Speaker 1: A good a team. I hope you will. So those
Speaker 1: of you who know me pretty well know that I
Speaker 1: share a lot of stuff, obviously through the podcast, but
Speaker 1: also on social media. I pump out a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff on Instagram. Sometimes it's a thought, one thought, one idea,
Speaker 1: or a couple. Sometimes it's a story. Sometimes it's serious,
Speaker 1: sometimes it's silly, and sometimes it's funny, and sometimes it's philosophical.
Speaker 1: And you know how it kind of works with me
Speaker 1: is I don't really have a strategy or a plan.
Speaker 1: I don't get up every day and think, what did
Speaker 1: I share the last ten days, What topics have I
Speaker 1: covered recently? What does the world need to hear? Or
Speaker 1: what do I think I should you know? Or it's
Speaker 1: very organic, And what happens quite often is I'll have
Speaker 1: a thought or an idea, and I'll just come up
Speaker 1: with one or two sentences that kind of capture that
Speaker 1: idea or that message, and it might be in a
Speaker 1: funny way or a cheeky way or a sweary way.
Speaker 1: And quite often the one to two to three to
Speaker 1: four sentence just have the most impact, get the most traction,
Speaker 1: get the most eyes, get the most attention, and so
Speaker 1: on and so there's a real, I guess, a real
Speaker 1: attraction to writing stuff that's short, cheeky, funny, I guess,
Speaker 1: and impactful in that way. But I also there's another
Speaker 1: part of me that thinks deeply, very deeply. Some people
Speaker 1: would say too deep, and that's okay, And for better
Speaker 1: or worse, my mind really is always thinking about all
Speaker 1: the stuff we talk about, you know, other people, human behavior,
Speaker 1: us as a species and as a world, as a
Speaker 1: planet full of eight billion or so human beings, and
Speaker 1: you know, the dichotomies and the division and the love
Speaker 1: and the hate and the and sometimes I'll write something
Speaker 1: deep and I'll turn into not a few words, but
Speaker 1: a paragraph, and then two paragraphs, and then I've written
Speaker 1: this thing that's like probably too long to share anywhere,
Speaker 1: and it's It's what interests me is some of the
Speaker 1: things that I can write in two or three minutes
Speaker 1: seem to get the most attention and traction and to
Speaker 1: me are very you know, that not that impressive, If
Speaker 1: I'm going to be honest, I don't think they're that impressive.
Speaker 1: I don't think they're that clever or funny. But some
Speaker 1: of the things that and you know, the things that
Speaker 1: I'm talking about the things that are often cheeky or
Speaker 1: sweary or inappropriate get sometimes you know, like I've written
Speaker 1: one many many of my whiteboards have got well over
Speaker 1: a million views. One of them's got somewhere close to
Speaker 1: twenty million, and when I read it, I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of interesting and a bit funny, but it's
Speaker 1: not that fucking good, right And then and then when
Speaker 1: I opened the door, and this is I guess, this
Speaker 1: is the dichotomy of like trying to be real and
Speaker 1: be authentic and share your thoughts and ideas, but also,
Speaker 1: you know, have have an audience and and share content
Speaker 1: that people want to read and is relevant and connects
Speaker 1: in a way that's not going to take people an
Speaker 1: hour to read, and it's not overly complicated, and it's
Speaker 1: relevant and it's all of the things that people want. Anyway,
Speaker 1: with that long winded intro, so I started just thinking
Speaker 1: out loud, writing some stuff, well, thinking to myself, I guess,
Speaker 1: and then with the idea of potentially sharing it, and
Speaker 1: I just wrote a few things and that became a paragraph,
Speaker 1: and then that became a bigger paragraph, and my intention
Speaker 1: was to share it on social media. Then it ended
Speaker 1: up being probably you know, I could definitely share it
Speaker 1: as a post, but whether or not anyone would read it,
Speaker 1: and to be honest, I don't even know if sharing
Speaker 1: it here is a great idea. I think some of
Speaker 1: you will resonate with what I'm about to share with you,
Speaker 1: some of you won't. And my intention is not to
Speaker 1: change the world or push anyone in a direction, or
Speaker 1: to highlight any specific cause or but rather just to
Speaker 1: think deeply and to try to turn down the emotion.
