Episode 20: Violence

Welcome to Wisdom from the Area of View, the podcast for those who wish to learn how to crush their anxiety and find meaning and purpose in their lives. It's for those who imagine a world with less contentiousness and more harmony. It's the place to come for a dose of optimism and 30 minutes of tranquility. Learning to access the area of view has changed lives. It just might change yours. You know, Mark, today, I really did want to talk about And was your idea. And I've been thinking about it a lot about how contentious everything is in the world today. And I want to start by talking about on August 16th, no, on August 6th in 2024, the Harvard Kennedy School Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation convened a panel of experts to discuss Americans attitudes toward political violence. And one of the panelists whose name was Hardy Merriman, who's the president of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, said this, at the very least, we need to agree that violence isn't the way that we're going to get things done. No matter how much you may politically disagree with your neighbor, chances are they agree that violence is not acceptable too. And it's not how they want things to get done in this country. And yet, and you pointed this out to me, a new report came out that said just the opposite. Their premise is that political violence against Trump and Musk is justified by a high percentage of individuals. And in fact, we've now seen the rise of what they're calling the assassination culture. So for a change today, let's really talk about violence, what's happening in our culture, what's happening in our own lives, and what we can do to sort of, if not ameliorate it, at least calm it down a little. Tell me, let's talk about violence.

It's a topic that's very important to me. As you know, I loathe violence. I know that violence is a poison to both the person who is the victim of violence, obviously, but also to the perpetrator of violence. It destroys the soul. Many authors have written about this over many, years. This is not a new idea for me, from me.

Yes.

But we know that violence erodes character. It destroys the inner value of a human being. It's so bad. You've heard me say this before. If I could do one thing, I'd eliminate all the violence on the earth. I don't watch violent movies. I don't watch violent TV shows, which is why I don't watch that much TV in general, because that's about all there is. So I walk into the room sometimes. My wife is watching something and it's, you know, generally the first thing I hear is a four-letter word.

Yeah.

And the second thing here is gunfire or something smashing. So that's a problem in our culture. There's so much to talk about here. The real question is why have... Let's get back to that poll you talked about, the Rutgers poll that showed that I think it's up to 40 % of people who lean to the left think that violence against Trump or Musk or both is justified. That's a staggering number. The number should be zero. We agree on that, right, Enid?

Yeah.

Yes, indeed, absolutely.

The numbers should be zero. So why is it not only not zero, why is it so high? What allows people to have that feeling? And I have very good friends, one of whom you know, who are very rabid in terms of their feelings about Trump and Musk and the Republicans in general. And I've actually heard them say or imply that violence against these people is justified. And when I heard that, first of all, my heart hurt. I'm thinking, how did these people who I love, how did they come to this point? How have they reached this? We all grew up the same way. I don't understand. At first, I'm saying I didn't understand this, but then I kind of thought about it and I think I kind of get it. So it all is part of the same package that we have devalued our culture, have devalued life, that somebody can shoot the head of UnitedHealthcare in the back and be glorified that somehow people think this is okay, because he's the head of a corporation that it insures people or even turns down people for insurance. What? How do... So it's all part of the same thing. The assassination culture that you mentioned in that article. and this idea that violence is permissible against certain individuals. Well, if it's permissible against Trump, is it permissible against a democratic politician? We just saw Josh Shapiro recently was attacked, had his house set on fire. Well, he was actually there with his family. We don't know, at least at the time of this recording, we don't really know the motives, whether it was anti-Semitism or just hate in general. one side of the political spectrum hating the other side. So it doesn't matter whether it's left or right. If you can't, you only need 30 seconds in the aerial view to see that this is not one-sided, that this is a ubiquitous problem that is not left or right. It's sadly permeating our culture from both sides. If you can't see that, then I'll take you on a trip to the aerial view for 10 seconds and I'll show you why that is so clearly obvious.

