Rob Long talks philosophy, empathy, mask laws, federalism | @plantimals | The Vance Crowe Podcast

Rob Long [00:00:00] Feeling what their emotions, what it would be like to be them, and then making a decision based upon that. It's like loading, you know, random software from the internet and, you know, hitting run and just saying like, go ahead, do whatever you want. On my, on my computer here, you know, I'm Jeremy Osh, a retirement community, CEO, living in Eureka, Illinois, and you are listening to the Vance Crow podcast.

Vance Crowe [00:00:25] Welcome back to the podcast. I'm glad you're here today, Mark's season two of the podcast. I don't really know why I'm calling it season two. I just had a baby. I'm really excited about that. It was two weeks ago, which is why I haven't put a podcast out. It came a little bit early and it was unexpected, so I just took some time off. But now that I'm coming back, I'm starting a new season and I'm gonna make some changes. Some of those changes won't be obvious to you. It's gonna just be the pre-work and all the planning that goes into it. My executive producer, Ben Anderson, who was a guest on the podcast, but he and I now are starting to work together a lot more. He's gonna help me get some things arranged in a longer timeframe. We're gonna be more diligent and try and get out podcasts even more regularly than I was before. But more than that, I'm gonna go out and try and find people that I respect, but I disagree with. I wanna find people that are able to have conversations with me and they can change my mind on things, or we can learn things together. So we really are going to push and try and get on the edge of chaos, that place where the two people coming together learn things from one another and something new manifests from it. And I'm excited about that. So season two is going to be all about this, and I decided that this season would be started with one of my closest friends, Rob Long, you've heard Rob mentioned on the podcast many times, you've probably seen me talking to him on Twitter.

Vance Crowe [00:01:59] He goes by at Plantables, but we've tried to record podcasts before, and every time we did, we started talking about things that were something that we knew because we were such close friends, but it would make it really difficult to translate to just a regular audience. But now something changed. I don't see Rob every day now because of Coronavirus. And really it's been about four months since we've seen each other all the time, every day talking all the time. So we had some new things to discuss. So I decided that I would invite him on, and he is a tremendous guy. This is a fantastic conversation, and we're gonna go talk about things like virtues and is and ought. And we even talk about things like inflation and what's gonna happen with the way people are responding to Coronavirus. So I hope you really enjoy this interview, but one of the things that's happened in the last few weeks is that the Articulate Ventures network has grown and blossomed. We have started a speaking gym where people come together once a week and they practice speeches and they start getting each other feedback. The Book Club is exploding. We're having a great time this month, we're reading The Stranger. And if you've never read that, it is probably a two hour read. It's a quick read, and we're also doing a longer term book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. So if these are things that you're kind of interested in doing and you've been kind of curious about, I really recommend that you join us. Just go to the Articulate Ventures network and try and sign up.

Vance Crowe [00:03:32] We'll invite you into the group. You'll get to meet all of the people that are there, and you'll get to see that there is a whole different way to interact with people on the internet that isn't the barbed fighting that happens on Twitter or the posturing that happens on Facebook and Instagram. So I'll leave a link below, but I hope you consider joining this network. It's been something that has really enriched my life, and I believe the other people that are involved feel like it's a great place to talk about ideas and to consider things they'd never thought about before. So, we're gonna jump into the interview with Rob Long, I am so glad you're here, and welcome to season two of the Vance Crow podcast. Rob Long, welcome to the podcast.

Rob Long [00:04:21] Good evening.

Vance Crowe [00:04:23] So the other day I was talking with a group of my friends and I quoted something and they replied back to me that that was Arabism. And I kind of chuckled to myself and I realized I, I don't know if if they've heard you say these things or if I've said 'em so much that, that they just come out as Rob Hims, but I thought, what the hell, as I'm starting season two of the podcast, I ought to have probably one of my closest friends, somebody that I talk with all the time on the podcast. And I'm glad you're here to join me now that I start season two.

Rob Long [00:04:54] Yeah, thanks for having me. I've been listening since the beginning, so I'm excited to, to make a onscreen debut here.

Vance Crowe [00:05:02] So the other day I got myself embroiled in more conflict on Twitter than I would like, because I thought that I was generating like the beginning of a conversation between maybe five or 10 people. But the way that I worded a tweet just spun it out of control. And basically the, the meaning that I was trying to impart the conversation, I was trying to start spun out into this like very vitriolic back and forth, and it was about virtues. And I realized that I probably came to that woefully inept, not not capable of articulating things that you and I have talked about for years. And I thought that might be kind of a fun place to start. We're not scholars, we're not people that, you know, studied this deeply, but you and I have for for many years talked about this concept of the virtues and and I thought like maybe you and I could have more of a long form discussion about it.

Rob Long [00:05:57] Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, trying to reel it back in a little bit and say, what exactly are we talking about when we're talking about virtues? I think ultimately, you know, it's, it's a normative concept, right? So it's just some subjective preference where we're saying, we think this is a good thing, right? And the idea is that people generally agree on this. So I would reel it all the way back to Socrates back in, in Athens there, who came up with kind of the, the cardinal virtues that people like to quote. So that's wisdom, courage, temperance and justice. And there's nothing particularly magical about those. Like, I don't think that you can measure the universe and find, oh, there's, you know, 10% wisdom and 16% justice. Like there's, it's just kind of a framework to think about things. And in fact, Socrates himself never wrote down any of his dialogues. He was kind of opposed to, to writing. He thought that you people would, you know, who had to write things down, would lose their memories and kind of be bewitched in a certain way. And, and I think there's actually something to that, but that's kind of another, another conversation, I think. But Plato was the person who wrote down the dialogues of Socrates, and he's also one of the people who kind of systematized the idea of mathematics, which is another example of, of a model like this, right? So mathematics is coherent in its own self, but it exists kind of outside of the physical universe.

Rob Long [00:07:32] They're just ideas. And if you accept all of the axioms of this system, then there are certain properties that you get out of it. And I think that's kind of the same way to think about these various ideas of, of virtue. So, you know, wisdom is, is defined as taking, taking the right action, right? Like knowing the right choice. And there's giant scare quotes around right here. And that's kind of the first thing that I would point out that we encounter here, that there's no universal definition of, right, right. Like kind of back into another topic that we've talked about a lot, which is the difference between is and ought, right? So is being how it, what is the universe like when we observe it? Well, I open my eyes and I see things and I can describe them, and it turns out that you see the same things that I see generally, right? For some, for some level of, of specificity and ought is something else, right? So it's a how should the universe be? We don't know what to say is the answer to that. And there's really nothing that science can tell you about this. There's nothing that your senses can tell you about this idea that people have had a lot of ideas throughout the, throughout the years, religion falls, you know, mostly makes claims about ought, right? So what is good and exactly, that's what, that's what this stuff does. The, the virtues. And yeah, I mean,