Speaker 1: I understand the emotion. I understand the anger, I understand
Speaker 1: I understand the outrage. I understand all of it, and
Speaker 1: I was all of it as well, and I still
Speaker 1: feel those things. But I am fascinated with the why
Speaker 1: behind it all. And I just think that sometimes it's
Speaker 1: worth trying to understand the things that we hate, and
Speaker 1: I'll explain why in a moment. So what I'm about
Speaker 1: to share with you, I'm going to read. I don't
Speaker 1: often read, you know. I just riff and freestyle, as
Speaker 1: I'm doing right now. I just talk off the cough normally,
Speaker 1: which doesn't always produce a good outcome, as you know.
Speaker 1: But I'm going to read for the next few minutes.
Speaker 1: I'm going to read you what I wrote, because I
Speaker 1: think some of you will find it may be helpful,
Speaker 1: maybe a little bit enlightening, or maybe worth exploring a
Speaker 1: little further. Some of you won't, And that's okay, of course. Alrighty,
Speaker 1: so here we go. Like most of you, Like most dozzies,
Speaker 1: I was shocked, saddened, and if I'm being honest, I
Speaker 1: was angry about what transpired at Bondai on Sunday. And
Speaker 1: I'm also well aware that my shock and my sadness
Speaker 1: and anger doesn't change anything. It doesn't fix anything, it
Speaker 1: doesn't help anyone, and I'm well aware it's not a
Speaker 1: solution to anything. And typically I don't really like to.
Speaker 1: I don't feel compelled to. I tend not to comment
Speaker 1: on such significant public events or tragedies because in the
Speaker 1: grand scheme of things, really, who needs to hear what
Speaker 1: I think? Honestly, and the complete overwhelm of media and
Speaker 1: social media commentary in the middle of all of that,
Speaker 1: and the outcry and the newspapers and the stuff on
Speaker 1: repeat on TV. I don't think I'm important in that.
Speaker 1: I know I'm not important than that. And maybe another
Speaker 1: person just sharing their feelings isn't particularly helpful. So rather
Speaker 1: than reiterate and revisit the obvious tragedy, devastation, and sadness
Speaker 1: of what happened, I thought I would think out loud
Speaker 1: about what's actually happening underneath the behavior, what's happening underneath
Speaker 1: the violence, Like what's psychologically and sociologically and culturally and
Speaker 1: emotionally happening behind that behavior, that violence, and that terror.
Speaker 1: In simple terms, I want to explore the unseen behind
Speaker 1: the scene. I want to explore the psychology that drives
Speaker 1: the action, the thinking that drives the behavior. But before
Speaker 1: I open this door, I want to say something really clearly,
Speaker 1: and that is to understand hatred and to understand evil
Speaker 1: and violence is not to condone it. I'm of the
Speaker 1: opinion that we need to understand the minds and the
Speaker 1: motivation and the beliefs and the ideology of people who
Speaker 1: perpetrate horrible acts, who do horrible things, who hurt people,
Speaker 1: so that we can better prepare and combat and protect
Speaker 1: ourselves and others, protect the people we love. To not
Speaker 1: understand the enemy in inverted commas is an overwhelming psychological
Speaker 1: and strategic disadvantage. We need to understand them and if
Speaker 1: we don't, we are way behind. As I said, it's
Speaker 1: a disadvantage, and not only in war, but also in life,
Speaker 1: the life that we saw or the lives that we
Speaker 1: saw torn apart Sunday past. In fact, it's in our
Speaker 1: interest and the interest of everyone that we love and
Speaker 1: want to protect, to understand what we hate and to
Speaker 1: understand those who would seek to do us harm. How
Speaker 1: can we overcome what we don't understand, How can we
Speaker 1: anticipate the potential actions and attacks if we don't seek
Speaker 1: first to understand and to begin to understand. It's really
Speaker 1: important to realize that most people who do evil things,
Speaker 1: they don't believe they are either evil or evil doers.
Speaker 1: And as uncomfortable as that makes us, and as deluded
Speaker 1: and indoctrinated as they may be, most terrorists absolutely believe
Speaker 1: they are doing the right thing. They believe they're doing
Speaker 1: the good thing. Bad people doing bad things don't think
Speaker 1: they are bad people doing bad things. They can't see that.