So what we're talking about is a problem in the street view. Violence occurs in the street view. This hate occurs in the street view. And if that's all we had, we'd be in a lot of trouble. We don't, we do have something else. We have the aerial view. We're going to talk during this podcast about how the aerial view can change our perspective and get us to a point where it's clear that any type of violence, certainly as political violence, is not only unacceptable and wrong, it is just anathema to the, what we need to do as human beings.

Okay, and let's go there then. I mean, we have a culture right now that may be on both sides. And it's not just political, it's just violence in general that says it's okay. Violence sells in the movies, violence sells on television, and even in newspapers. I mean, we have dedicated newspapers that are really making a living off of this. And we've had them for many, many years, the National Enquirer, et cetera, et cetera. Violence sells. There's no question about that. But the people who commit the violence, how do we get them to understand that doing that on the street view is not the way to do that? That if in fact we elevate them to the area view, they will realize the error of the ways. How do you get reach those people who are the ones who are committing the violence? Let's talk about the ones who commit the violence and those who are basically watching the violence. So let's talk about those who commit it.

Well, first, before we do that, let's get back to something you mentioned a few seconds ago, which is about the media and that we see violence on TV and violence in the movies and violence in our music and violence everywhere you look. So let me ask you a question, Enid. Do you think that the over saturation of our media with violence has an effect on the actual level of real violence in our society?

Mm-hmm.

I sure do, I absolutely do. And I hate to place blame and everybody blames the media for this and media for that, but I do think that's true. I think that when children in particular are watching this, they become inculcated to it and they, well, maybe it's not a bad thing because it's there, it's with us, it's around us, it's part of our lives. Yes, I do think a lot of it has to be blamed on the media and probably a lot of it has to be blamed on the parents who are bringing up the children to allow them to even watch. those things on television, take them to the movies, movie ratings, I don't know if anybody even abides by them anymore, PG or X or whatever. Yeah, I do think the media plays a great role in this, but I also think it's upbringing. And you mentioned our upbringing. We weren't taught that violence is good, and yet there are probably people that we know, as you said, who think violence is okay against something that we don't like, maybe the president of the United States. I don't like the president of United States, but I would never in my wildest dreams think of committing violence against him. I don't know.

So I agree with you that, and I felt this way for a long time. I've written about this. I've talked about this, that violence in our media absolutely, unequivocally affects the culture. And how do I know this? I think I've given you this example before. Maybe I don't remember if we talked about it on this podcast or we just talked privately about it, or maybe I'm just having a senior moment. I don't remember at all. But people can be convinced or certainly their attitudes can be affected.

you

rather quickly, but if in the right environment. So I'm to give you one of my favorite examples. When President Obama became president in 2008, soon after that, he made a statement within the first year or two of his presidency that he said that marriage is between a man and a woman. Do you remember that Obama actually said those words?

Yes, I do.

He was president eight years. By the end of his tenure, gay marriage was the law of the land. So we went from marriages between a man and a woman to the country accepting and embracing actually gay marriage in the course of like six years, seven years. And I was amazed by that. think, wow. And not the fact, I could care less about the gay marriage part. What interested me was that

Yeah, we grew up.

that attitudes could turn on a dime about something so consequential in the minds of many people. Centuries forever, marriage was between a man and a woman. Forever in almost, I'm not an anthropologist, but I think in almost, I'm going to guess in the majority, if not all countries and all cultures, marriage was between a man and a woman. So anything else was quite outside the box, I think. And yet we went in such an incredibly short time from marriage between a man and a woman and well, OK, marriage is just fine. Everybody thinks it's OK. So you can change people's opinion so quickly with the right environmental, the the right messaging. It can be done so quickly. so. Therefore, it is not a leap to believe that violence in our movies and our TV and our music everywhere. has an effect on people's attitudes. Of course it does. You have to be dead to not understand that people can be convinced to believe one thing or another by what they see and hear. So for sure there is responsibility in the media. We should not be making violent movies. We should not be making violent TV shows. Okay, people look at me and go, that's ridiculous. Okay, fine. What kind of society do you want to live in? Do want to live in a society where you can send your kids out at two o'clock in the morning and not have to worry about them? Or do you want to hide behind bars in your windows at four o'clock in the afternoon? I mean, you have to decide what kind of culture you want to live in. Do we have the right? know, this thing about rights, makes me, rights make me a little bit crazy because... It comes down to just because you can do something doesn't mean you should do something. Yes, we have the right to watch and listen to everything we want, whatever we want. I'm not interested in the government censorship. I'm not even interested in the government deciding what we can watch. I want the people to say, this isn't healthy. This isn't good for us. So we should just start to move away from it as much as possible to decrease the level of violence in everything we see and hear in our society. That's number one.