Vance Crowe [00:09:05] I think that the, the interesting part about the concept of virtues is that for many people, a virtue is just something that's kind of good or oriented towards, you know, something you want or some, and, and I don't think that's wrong, but there's something that you come to when you start going down the path of what are the virtues where you say, well, there are some good things that are good in and of themselves, or that if you take them out to an extreme, certainly you could pervert them by taking them out to some extreme, but that for the most part in and of themselves, when you take that action, it is good. It's not, this leads us to another decision that that is not directed by the virtue. And this is where I get hung up because I have a difficult time articulating this thought because it's saying there's some kind of purity to it. Well, yeah,

Rob Long [00:09:56] I mean, I think you started out there by splitting out kind of the colloquial meaning of virtue, meaning like just something in general that's good versus these, this very specific, you know, philosophical definition of it. But yeah, those four virtues that I mentioned, the cardinal virtues, you can kind of take those as like the axiomatic goods, that, that if you accept these, then all these other concepts follow. So generally the the end that's in mind, the thing that you're going for is EU ammonia, right? So this is the Greek word for that's roughly translated as human flourishing. And what does that mean? There's not, there's not a concrete definition to any of these things, right? Ultimately, no one can hand you wisdom. You have to have some sort of tacit knowledge of how to interact with the real world and what is good to you, right? Like, we're not gonna invent reinvent values out of, out of nothing. But there are things that people generally value, like being out free from pain. It's like the, one of the most fundamental things that living beings care about is being, avoiding pain, right? And then you kind of get more and more esoteric and, and interesting and fine-grained out from there. So security, you know, having food and then on and on and out from there, social interactions, you know, safety over time, long periods of time, passing your genes along, all these sort of concerns that human society is generally thought of as being put together to facilitate.

Vance Crowe [00:11:38] Yeah. And when you're talking about that is versus ought the way that this relates, I think, to, to so many other discussions, like, it's one of those things where you have to have that as a foundational block in order to be able to add it into other conversations. But it's one of those things that I think people get caught up in, or particularly in the modern age where we say, okay, we're gonna use the scientific method, determine what is true. But then people oftentimes are tempted to say, well, if we know what is true, then we can also quickly slide in and ought where, where we're not actually coming to agreement that everybody thinks that the world should look like this, but we're gonna slip this value in here and then use science to propel us towards that idea or the, or that the, that the more that the iss make it obvious what we ought to do in this scenario. And that's where this values and virtues conversation kind of the rubber hits the road with, I mean, basically everything society's trying to decide on.

Rob Long [00:12:35] Yeah, I, I think that there's a phase I, I feel like I went through this phase myself personally in my life where I became aware of science and how it operates and, you know, read into it pretty deeply. And I think I got carried away with the idea that if we just keep learning what is the further and further, like, eventually there'll be some end to this and it will describe the aughts for us. And it, it doesn't seem to work that way. Now, you know, who knows, I could be wrong, but, you know, simply knowing, I think, I think climate change is a, is a perfect example of this, right? So, you know, you can measure the climate and say, okay, it seems to be going up this, you know, percentage of degrees every year, then what? Right? Like, what, what is the conclusion from that? It, you know, is it the fact that we're in a, you know, a series of ice ages, you know, historically like that the world has been many, you know, sometimes tens of degrees warmer than it is right now, historically, on average, do it, like what's normal? Is it normal for us right now this year or this last a hundred years or a thousand years, or 10,000 years, or 10 million or 200 million or more, right? That you have to have some sort of preference to, to constrain the conversation to some degree.

Rob Long [00:14:09] I think the same is true for, for the conversation about virtues. There should be some, we, we need some sort of tighter path to discuss this through.

Vance Crowe [00:14:19] Well, it's hard because you, like in the example of climate change, I, like many times people come to the conclusion that when they say, okay, I agree that climate change is a real thing, then oftentimes there are other people that are like, okay, well then the obvious next step is X, y, Z, right?

Rob Long [00:14:37] And

Vance Crowe [00:14:37] So what that ends up doing is people that don't have a frame of reference to say, well, you can't derive an ought from an is. You can't say, well, something is happening and therefore we ought to do this. Most people don't have this as like a, as a logical framework. And so if they can't fight that back and they don't like the augh that's going on, where people are like, well, then we should stop using cars or flying on planes or, you know, doing taxes. Yeah. Then they start saying, well, then I just don't believe your is. And then the other people are like, ah, look how dumb they are. They don't believe there is, but like we have all this evidence. And so there's this like cycle that things go on. And instead of people saying, all right, let's agree on what the is is, but now let's agree that we're going to have to assert, like you said, preferences or values or whatever that is. And the virtues allow us to think through this in a way where we can say, are there some ideals or some ways of being that we think we should be preferential over others? And that's where it's, it's valuable to try and nail down some of these ideas, although you're never gonna get to a place where everybody agrees because inherently oughts are subjective.

Rob Long [00:15:49] Yeah, yeah. Where to take that though. I mean, we could, we could talk about kind of what exactly is it that people are after when they're acting virtuously, right? Or, or kind of like how you, how you would view this and maybe say, okay, if you accept these cardinal virtues, then how do we get from there to something more meaningful, right? Like, I, I kind of like the concept that, you know, you have to take control of your own, you know, the things that you have absolute control over your own behavior, your own mind first, right? And kind of pull that into this virtuous sphere and like, well, let's say out front that no one is ever perfectly virtuous, right? It's an ideal. It's, it's a, it's something to fall short of ultimately, but you can't possibly demand that the world, you know, conform to your idea about climate change if your own life is in total disarray and you have no idea what's really, how the real world actually operates as this is kind of the place where I, I, I see this happening a lot. And this is not, you know, this is a, not a new concept here, but basically that you need to nail down your, your, your personal life, right? First who you are, and then how you interact with those closest to you. And then gradually expand your circles of concern until you get to some point where you can think about the multimillion year trends of, of temperature in the world and how you might change other aspects of human society to accommodate those things in a sensible way.

Rob Long [00:17:30] Because I think once you, you know, I think we all have some pretty intuitive sense for how do interact with other people that comes naturally from our evolution. But once you get to large groups of people like the, the economy of the United States of America, which is, you know, whatever, 350 million people at this point, you're, you have no intuition for how this machine works really, right? It's a, it's an amazingly complex, interconnected, you know, complex adaptive system that your intuitions are just not you, you don't have any of those at this scale.

Vance Crowe [00:18:02] Well, and I think when a lot of these ideas are being explored at like the college age, you're in your twenties, you have this natural desire, and I think Piaget talks about like this desire to go out and save the world, that your meaning in life will be derived from you making some change that will go out and have some monumental change in the world. But the reason that this ends up being so naive is if you can't balance your checkbook, or you are taking on massive amounts of debt, or you can't even, you know, hold a job or, or keep your family organized, then it's really difficult for you to, to be taken seriously when you're saying, Hey, you corporate executive that manages a multi-billion dollar corporation, I demand that you listen to me because I believe that the world ought to be this other way. And yet it's one of those things that you see happening wave after wave, every generation, every every group. Because it's, it's almost natural for these young people to be coming in and kicking the door down and saying, well, we want change, but not necessarily having a way to know what that change ought to be.