Speaker 1: They don't have that level of self awareness. They live
Speaker 1: in that confirmation bias, They live in that echo chamber
Speaker 1: of belief and ideology that says that you and I,
Speaker 1: in this case are the enemy. Consider a teenager. Think
Speaker 1: about this. Think about a teenager walking into a marketplace
Speaker 1: strapped with a vest that's full of explosives, ready to
Speaker 1: kill himself because of the belief of a way of
Speaker 1: thinking that he had programmed into him since he could walk.
Speaker 1: Not only is the killing of innocence not evil in
Speaker 1: his mind, it's noble, it's courageous, it's a higher calling.
Speaker 1: And in his group and with his indoctrination, he's actually
Speaker 1: becoming a martyr. He'll be celebrated for his sacrifice and
Speaker 1: courage by his family, by those in his group, and
Speaker 1: of course to you and I this thinking is fucking horrible,
Speaker 1: and it is fucking horrible. It is pure evil. But
Speaker 1: to them and to him, it is not. And this
Speaker 1: is where we can seek to understand so that we
Speaker 1: can perhaps prepare, we can perhaps anticipate. And this doesn't
Speaker 1: just correlate to you know, big horrible, devastating events like
Speaker 1: we saw on the weekend. This correlates and relates to life.
Speaker 1: You need to understand, even in the context of what
Speaker 1: I'm talking about. I believe it's important for you and
Speaker 1: I to understand the sociopaths that surround us that we
Speaker 1: work with that, we know that we need to interact
Speaker 1: with them so that we can prepare ourself, so that
Speaker 1: we can protect ourself and others for what might be
Speaker 1: the consequences of interacting with or being around that person,
Speaker 1: and what sits beneath this kind of violence, the violence
Speaker 1: we saw on Sunday, it is rarely just an impulse
Speaker 1: or momentary madness, or a single bad decision. It's almost
Speaker 1: always the end point of a long psychological conveyor belt
Speaker 1: identity fused with ideology, belonging tied to belief meaning outsourced
Speaker 1: to a cause, and moral responsibility handed over to a narrative.
Speaker 1: I've spoken about this before, but when a person's sense
Speaker 1: of self, when their identity, when their version of who
Speaker 1: they are becomes inseparable from an ideology, a tribe, or,
Speaker 1: in some religions, a promised future of eternal bliss, then
Speaker 1: critical thinking no longer plays a role in the decision
Speaker 1: making and the action taking process. Nuance dies first, being
Speaker 1: able to make nuanced decisions in the middle of a
Speaker 1: programmed mind doesn't happen. Nuance dies, then empathy dies, Then
Speaker 1: the humanity of the other person dies, and at that point,
Speaker 1: violence is an experienced by them as violence. It's experienced
Speaker 1: by them as obedience and necessity and duty and even destiny.
Speaker 1: And this is how ordinary human psychology, under the right
Speaker 1: or perhaps more accurately wrong conditions, can produce extraordinary cruelty,
Speaker 1: not because the brain suddenly stops working, but because it
Speaker 1: starts working exactly the way it was programmed to. The
Speaker 1: uncomfortable truth is that the psychological ingredients that make this
Speaker 1: possible are not exotic or rare. They're human. Our brains
Speaker 1: crave certainty and belonging, meaning and identity. And when fear, grievance, humiliation,
Speaker 1: or perceived in justice are layered on top of those needs,
Speaker 1: and then exploited by simplistic narratives that divide the world
Speaker 1: into good and evil, us and them, heroes and enemies,
Speaker 1: then that slope becomes dangerously slippery. Most of us will
Speaker 1: never commit violence. But the mechanisms of dehumanation, tribal thinking,
Speaker 1: and moral outsourcing exist on a spectrum, and they don't
Speaker 1: begin with bombs or bullets. They begin with stories. We
Speaker 1: stop questioning people, we stop humanizing, and beliefs we stop
Speaker 1: holding lightly. Now, having said all of that, I fully
Speaker 1: acknowledge that these are just words. These are just my words,
Speaker 1: these are just my thoughts, and I'm just a flawed
Speaker 1: bloke trying to figure stuff out like you. I'm just
Speaker 1: a guy trying to understand human behavior and how the
Speaker 1: world works, and hopefully to do some good and to
Speaker 1: share some love and to encourage some of you to
Speaker 1: think critically. I want to support you along the way,
Speaker 1: and maybe I can shine of the light in the
Speaker 1: darkness of what's going on at the moment. Love harps