What you said about families, 100 % true, but you can be the best parent in the world. But if all your kid hears in the movies, on TV, on social media, you now on, you you and I are at the point where we don't spend a lot of time doing a lot of social media stuff, but kids are on TikTok, they're on Instagram. You know, if it's there, you can be the best parent in the world. Good luck. It's much harder. There's another piece that has, that we've lost. And we don't talk about religion in this podcast because this is not a religious podcast. This is actually, as you've heard me say, the aerial view is a way to get to the right place with that religion because religion doesn't work for everybody. But I am very pro anybody believing whatever religion they want, as long as they're not using that religion to hurt other people or try and take power through a religion. as long as they're not doing that, then religion is great. Why? Because it sets an absolute standard. So the decision of whether something's right or wrong is taken out of our hands and placed in the hands of the divine. God says thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not kill. Okay. Okay. It's not your opinion. It's not whether we stealing is good or bad. God says you can't kill and you can't steal. Okay. That's it. We're done. We can't have that conversation about whether we think it's right. It's out of the street view. It's in the area of the divine. Right. But if people as religion has waned in this country and around the world in many places, that absolute standard has also been lost. And now it becomes your opinion versus my opinion. And if I think shooting somebody in the back because they because they're of a insurance company that I don't like, if I think that's fine, well, then how you who you tell me it's not fine. That's a problem. We've lost the absolute standard. So if we don't have so I'm all for

bringing God back into people's lives if that works for them. But I know that the area of you will also get you to the same place. So if you're not comfortable with religion, if it's not your thing, I respect that. But the good news is, it's another way to look at life that will get you to the same place.

But there are levels, let's talk about levels of violence. And I really do believe there are levels of violence. And for example, you and I have talked about this several times. We both like sports and we both like football. And you like hockey, I don't. But those two sports, I don't understand. I can't even see the puck, I don't even get. But those two sports are violent. There are actually men who are physically beating up each other. They are. They're throwing them in, you know, they hit them.

That's great.

They're wearing helmets, but big deal. They still have concussions and you as a physician know that better than anybody what those are doing to their brains. And in a hockey they throw them into the boards as they call it. So that's violence too. And yet, well, what's the difference? If the definition then is someone hurting someone else physically is violence, well, then that's violent. So how do you say, well, on the one hand I like football and I hockey, but I don't want...

Sort of, yes. Okay.

We're not killing anybody, although people have been killed in sports, but how do we say, how do you differentiate between violence?

So at end of every football game, what do you see? You see people on each other's teams are hugging each other. They were probably former teammates. They're smiling, they're laughing. Hockey, at the end of a game, at the end of a playoff series, they've killed each other and they get online and they shake each other's hands. I don't think we should, look, I think like for instance, fighting and hockey. I'm an American, I'm not a Canadian. I like hockey. think fighting, I've always felt this way.

Right.

Fighting to me is unnecessary and detracts from the game. the people who, Canadians especially or Americans who have followed hockey forever, they're always part of the game. Okay, I respect that, but it's not, I think it's silly. I think it is not, it detracts from the game. And I don't like fighting. I don't like it. I think it's just what you said. You can't totally say, okay, it's okay to fight here, but it's not okay to fight there. So I'm with you on that one. But here's the thing about violence.