Rob Long [00:19:13] Yeah. I think that's right. That's a good way of putting it.

Vance Crowe [00:19:18] Did you have that when you were younger? I mean, I, like, the reason I ask is, 'cause for me it was so, so like, I, I mean, painful and to, to look back on how much I wanted the world to change and, and couldn't keep my room cleaned up and was proud of the fact that I did laundry, like, you know, twice a semester or something like that.

Rob Long [00:19:38] Yeah, a little bit. I mean, I think I went through a phase where I, you know, rebelled against the, the ways of my parents and my society that I grew up in and on some level. But I, I don't think I ever really put any energy into going out and changing the world, you know, for those ideas. It was just kind of my own personal journey, you know, to go through those and, and like test those ideas and you know, like I was raised a Catholic, I'm no longer a Catholic, but I went through a phase where I was harshly against religion, you know, and would argue with anyone who would say anything that referenced religion in any way. I was that, that character for a while. You know, I've, you know, gone long since past that point. I'm, I'm not religious now, but yeah, I, I don't have a problem with people who are religious, right? Or, you know, just kind of the, the government in general. Everybody has some kind of a gripe about how the government works no matter who they are. But ultimately now, you know, after trying to organize a team of people to, to produce something, you know, I realize how how difficult it is, and it's just really easy to yell at people and tell 'em what they ought to be doing. But, you know, yeah. And there are people that fail at organizing things for us on our behalf in the government right there. That definitely happens. But at the same time, it's not helpful to just yell about it, right? Like, you have to build something in its place.

Vance Crowe [00:21:10] Yeah. The building something in the place. I think at least when I was younger, it was like, but I don't have time. I have the answers now. And to build it would, would require me to, to, to be diverted from the answers that I know to be true. And like, there's a phrase, a Robb, I don't, I'm it, I'm sure you've heard it some from somewhere else, but the beware of unearned wisdom, right? Yeah. Where you are trying to enact some ought that you have come to believe is, you know, absolutely true, but somebody handed that to you and it's not wisdom necessarily. It could be real folly.

Rob Long [00:21:44] Yeah. You may be granted your own wish, right? It could be your, your twilight's own nightmare wrought upon you to get your exact wish. I, I, I like that because it's kind of like I, if I, if I'm remembering the, the conversation correctly, I believe the concept of empathy was, was being discussed, right?

Vance Crowe [00:22:04] Oh, on the Twitter, on the Twitter

Rob Long [00:22:05] Conversation. Yeah. Right.

Vance Crowe [00:22:06] Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rob Long [00:22:07] And, and so my, my critique of that actually kind of slots in perfectly with that bit right there. Not that we shouldn't be capable of empathy, but that we should not use it to make decisions. And ultimately what it is, is it, I don't wanna say unearned wisdom, but it's, you know, putting yourself in somebody else's position, feeling what their emotions, what it would be like to be them, and then making a decision based upon that. It's like loading, you know, random software from the internet and you know, hitting run and just saying like, go ahead, do whatever you want on my, on my computer here. You know? Well,

Vance Crowe [00:22:42] So to give it some context, so what had happened was there were two people out there, one of them was talking about like not having masks. The other one said, Hey, you Americans down there, maybe the reason your country is failing is because you've prioritized your individual freedoms over empathy. And, and that may not even be a fair representation of their tweet, but that's how I read it.

Rob Long [00:23:04] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:23:04] And I came in and was like, Hey, empathy's not a virtue, because empathy may prioritize weakness and fragility over other things. And so what I think we ought to do is have individual freedoms be paramount, and then let those individuals decide on their own that they want to be empathetic or make decisions based on, on what other people are, how they feel or resonate with other people. Yes. And when I said this, I, some people I think took it outta context. Some people were like, he's saying empathy is fragility and weakness, but there were other people that made the commentary that was basically saying, no, we must first have empathy, understand others before we can, you know, build a society up. And that's what was like a very frustrating part of this conversation because in 240 characters, it's very difficult to have the conversation about why that's not an accurate state, or it may, might not be the best way to organize our society.

Rob Long [00:24:05] Yeah, no, I totally agree with that, right? Like, if you're building from a place where, and, and I think there's not really another option of, of a reasonable way to look at this. That everybody has to be taken care of themselves as best as possible, right? Like, there's no better advocate for yourself than, than you. No one, no one can help you more than you can, right? Ever. And so if we assume otherwise, then we get into a weird place where we're saying there's some, there's some decisions that individuals would normally make for themselves, but we're going to ask a group to do this instead. I think experiments in this area have worked out okay, right? Like, you know, the concept that we have law and order in our country and that retribution is not permitted, but that we pass it off to this, you know, to the police to, to help us, you know, eliminate retributive, you know, justice kind of stuff going on. So, you know, it's not impossible, you know, I think there are examples of things where, where it works, but there has to be a good reason behind it. And I don't, I don't really understand the reasoning behind this, the mask law stuff, you know, of why, why that should be a law and not just, if you feel like this is a, a problem for you, then, then you should wear a mask. Okay? I don't think anyone is saying you shouldn't wear a mask, right? It's, it's, you just shouldn't be threatened with being put in jail if you don't wear a mask.

Vance Crowe [00:25:40] That, that has been such a difficult thing for me because I really assumed that the, that the state that everybody would start in is we're all free and we want that freedom to continue as much as possible, because that has proven to be very valuable here. But instead, there were these other things where it was like, if you don't give up these freedoms, not only will we take them from you, but you pushing back on them indicates that you are bad. And as soon as that happens, like I have wiring in my brain, as soon as somebody says you have to do something, I, I want don't to do the opposite. Don't wanna, I, I I, and I think that you need people in society that are highly disagreeable, because if you don't have that, then anybody that decides to start making a moral case for why everybody ought to do the lowest common denominator thing, by law, you start having a really tyrannical society.

Rob Long [00:26:35] Yeah. I mean, and ultimately, how are we gonna figure out whether anything is, you know, whether it's time to come out from under our rocks, you know, like if everyone is hiding in inside and not interacting with the rest of the, the world. Like, there, there needs to be a gradation of people and approaches. And I think, you know, everyone is super excited to criticize governors and federalism right now to say, boy, wouldn't it be nice if we had one of those fancy governments like the, the Chinese have, where they can just, you know,

Vance Crowe [00:27:07] Just

Rob Long [00:27:07] Take a city and smash it into the ground and say, no, everyone's staying inside for the next three months, you know? And if you come outside, we'll, you know, the scary men will come and take you away. I, I think it's fantastic that we have a, a federalist system and that we can see based on different behaviors in different states, what, what is gonna happen. Like this is a natural experiment. I think ultimately this was, this was what propelled Europe in the, you know, from the year 1000 forward into the, into the position that, that we kind of find ourselves now in Western civilization where there was this, these various overlapping hierarchies of, you know, go local government and the church government, ecclesiastical government, all these different little bitty pieces, kind of doing things slightly differently and, and competing with one another. I, I think it's a, it's a wonderful thing that we have here and we should take advantage of it now. It will, it definitely means that there will be more casualties in some places and fewer in other places. But you know, this, this whole experiment was never about like, let's, let's do everything in our power so that no one ever dies. You know? Like that's not, that's not the point here. If, if we can't live and maintain our, our way of life, I think, I think there's a lot more questions that need to be asked and people kind of pretend like that's not on the table, but it really is with this stuff, I think it goes pretty far.

