a real trouble with it they just devolve into this emotional mess these are just normal people you know on Facebook like I keep saying this we cannot have solutions for peace.
Because if we're everyone scared and blaming and shaming and thinking that everyone's trying to kill everyone else and whatever and walking around feeling fearful and shade, we cannot access the circuitry that we need in order to collaborate and think and have peaceful coexistence. So like it's really up to everyone to look at what they're doing.
Maybe you think that people are extreme when they say, "okay well, you know what? I'm really Old Testament. I'm going to be, happy that the bad people are dead," and you think that's repugnant. Well okay well you know what? Going around and pointing out that that person is problematic is probably not really gonna change their behaviour and it's just gonna make you more upset. Focusing on what other people do like is sort of pointless because you can't control what they do you can only learn about yourself.
So I'm learning a lot about myself because I'm very aware of the fact that the things that upset me are things that I've done in the past and that I have a tendency to do. I just want to point out to everyone that everyone needs to take a chill pill and seriously think about what your intentions are. Is it kind? Is it necessary? Is it true? Does it advance peace? What does that mean? Why are people behaving this way? Why am I behaving this way? Do I need to have an opinion about that right now?
All of these questions are really important. The road to peace is your vagus nerve, okay? The road to peace is in each one of us. Take responsibility rather than give, blame and shame.
Humanization is your friend and empathy erosion is not. Everyone have a great week.
The Vagus Nerve is the Road to Peace