Right.

that I think getting back to how we can move the bar, move the ball forward on this. To me, violence is a misunderstanding of our purpose. So that's a very important phrase. Violence is a misunderstanding of our purpose. So if we think we're here to become rich, famous, powerful, that we have to protect ourselves at all times from being taken advantage of, then you can see how violence makes sense or at least is understandable. If that's what you think the purpose is, fine. But that's not the purpose. We've talked about this at length in these episodes of our podcast, that our purpose is to make this evolution, to prepare for what comes next. To evolve from selfish to selfless, from inward to outward, forward, focused. You and I had a conversation yesterday offline about a friend of ours. who listens to the podcast and thinks that it's all garbage, it's all BS. When I say to people, look, this is what I think. think the evidence points that life is preparation. But for sure, our mission is to evolve from selfless to selfless and with that we're focused to help as many people as we can. When people think that's silly and nonsense, I go, well, I'm sorry that you feel that way and I respect your opinion, but I'm to tell you, you're not paying attention. Because if you pay attention, then all the evidence, or at least a preponderance of evidence, moves you in this direction. It's only because you're not, I think you're not appreciating the clues that are smacking you in the head. Number one of which we talked about is death. The greatest clue of what the purpose of life is, is death, right? It's happened, we talked about this, I think yesterday, right? You and I talked about it. It happens to everybody. It's unavoidable. Hello, you don't get out of this alive. There's no winning the game. That tells you something. That is the ultimate clue.

Yeah, we did. We did.

Don't fight to be the most powerful or the strongest or the richest. It doesn't work. You're going to no matter what you do, no matter what your accomplishments. Leonardo da Vinci at last I checked is dead. Right. Winston Churchill is dead. FDR is dead. Gandhi is dead. We can go on and on and on. Steve Jobs, who I thought was a brilliant guy, dead. Tesla, not the car, but the original Nikola Tesla, dead. Einstein, dead. You know, everybody's dead. Hello. These people who did the greatest things on the planet, Nelson Mandela, dead. All these people, no matter what they did, no matter how powerful they were, kings, emperors, they're all gone. Hello. It doesn't work. There's another message to this life. Pay attention to what the world is telling you, what the clues are telling you, so you can move your life in the right direction. Clearly, violence is like going, is 180 degrees in the wrong direction. You want to get it right in your life. You want to have a fulfilling, meaningful life. You want to prepare for what's next. You want to be able at the end of your life to say, I did it right. I got the most out of it. Then run away from violence. It's the worst thing for you. It's going to drag you down. It's going to suck the humanity out of you and not only not move you towards fulfilling your mission, it's going to prevent you from fulfilling your mission. You can't possibly make that evolution if you embrace violence. So the 40 % of people in that Rutgers study that said they'd embrace violence against Musk and Trump or the people who think it's okay to invade Nancy Pelosi's house and attack her husband or now recently attacked Josh Shapiro, it doesn't matter if it's left or right, it's irrelevant. It's wrong, but here's why it's wrong. It takes you away from the completion of your mission. You are throwing your life in the toilet. I don't know what's gonna happen to you in the long run. Karma is real, for sure. I mean, I've been convinced of it. Karma is real. see it every day and most of us have. Violence is going to take you in the wrong direction. And here's the other thing. think people need to, and let's get to the aerial view for a few minutes if I might. Is that okay with you, Enid? From the aerial view, we see if there are a few things that are evident. One, all moments of time are equivalent. So we imbue certain moments of time with greater value.

Yeah.