Vance Crowe [00:28:38] Yeah. I mean, like the, the question about what, when we started to do lockdowns, I, I was definitely of the mindset of if we're going to lockdown, let's come to agreement before we go into lockdown, what will be the parameters that this is released? And other people were like, no, we don't have any time to talk about it. And something you have said to me many, many times over is like, as soon as you start saying that, we don't have time to think, it means you're trying to hijack me. Like it's, it's the, anytime somebody's coming up there and trying to be charismatic in the way that they explain something that requires logic and deep thought they're doing it because they want to use something other than logic. And the, and yeah. And some conversation about the virtues to, to make these decisions. So the other thing that I think was a big part of the mass discussion, which I had, so just, so my wife just had a baby and I have been almost completely sequestered away from the world for four months. There's been a few times when I've gone out, I've had a few interactions with other people, but just the other day I had to go to Home Depot. So I go in there and I put on a mask, and the very thing that I thought was going to happen really came true for me as I'm walking around there, which is I cannot tell the emotional state of anyone I am walking around with. So as you approach somebody, you, you have no way of telling is the reason that they're walking so close to me because they're aggressive?

Vance Crowe [00:30:13] Is it because they're lost in their own thoughts? You have nothing other than their eyes. And I found myself being so distracted and my brain having, so I have to work so hard to figure out what was going on with the people around me, that it made me like a, a not very pleasant person to walk around with. And like, you've known me for years. Like I'm the type of person that walks around with a big goofy smile on my face and talks to total strangers. So the fact that I can't do this, like, I think there's a much, much bigger cost with removing two thirds of people's faces than, than just the very active protecting people from, from whatever is behind the mask.

Rob Long [00:30:53] Yeah. It's interesting 'cause I've walked around various places with you plenty of times in the past, and I think probably what you're talking about is I think that typically I'm not tuned in as much to people's emotions and, and I have a less detailed mental model of their inner states than I do of my own, right? So I feel like I'm maybe in this condition most of the time, like when I'm walking around. And, and maybe that makes some sense, right? Because I, I feel like I'm generally more, you know, I don't know, I don't wanna use the word paranoid 'cause I don't want you to think I'm, I'm walking around like a crazy person here, but I know what you mean, right? Like you're, you just, you're just kind of like leery of having encounters with other people. And if they're in your personal space, you're not just like, oh, hey friend, what's wrong? You're kind of like, what's what's happening here? There's some kind of a threat, you know? Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:31:49] A guy stopped to shake my hand and like, I was like, okay, are we doing go time here? Like, why is this guy returning And making his like, body facing me? And then it turns out it's my good friend Bob, and he's got a big smile on his face and he wants to shake hands. But I like, and to, so to me, I left Home Depot being like, I don't know when I'll go out and do that again. And it's not because I'm afraid of the germs, it's because now the very fabric that that made me love being an extrovert, love being and encountering other people, the, the randomness that came with being in a, in a place like that was like enjoyable for me. But now it feels hostile even when it's not. And I think it's, I think that, you know, to not address the fact that by, by forcing everybody to wear masks, you've now created this situation in society that already is suspicious of everyone else. This has got way higher consequences than most people realized.

Rob Long [00:32:46] Yeah. I, I think there's a difference a little bit there. There's a little bit of space to separate kind of two layers here where the forcing people to wear a mask issue, I'm with you a hundred percent on, but I think it's also reasonable to expect that whether you are wearing a mask or not, other people may or may not in the future, right? Like six months ago if you'd said everybody would be wearing masks somewhere and it's a thing, and you'd have to have this conversation, it wouldn't make any sense at all. But here we are, right? So I would say, what can you do to adjust yourself to get used to that potential reality? I, maybe that won't be the case, I don't know. But if it is, you know, you have to be able to give yourself some space between your, you know, perception and your, and your reaction there so that you're, you catch those things and say, wait a minute, you know, is it likely that this person is like reaching out to, you know, are we doing this to, to start a fight here? Or what's really going on? You know?

Vance Crowe [00:33:45] Well that's a fair, that's a fair way to look at it. Like, just because I had that emotion and the before masks, I didn't have that emotion, doesn't mean that then therefore I'm righteous in my anger. And that's probably a fair, that's, that's, that's a good reminder for me. I, I, I don't know, I, one of the thoughts that I had, because I was watching children be carted around and there was a guy there and he had three kids and one of them couldn't have been older than four years old wearing a mask. And to me, I feel resentment, I feel like this sense of like, where can we go where this won't happen? And I guess if I have to, if I have to address it, that it won't change. I really don't know how I will react because this is, maybe it's something I have to come to terms with. I really, really hope it's not this way. And I think I'm prepared to do some level of civil disobedience in order to not make it be that way. Not right now. 'cause I guess I don't know how deadly this disease is, but more and more every day, I think civil disobedience might be the more valuable thing that I can hand future generations than it is to do my part to stop the spread of the disease by wearing a mask.

Rob Long [00:34:55] Well, what, what would you like, what would you want to accomplish? Right? To, to, to let people know that, that it's, that there's something better than wearing a mask around that the balance that their preference for safety over, you know, liberty was, was improper.

Vance Crowe [00:35:16] Yeah, that's a good question. What would I try and communicate that with? I don't know that that's fair because if you just start walking around without a mask on, that's not going to do anything. And if you walk around holding a, a sign saying why you're not wearing a mask around, then you're kind of doing exactly what we had been saying before is the folly of youth. So yeah.

Rob Long [00:35:35] You're, you're telling everybody else what they should be doing. Right? No, I, I mean, I think it's, it's important to think these things through because those, these are all, all these ideas are in the air right now. Like, everybody's kind of mulling these things over. I saw the video of the people being arrested in California for not wearing masks, you know, I mean, ultimately my feeling is if you're on private property and the sign says you must wear a mask, then you must wear a mask. Right? Like, that's how I feel about it. And if they, if you don't wanna wear it, then don't go there. But I feel equally as strong that the government should not have a ma a a mask law requiring you to wear a mask either. But yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:36:19] I dunno. Yeah, I mean, I think, I would imagine that many of the listeners probably feel there's some line because nobody thinks that you should just be able to put just endless amounts of, of asks on people. And there are probably a lot of people that are much more willing to accept a small ask than other people, right? Like you and I are highly disagreeable people, so this small ask doesn't feel like a small ask any encroachment,

Rob Long [00:36:47] Right? That

Vance Crowe [00:36:47] I'm not, that I'm not particularly those that you say I don't have a choice on. And there's gotta be a better balance here. But I think that we are going to watch much more tribal upheaval and intertribal conflict coming up here because as Coronavirus first kicked off, very few people were asked to make sacrifices. I mean, certainly people lost their jobs, people were sold to go home, but a lot of the things that were going on seemed to split along political lines. And it just kinda seemed obvious, my people think this way. But now that schools are either starting up or not starting up, or they're having some people go remote or they's all these different types of restrictions, I think we're going to see a much higher increase of people that used to have political similarity that are now gonna have interests that are not aligned. And you're gonna start watching intertribal conflict. I think it's going to increase over the next few weeks as school gets started.

Rob Long [00:37:46] Yeah, I think you're right about that. There's definitely been a pattern even before all of this stuff. The, you know, the protests and the, you know, the, the pandemic stuff, even before that, there was kind of a trend of corporations and other entities taking tribal kind of political stances on things and you know, like I I, you know, just randomly like credit card companies, certain ones, you know, refusing to process sales of guns or, or things like this, things that were not illegal, right? But they just were like, nah, we don't wanna do this, which is their right. You know, that's perfectly fine. But at some point, if we're all living in this society together and we, and we end up having like weirdly, you know, separate but equal banking systems and grocery stores and all this different stuff that we go to, you know, how much are we really a single society anymore? And how, you know, how do we pass laws that apply to all of these things equally? I don't know. I feel like, pardon me, they're gonna have to be lower level things that we all agree to, which ultimately was kind of the point of, you know, the constitution was that the, this federal government was a way for the states to kind of coordinate, have some common forum policy, but we've gotten to this point to where the federal government itself has its own interests, right? Beyond just that it's a place for the states to coordinate their relationships with one another.

Rob Long [00:39:21] And that seems difficult to negotiate, but that if we were more in this stance of kind of devolved most of those, more of those decisions about aughts, right? The, the highly opinionated things, the more local they are, the more opinionated they can be, right? Like kind of calling back to tal LE's fractal localism, right? Where he, it, it's a funny way of putting it, but it, it kind of makes sense if you think about it, that among your family, you know, you're, you're kind of a, a communist, right? There's no, you don't have a private property between you and your wife or whatever, really, you know, and then you're, you're like close friends and extended family, you're kind of like socialists. There's some sharing of resources and, and responsibilities and kind of, you know, everyone's friendly and, and, and going there and then like municipally, you're more like a, you know, let's say more like American progressives where you're wanna provide services and kind of regularize the, the way things are built so that you have some sort of coherent city forming there that does things roughly the same way there's trash and police services and those things are provided for, and then at the state level, you're more of kind of a, a conservative, you know, more of a Republican kind of, you know, we, we want to have some level of laws to hold us together here and, and facilitate trade and that sort of stuff. And then the federal level, you're more of a libertarian kind of like, there's just some, a few things that we're allowed to care about at the federal level and they're really important and that's it, right?

Rob Long [00:40:55] And I feel like that's a pretty good recipe and it kind of fits with sort of the virtue stuff that we were talking about earlier where you see to your own your own local interests in the way that makes the most sense for you, which is really gonna be different, right? People that live in St. Louis versus, you know, Ames, Iowa versus Billings, Montana, wherever, right? They're wildly different environments that have different interests. And I think it's important for people to be able to live the way that that makes the most sense to them. And I think this is one way to do that, but

Vance Crowe [00:41:31] I dunno. Yeah. I think one of the indicators that there's something wrong with the Federalist system, when you start, you start hearing about laws that are being created and your only option is to have some wild conversation about how you're gonna move to New Zealand or Switzerland or something like that, right? Yeah.

Rob Long [00:41:48] Whereas

Vance Crowe [00:41:49] If we had a highly functioning federalist system where cities were actually really governing over themselves over everything that wasn't enumerated in the constitution or the state, you know, of Missouri didn't, didn't grab it as, as something that they were in control. If you really did have that, then you could say, Hey, I wanna move to cities in the Pacific Northwest because they have these values and this is how they pay for it and this is how it all works. But in the Midwest, it works in this other way. But because we don't have that, the only thing people do is they say, well, if you know, this person becomes president, I'm gonna leave the country. And it, I think that anytime you feel that sense, you should say, this is the, because the Federalist system has been decayed, and what can we do to bring it back?

Rob Long [00:42:36] Yeah. I don't know. I don't know, honestly. I mean, I think that we do have it here more than most other places in the world ever have, right? Like we have states and they're called that for a reason, right? Because they were thought of as independent states, like a, like a unit, just like all of the countries in the European Union, we all still, it's easy for us to think of them as independent actors in the world stage, but they have this like common framework for trade and immigration and these things that they do in the eu. That's what the United States used to be, right? I mean, it was the same sort of a thing, but over time, as I said, the the power kind of, well, I mean the civil war happened and that, that was a very sudden lurch of, of federal power that happened there for, for obvious reasons. But I don't think that things ever kind of devolved back to the states after that.

Vance Crowe [00:43:30] Why, why do you think there is this pole towards a large centralization? Because very few individuals in and of themselves benefit from an amassing of power far away from you. And yet people seem so willing or so excited that, that the federal government may step in and and make some decision.

Rob Long [00:43:52] I think that, you know, who can really say, but my, my guess would be that it, it's easy to point to a few people who will benefit from some centralized kind of federal action. Like let's, let's take for example, steel tariffs, right? Like you think whatever you want about, you know, economic nationalism, but if your goal, you know, like let's say the, in the early bush years, he put on a tariff to protect American steel, right? And the amount of money that if you took like the, the amount that the price rose for everyone in the economy versus the amount of money that the steel industry made, you could have just given them this money directly,

Vance Crowe [00:44:34] Right?

Rob Long [00:44:35] Like it was a very diffuse and small cost for many people and a, an acute benefit for a small group of people. So, you know, the, the politicians can point to them and say, look, it helped these people, it's very good. And the diffuse costs are very hard to understand, right? Especially when it comes from, you know, like how long has it been since we collected more money than we spent as a, as a federal government? Like, I don't know, maybe, maybe 250 years, I don't know, since before the country was created. But you know, it's, it, it's because of this, right? That there's specific acute needs that you can point to, to get people to support. Like, oh boy, we can be really, you know, boy we were gonna, we were gonna not buy that last program, but boy, we really need this, don't we? We'll just throw that on there too and we'll just make some more money. And nobody, nobody really understands the, the consequences of, of spending more than we make as a federal government because it's just not, it's not, it's hard to understand what's going on there, right? You have to understand

Vance Crowe [00:45:40] Inflation

Rob Long [00:45:41] And fiat currency and all these things and it's, it's complex.

Vance Crowe [00:45:44] Well, and I, I finally have heard people that I've known for a long time that were warning me against deflation. You know, I've always been the inflation is coming, inflation is coming, and then the counterbalance is, no, you gotta worry about deflation. But now that the ports are backed up and the, and the highest priority goods are gonna be the ones that are raw materials that are going to the highest bidder, I think we're going to have an actual supply problem. And you know, in the US for the last 60 years, if you had a demand and you wanted to buy something, you could pretty much get it. It, it was available. But now I think there's so much one, the the backing up of the ports from China to the US and then also the fact that it's just, it's much more difficult to get people working. And I think we're going to have way more money chasing after way fewer goods and we're going to have a dramatic rise in prices. Yeah, I could be wrong, but I think we're gonna see that happen faster than what we've seen it happen for in the past.