Please. Yes.

a happy occasion, a birthday, a wedding, the birth of a child, all these things we imbue with much more significance than I went to the supermarket today. The truth is there is no difference. The moment you go to the supermarket is actually of no greater value than the moment you were born or your child was born. It sounds crazy, but that's just the way it is. When you remove yourself to the area of view, when you become the reader of the book instead of the protagonist in the book, every page is the same. No page stands out in the story of anybody's life. When we recount the story, we don't stop at anything and say, that's the most important thing. No, it's all part of a life. It's all part of our evolution of what we do. The second thing we have to understand is

Wait,

It's not more important. It has no greater significance in the jukebox of time. To us, they have more importance, but understand that we're imbuing them with those. Right. I'm glad you did. I'm glad you did. We imbue things with more importance, but from the aerial view, when viewed from outside, you see that all moments of time are equivalent. And the reason they're equivalent is we talked about choices last time we talked, is that Enid (21:56.3) Okay, but it's not, right, okay. okay, but okay. Okay, I just wanted to clarify that because there are things that are more important. Yeah. Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Each choice creates a cascade of events. There's no way to know what single thing you do or say is going to, how that's going to turn out in the future for you and for everybody else on the planet. We talked about the fact that one person turning down a job and offers an opportunity for somebody else to get a job, right? So the world is intertwined that way. So all moments are equivalent. The other thing is it pertains to violence and the violence we're talking about, the political violence especially, is that from the arrow view, you can see there are no teams. You don't wear your team's logo. You're not on team A or team B. There are no teams. There are no associations. are no, what's the right word, allegiances. There's no allegiances in the aerial view. We're all in this together. You think that your team is better than the other team? You need to hop up to the aerial view and understand that is not true. All teams, there are no teams in the aerial view, right? It doesn't work that way. You have to... from the air of you understand the perspective of other people. I was on a call just before we recorded this podcast with somebody with whom I was trying to solve a problem. And I said to that person, I said, I understand where you're coming from. I am able to crawl into your head and look through your eyes and understand how you see this situation. I am also able to crawl through the other person with whom I'm trying to solve this problem. I'm able to crawl into his head and see how he sees this. And guess what? Neither of you is right and neither of you is wrong. You just see it differently. And one of the great skills in life to learn is to be able to crawl into somebody's head and see the world through their eyes. You you might call it walking in somebody else's shoes, but more specifically, get into their brain, look through their eyes, see what they see, sit next to their ears and hear what they hear. And you realize, okay, now I understand why that person feels that way. That's very important. And in the aerial view, get a very, it becomes obvious that there are numerous views, not that they're all equivalent in terms of their ultimate value, but that they exist and that you, once you appreciate that there are these multiple perspectives that people can have, and you try very hard to crawl into that person's head, it's very hard to be angry at that person. It's very hard to keep them as an enemy. say, okay, all right, I don't agree with you, but I see where you're coming from, because I'm looking through your eyes.

So, yeah.

Then you humanize, then this person is a human being. They're not an adversary. They're not some entity that wants to go to the left or the right. They're a human being and you say, I can understand how you feel that way. But can you understand how I feel this way? You need to crawl into my head and look through my eyes. Once that happens, you realize that the allegiances go away. The teams go away, right? It's all about humanity. again, turning that camera from yourself outwardly. so that you're less focused on your needs and your wants and your desires and more focused on the other person's needs, wants and desires. When you do that, then the hate goes away, the anger goes away. We talked about how the anxiety certainly goes away and then therefore the violence goes away. And that's how we get to a much better society.

Yeah, and we can do that, there's no question, but there is still something out there called mental illness. When Luigi Mangione pulled that trigger, he was clearly mentally ill. mean, people just don't... What do you think?

Are you sure? I don't think so. Now, I think the guy that attacked Josh Shapiro is probably mentally ill. But I don't think, I'm not sure, I don't know enough about this, but looking at Luigi Mangione and hearing what he's saying, he thinks he's right. He thinks it's justified. He's one of those 40 % of people think this is perfectly okay. Because he's, I'm telling you, he's misunderstanding life's purpose, like many people do. Your purpose is not to be right, to get your point of view across. Enid (25:53.9) Okay, he is too.