Rob Long [00:46:50] I think that's, I I think that's exactly correct. Right? And like, again, you know, not a doctor, right? I don't really know these things or an economist or any of this stuff. This is just our, our kind of riffing here. But it, it does seem like making money more accessible than it otherwise would be, is an obvious bad idea, right? Like if you, you know, in the absence of the kind of machinations of the Federal Reserve system setting the interest rates, you would assume that the interest rate would represent somehow the amount of savings versus the demand for savings, right? Who, who, you know, the amount of people who are looking to borrow capital to begin a business or some, some put some use to it versus those who have some capital that they would like to, to earn some, some interest on. And that's, that's not the case here. That's been totally, you know, that there's not any savings anymore. This is the problem, right? So there's the, and they're making tons

Vance Crowe [00:47:51] You more money

Rob Long [00:47:51] And if you have savings money. So what happens is they take this money and bid up all these prices on it and, and people are beginning projects all over the place, but there's no reason to expect that any of these projects are gonna be able to complete. There's not, there's not actual physical wealth in the real world that's being created when they do this, right? It's just more tickets to more claims against the physical wealth that's already there.

Vance Crowe [00:48:16] When, when, when you see the, the amount of money that people are able to save now because they have bank accounts that they got PPP money, they were able to not go out to eat. They've got, eventually they're going to wanna spend this money, but everyone will have more money available to them to spend and they're going to be chasing after it. And a, a few friends of mine in different parts of the world mentioned that they were trying to buy furniture the other day

Rob Long [00:48:44] And

Vance Crowe [00:48:44] They're like, everybody when you go to buy furniture says, okay, you can buy this, but you're gonna get delivery in six to 12 weeks. And, and you're like, wait, but I wanna buy it now. Well, can I just buy the floor model? And they're like, no, we, we need that floor model. Well, the reason they need that floor model is 'cause they wanna keep selling those goods because people have money in the bank and they know if you don't have a floor model, they're not gonna sell that good, that ticket like you called it for, for 4, 6, 12 weeks later. But those, that, that furniture may not be coming in and what, you know, what's gonna happen when people have laid down all this money to buy couches that just don't come in and couches are only the beginning. 'cause you can get along without couches, but what happens when it's carburetors and mufflers and all the things you need to make your cars work and your houses run.

Rob Long [00:49:33] Yeah. And all the factories that make all of those things all require various and bits and pieces to keep them going. Yeah. I don't know. It, it does feel like some kind of unwinding is happening, but who knows, right? I don't think that we would ever actually be able to, to really tell what's going on here. There's a lot, it, it, it's hugely complicated and it feels like, pardon me, that the numbers are mostly, mostly focus, right? When they measure inflation, they, pardon me, they, they don't include housing, energy, education, healthcare. These are things that people spend most of their money on that they're not counting when they measure the, the CPI, right? The, the normal inflation metrics that they do. So what, you know, what, what, how will we ever actually know what's happening out there?

Vance Crowe [00:50:31] Oh man, in healthcare, those prices must be skyrocketing on a scale that, that's mind-boggling. So we were in the hospital to be able to have this baby, but because of coronavirus, the number of rooms that a nurse can go into has been dramatically lowered, which means you now have to have so many more nurses in there, which you'd think, okay, that's good. You know, you want those people that are getting paid, they're getting hours, you're lowering the disease, and yet someone is going to have to pay for the number of hours and the number of nurses that you have in there. We had great amazing people helping us during the, during the delivery of our child. But the, like, this is, this is gonna be compounded out with not just delivery of children, it's gonna happen with heart surgery and diabetes treatment and cancer treatment and all these things. And that's just one aspect of the economy that isn't included in, like you were saying in the, in the CPI, the consumer price index. Right on. So this is another one of those things though that it's just like the, you know, if you wanted to protest against signs, what, what, you know, what would that look like? This is another one of those things that, you know, I can talk about it on my podcast, but what am I gonna go do about the inflation rate? You know, if, if the, if the federal government is trying to determine should we give out 2 trillion or 4 trillion, I have no say in this. And even paying attention to it seems like a waste of time. Yeah. And I am now coming, coming to grips with what should I be paying attention to with the news?

Vance Crowe [00:52:06] Because it feels like watching the federal level of news, now that I'm almost 40 years old, I've got my family, it feels like I'm watching WF wrestling and that it doesn't actually have an impact on, on me in the way that I can interact with it. I mean, you know, I should probably know what's happening, but outside of that, like, I think that I want to, I wanna change what news I pay attention to.

Rob Long [00:52:31] I think that you, like, you know, on some acute level you have to know what's going on, right? Like, if there's, you know, a, a gun battle happening outside your house, you want to know that's happening. But like, I think the, the, the day-to-day comings and goings and the, you know, the various issues that come and go, I, I think you just shouldn't pay attention to 99% of that stuff. And that you should just kind of stick with more long form, you know, longer digested ideas, right? Where people have time to not just have the, you know, stimulus response really fast, but just, you know, recording things over time, working on theories, kind of understanding what's happening, letting ideas ane out of the, the chaos that's going on out there and build something of value and then present that back to people

Vance Crowe [00:53:25] A kneeling. That's, that's a great, that's a great concept. Can we talk about that for a little bit? Sure. When you say that word, what does that mean

Rob Long [00:53:34] In the, it's the most explicit meaning it, it comes from chemistry and it's the process of growing larger crystals in a substance by lowering its temperature slower. So like when you're tempering steel, this is a kneeling, right? So you heat it up and the molecules can move around and you quench it, right? And some of them come together really tightly, right? When you, when you quench it. And what your goal is, is to kind of do this repeatedly over time and get kind of, give them a little bit more energy and then let them find a better spot to fit so that they build larger crystals of steel in there. Right? And the, you know, if you just, if you just take like say a railroad tie and you hammer it out into the shape of a, of a blade by heating it up and kind of smashing it and then just let it cool, it will be brittle. Like you could smash it against a rock and it would, it would break, you know? But if you do this process of, of heating it up and quenching it and heating up and quenching it, you grow crystals throughout this thing that give it a much stronger strength and allow it to flex and be more useful. And, you know, we, we kind of use this, this idea as an analogy all of the time in a lot of places. One of them is like in conversations, I feel like this exactly what you're doing here, this kind of long form conversation is a, is kind of the same process of, of a kneeling where we can talk about something and it doesn't have to be a, a, a two minute sound bite that you're getting out somewhere.

Rob Long [00:55:10] It's like, well, I'm, I'm for, you know, sound money. It's good, go. You know, like where you just have to not listen and just kinda be very brittle and, and brought, you know, brute force with it where we can take some time and play with the ideas and kind of say, okay, well yeah, let's let this settle down a little bit and then come back and attack it again from a different angle and, and see what happens and not just let it, you know, away.

Vance Crowe [00:55:37] I think that one of the ways that this concept of a kneeling you, you had always described it to me that I like your steel and sword metaphor, but the one that clicked into my mind was lava that comes out of the top of a volcano and then hits the ocean cools so fast that it just becomes sea glass. Right? It's just brittle. It's totally worthless. Yeah.

Rob Long [00:56:00] Yeah. So it has no minerals in it at all. Right? It has all the same, you know, molecules that came out of the, that were in the lava, but it's because it cooled so fast. They're all just in a big jumble. And so there's no internal structure to it. It's just glass. But if that same lava, it would be magma if it were underground, right? If it were in a, a chamber and it's just cooling slowly, like maybe over millions of years, you get something like granite out of it and you can look at granite and kind of tell what, what their quality is based on the size of quartz crystals that are in there. Right. The slower it was, it cooled it. The longer it cured, the larger those crystals are and the stronger it is.

Vance Crowe [00:56:44] Well, and I think the, the, the real world application of this is friendship, right? Like, if you have two people, they meet, you know, maybe two, maybe a, a boyfriend and a girlfriend, they meet and they have this like torrid love affair, right? If anything comes along and, and you know, they're not expecting, it's a very brittle relationship. They can go their separate ways. They haven't lost anything. But when you start having friendships where the people meet regularly, they see each other, they know that this is not, there's no one conversation they can have that the, they, they're just no longer gonna speak to one another, but they're gonna keep hammering on ideas. I think you and I have done this for years and years and years and years. It's why it's actually really difficult for me to have a podcast interview with you because if we were to speak at the level that we speak when we just encounter one another, we have so much going on, so many threads that we can go back to that it makes it difficult for other people to jump on that train. And I, I, for me, I think one of the biggest things that's been lost in modern society is I see many men don't have these long-term friendships where they see their friends regularly over and over and over and over again. So you can take an idea and you can hammer on it, and then you can go look something up and come back. And that's the dramatic difference between a relationship that you have in the, in the real world versus people that you encounter on Twitter, right?

Vance Crowe [00:58:16] That's, that's the obsidian, you know, lava flying out the top. And I think that's, I don't know, to me that's the, one of the most important parts of my life. It's, it's like a major pillar in my life is the closeness of friends that I see regularly.

Rob Long [00:58:32] I think the thing that you're looking for here is meaning, right? Like, pardon me, this is what you're building, right? If, if you just kind of ram into people randomly, you, you kind of like treat them as these, you know, one dimensional characters and you know, I don't think you're capable of having a, a strong model of somebody else and what they're, what they're thinking of. But if I have lots of friends that I, or, or let's say, let's say lot, but just a few who are, who have different backgrounds from me, who have different opinions about things and I have a good model in my head of what they would think about something, then it's possible for me to encounter somebody and say, okay, I know what it's like to not agree with somebody, so I don't need to immediately, you know, feel attacked and, and try to crush their, their opposition. I can just try to understand what it is that they're, that they're after, you know.

Vance Crowe [00:59:28] Well, and this gets at the core, you said something that's actually completely true for me earlier about like, you grew up Catholic. You're not Catholic, you don't have any problem with the, with people that go to church. In fact, this year before coronavirus hit, I had committed I was gonna go every Sunday. And one of the things that I began to realize by going to church every Sunday is you see the same people. Now, I didn't know those people at all. They all live in my neighborhood because you can just drive to the local church. But now by seeing them every week, eventually you start to like wave at 'em and then, you know, you, you pass 'em on your way out and then somebody makes a joke. And I think one of the things that used to happen before I, I don't know whether it was just the, the, the brokenness of religion or the acceleration of technology, but one of the things that used to happen was you would encounter people at church or at the men's club or whatever, that you totally didn't agree with, but you had to see them over and over again. So you couldn't just go burn that relationship to the ground. So you had to be subjected to their ideas and you had to figure out like, okay, I don't totally like the fact that this person believes in deflation, but if I go and tell them that they're an idiot and they know nothing, I have to see them next week and my wife is friends with their wife and I'm gonna have all these problems. Do you think we'll ever bring that back into our society? Do you think this is lost?

Rob Long [01:00:56] I don't know. I mean, maybe, maybe we're on a trajectory to where we got to a place as far as we're gonna go on the inertia that we had initially as a, as a culture here in this country and that we're just kind of on a glide path. And it's starting to turn around now. And I think maybe when it starts to go down, people will rejoin and for various reasons, some of them good, some of them bad, and will pick up a whole different set of, of things that people will rebel against in the future, right? Like, who knows what, what, what bad reasons people will have to get together in groups. Now there's all kinds of things that you can imagine, but I think it's gonna happen one way or another because there's, I I think the illusion is gone that there's this like, you know, national culture that we have that we can just kind of all just keep doing what we're doing here. And it's, it's all gonna be fine because that doesn't seem to be the case. 'cause there's, you know, internal divisions, I don't know.

Vance Crowe [01:01:59] Yeah, I think there's gonna be, i I, whether it's a resurgence of church is, is maybe not the correct way to say this, but there is going to be a revival of people getting together on a paradigm that is not work. And it's not necessarily just enjoyment. It's not, it's not just entertainment. It's gonna be people coming together for some of the reason. And I think part of that is going to be because the public square are, people are coming to the realization that if you, if the public square really is in some like technological future where it's all done digitally, it's controlled by somebody else. And I think people need to have that place where they feel like they can go, they can try out ideas, they can say things that are a little edgy. And, and I think that, I think religion in the past or church used to give that to 'em. So something is going to come up in its place. And I myself feel the pull of wanting to come to agreement with other people in my community about what values we have, about what oughts we think are worth pursuing. And I, I'm resistant to it being the church because I, I think that there's something broken about it, but I think it's coming in some way because I am willing to give up some level of my own autonomy if I can come to some agreement with other people. Can we have conversations about the virtue where I don't have to burn you to the ground in order that I succeed?

Rob Long [01:03:30] Yeah, I, I agree with you entirely there. And I think maybe the, the one point I would make about this is that it's highly unlikely that there'll be one thing, right? There will be interweaving different things that some people will be in three different groups that do this. Some people will be in one group, but every, there'll be many of them all across the country at different layers of the hierarchies that are out there. I mean, and, and religion used to be that way, specifically in the United States, right? Like, that was the unique thing about us was that we had this kind of pluralism around religion where you could pretty much do whatever you want if you weren't hurting anybody else. So all of the various different sects and different, like kind of, you know, different groups that had different ideas that were punished in their, in their countries of origin came here to practice because they knew they could get away with it. Now, in reality, every other group that came over, there was some group over here that hated them, that didn't wanna let 'em do this and that, and that they, they, they fought these things, but eventually, you know, like we, we came to some sort of a, of a deante here and we're able to have a, a human society and like, ultimately I think wrapping this all the way back to virtues, the thing that we really want out of this, whether we realize it or not, is that the virtues give us some level of predictability for how society will interact with larger groups of people, right? That we, we won't, it's not, it's not, you know, who is currently holding the guns or has their hand on the switch as to what the laws will be, right?