Aha, okay. Okay, how do we change him?

Understand we talked about this before that you could be wrong. You need humility to understand, but you need to get to the air of you and see all perspectives to understand that there are multiple viewpoints that are legitimate. You don't have to agree with them. But once you understand that, you get into that other person's head and look through their eyes. Now all of a sudden you're seeing them as a human being. They have a different perspective than you, but they're still human. Your job in this earth is not to be right. It's not to get some law passed or some No, your job is to make that evolution from selfish to selfless to turn that camera from you to them. Luigi Mangione should be thinking, what he should have thought was, all right, this guy, let me find out about this guy who was head of UHC, UnitedHealthcare. He's married, he's got kids, he seems like a good member of his community. He doesn't seem like he's not a murderer. He's not taking people into, putting people in prison and torturing them. He's doing his job, okay. He thinks he's trying to do his job. He's trying to do his job as well as you can. He's got different responsibilities. Okay, I don't happen to agree with the way he's approaching this. So maybe I can talk to him. Maybe I can send him a letter, whatever. But the idea that I think I can take his life because I disagree with him. No, your job, Luigi, is to make that evolution from selfless to selfless. Your job is to understand him as another human being and to worry more about him than to worry about yourself. And by taking somebody else's life, you have cheapened yours, you have thrown yours away, you have gone exactly 180 degrees in the wrong direction. You think you're helping other people? No. You cannot take a life and think that you're helping other people. Those two are incompatible. They are oil and water. There is no justification for taking another life. Unless somebody's about to hit you over the head with a hammer or stab you or shoot you, right? There's no reason to, there's no excuse for taking another life.

self-defense.

you're misunderstanding your purpose on this earth. And the only way to get to where we need to go is to either get people to buy into the divine again or to understand the aerial view and what the aerial view teaches us about life's purpose.

You know, one could actually.

And one could actually make the argument that sometimes when these folks are then imprisoned, maybe they then, we say they found religion, well, maybe what they found was the area of view, because maybe all of a sudden when they're in that cell and they're thinking about what they did, their deed, and they realize maybe I shouldn't have done that. Maybe I do need to, maybe they do get to the area of view. Maybe you're right. Maybe that's what they're doing. They find religion. Well, whatever that religion is, whether we call it religion or we call it the area of view, maybe that's where they are.

And it's fine, whatever works. I'm all for believing in the divine and saying these are absolutes and you cannot kill, you cannot steal, et cetera, et cetera. That's great. But for those people who can't get there, who for some reason don't want to believe, and that's perfectly legitimate, the good news is there's another way to get there. It's the aerial view.

Yeah.

Right, right, right. They gotta read your book. I'm looking at the clock, I see we're out of time. I wanna end, I know, I know. Let me end with this. Let me end with this quote. Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our times. The need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Man must evolve for all human conflict.

my God, that took like five seconds.

a method which, turn the page, which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love. Martin Luther King Jr.

Look, I love his writing. I've read a lot of what he's written. I think in my, fact, in my last book, which was called Franklin Rock, the novel I spent a chapter where the main character visits Martin Luther King just before he's assassinated. So I am a huge fan. I would just want to end with this, that I want to reiterate this, that so what Martin Luther King said is 100 % true. The question is, how do you get people to get there? Right? That's the key. How do you get him? He's 100 % right. How do you get him there? And the answer is either

Yeah, no, no. Yes.

through a belief in the divine and a set of standards that are outside human intervention that we didn't create that are beyond us, or to understand that life is not a zero sum game. Your gain, your loss is not my gain and vice versa. We have misunderstood life's purpose. When we understand life's purpose, then we move, then we... automatically move away from violence and hatred towards love and towards a world where we respect each other, honor each other, love each other, and can live together in harmony. But to do that, we have to understand our purpose.

Amen, my brother. Thank you. I'll see you next time.

Amen, my sister. Hallelujah. Thank you, everybody, for listening. We'll see you next time.