Rob Long [01:05:08] There's some continuity over time that again, that a kneeling comes back. So the longer you have that, the deeper, more, you know, optimized, improved your supply chains, your entire economy can be. Now we, we realize that there's some level of balance here between perfect optimization, you know, and resilience to, to failure. Like, it's not, there's not a a perfect answer to this question, but I feel like, you know, having a lot of predictability in the legal side is something you can do that allows us to, to, to focus on buffering against external shocks rather than like, oh, this group took over and they're, they're, they're, they're turning the dials all the way over this way for our laws. And now, now the other group came back in and they're moving them back over here, you know?

Vance Crowe [01:05:57] Well, and that's what you have in Kenya. You know, when in Kenya, the, the, the tribes there was one dominant tribe, and then there were a whole bunch of other much, much smaller ones. And so the one dominant one was always gonna be in charge, but all the other things that were around that those smaller tribes fought for, and whoever got it, they, their tribe won all the marbles, they got everything given to them. All of a sudden there are roads being built, there's medical supplies going, and what it made for was you must win, otherwise people die. And so democracy becomes this game of, you know, zero sum win at all costs if you don't win riot until you can grab some amount of power back. And I, I mean, it appears to me that this is going on now. I've, I've been doing an experiment for the last few days where I just haven't gotten on Twitter and the world seems much, much, much more stable when I'm not on Twitter. And to me, I that, that's like a real lesson to me of like, I'm not actually sure, I'm not as confident today that I know what's going on in the world as I did on Friday because two days of getting off Twitter made me think like, ah, the world's actually not as chaotic as I thought it was.

Rob Long [01:07:17] Yeah, I think that's right. Like, it, it definitely plugs into your sense of your like reptile brain. And if you see pictures of, you know, violence in the streets going on and you know, police fighting people and all chaos, you, your brain kind of like paints it around everywhere outside of you. And it's obviously it's not the case, right? There's very limited places where these things are happening and they are happening, right? So it's like there's this other, there's this other balance of like, well, if I just don't pay attention at all, and I don't know this, any of this is happening, or I am, for example, just watching, picking one of the big three formerly broadcast networks and watching their news or something like that, you're, you're clearly getting some kind of confection that they produce that feeds their own interests and doesn't seem to really communicate what's actually going on. So there's, again, it's a balance between, you know, how much do you really need to be dialed into every, you know, every rubber bullet that flies across the, the cities to, to like being totally checked out. I don't know.

Vance Crowe [01:08:27] It's something that I have decided, and it's actually kind of why I decided to create a season two of the podcast is that, you know, the, one of the great things about this experience of being able to sit down and having these conversations where you can aneel over some, you can aneel ideas that are very complicated is for me to say, what, what is it that I should be paying attention to? Like now that life is different for me? So I became a father. But things become different for people all the time. Somebody in their family dies. There's some change in your work circumstance. So I decided I'm just gonna do season two now, and it doesn't mean anything. I don't know when season three will be, if it's in a year or if it's in five years, but I, I am going to take very seriously things like what ideas am I allowing to hit me based on how open I am to the world? And I think during season one, and actually for the entire entirety of my youth, I kept that open as wide as I possibly could because I could handle the emotional swings that came with it. But now I wanna slim it down and I wanna slim it down without becoming, you know, obsolete or, or unaware of what's going on in the world. But I am going to be trying to ask people the question of what should I be paying attention to because I can't pay attention to everything. So as you, as we kind of close out, if I ask you the question of like, what is the news or what is the way that you curate the news so that it doesn't hijack your emotions, what do you do?

Rob Long [01:10:09] I don't know. That's a good question. Like I said, I read long form stuff. I like reading about history. I think that's important. I think when you realize that a lot of the problems and kind of like the, the shape of the problems, if not the specifics have all come and gone in waves, you know, indefinitely as far back as we have written history that you realize that there's nothing yet that, you know, human beings haven't been able to, to deal with and have evolved things like, you know, the, the idea of the virtues and, and kind of laws and some kind of ever increasing order to our, to our interactions in some way that that can overcome that. I mean, you know, we'll have to learn if nuclear weapons and, you know, space flight and these sort of things like what that's gonna do. But those are long, long form questions. They could go wrong spectacularly, but you're not gonna be able to change it ultimately. So I don't really have a, a thing to say, like, here's the place where you can go and read, you know, but Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:11:23] Well, so in closing, people can find you on Twitter at plantables, but you also produce some other interesting things and you haven't, you know, made a big show of them. But if people wanted to encounter some of your ideas that you put forward, where do you, where do you put them out at?

Rob Long [01:11:40] So I have a little website at archetypal, so it's A-R-C-H-E-P-T dot YA goodness. Let's,

Vance Crowe [01:11:50] I'll, I'll throw it in the link. Yeah, that's problem.

Rob Long [01:11:52] Yeah. Put it in there. That's, it looks, it looks better than it sounds, but it's just a little, you know, one-off static site where I'll, I'll add thoughts there and try to collect patterns ultimately. So pattern names of patterns, this is kind of one of my, my long-term goals is when we find these interesting, you know, shaped ideas like a kneeling or, or things like this, that we write 'em down and I try to try to refine 'em and use them. 'cause ultimately I feel like the better fit tools we have to talk about stuff, the more progress we can make. Whereas if I have to explain the concept of a kneeling every time I talk to you, I'm not ever really gonna be able to use it to stand on top of it and build something on top of that. So the, that's kind of the, the long term goal.

Vance Crowe [01:12:43] So archetypal, what does that word mean? That's actually maybe a great way to get people to your site. Why that term?

Rob Long [01:12:51] Well, so an archetype is a, a pattern of other patterns, let's say, right? It's a pattern of patterns. And Carl Jung, I don't know if he, I don't think he created the word archetypal, I think he just applied it to these concepts and stories like the hero quest or the, the wise elder or the, the mother character, like these sort of, these are are patterns that you would say that recur throughout human history. And those are archetypal, they're, they're primordial kind of things that exist out there. And that's ultimately what I'm, what I would like to capture the patterns are there, there's some, there's something that's true about them beyond just that I wrote it down, right? That it's, it was out there and we just kind of captured it and gave it a name. And I think ultimately the virtues are, are potentially examples of these wisdom specifically, I think is a good one for that.

Vance Crowe [01:13:50] Yeah, and I, I've talked about pattern language and that's something that the podcast has and it's something I try and work on in many of them are rob iss, right? That is what the pattern language is. It's when we have an idea that is permeated and we don't have to revisit it. And Rob, you have been a fundamental part of this podcast. You've probably been talked about more on this podcast than anybody else. And I'm glad we were finally able to do this. And I think now that we figured out a pattern that we can do, I'd love to have you on a lot, lot more. So thanks for coming on, man.

Rob Long [01:14:22] Right on. Thanks. It was fun.