Get bent in a wet Kensington tent, you, Froogle Ewan's. Welcome to The Blind Bye podcast. If you're a brand new listener. Go back and listen to some earlier episodes, I always recommend that you can familiarize yourself with this podcast and to the regular listeners. Thank you so much for the delicious feedback that you gave me for last week's podcast. It was our first our first heartache of 2021. It was a podcast about quicksand. Which if you haven't heard it, I know that sounds a little bit strange now, what the fuck is he doing podcast about quicksand for?

But I went. I went figuratively and metaphorically deep into the well, I didn't go figuratively deep. If I went figuratively deep into the quicksand and the podcast, that would mean I literally stood in quicksand. We recorded the podcast. I didn't do that. I went too far with quicksand. Let's that's what happened, right? I spoke about quicksand and why it why it appeared in 1980s cartoons. And I rustled up a very, very hot take that took a back about 100 years.

And thank you for the feedback. And I wasn't on Nantwich last week, I wasn't on Twitch, I told you that I was going to do Twitch on Thursday night and I canceled this because I had a rather offensive eye infection. I have a I don't know the name of it now. It's gone. Now it's gone. I was on antibiotics are weak now, my eyes perfect. But last Thursday. I had an incredibly swollen left eye and which was exacerbated by staring at screens, so going on twitch for three hours wasn't the best idea.

So I will be on Twitch this week, twitch that TV forward, slash the by podcast. I'm doing some music and chatting. All right. I'm looking forward to it because the closest thing that I have to social interaction. Why am I talking about my twitch stream? What if you don't even know what Twitch is, which is a live stream and website LED's and it's something I started adopting since the start of the pandemic, I can't do gigs anymore.

So I said, fuck that, don't need gigs. I'm going to sit in my studio and live stream on the Internet for people and I love it. It's great fun. The reason I'm talking about Twitch is. I want to do like a mental health slash heartache podcast this week. All right, I want I want to meditate on the concept of adulthood, OK? I want to talk about what it means to be an adult. And the different how how?

I think a lot of us have our our perception and understanding of the word adult, I don't think we fully know what we mean when we say it. And I do think a lot of us have a completely distorted and I this is what I want to try and explore in this podcast. I believe that luxury advertising has invented and defined a version of adulthood that they've sold to us and certain people perform this version of adulthood. So I suppose what has me wanting to meditate on adulthood this week and to discuss what adulthood is and to define it and to try and explore what it means is.

Because I get called a giant child. Quite often and in quite a disparaging way, in a contemptuous way. And it's happened a lot since I started making videos on Twitch. So when I'm on Twitch Livestream and I'm there with my plastic bag on my head and right and really, really silly songs in the moment to the events of a video game. Right. Really silly stuff, because I'm trying to create in the moment that when you're creating in the moment.

You're not looking for good or bad, you're just trying to create, so it's often quite silly. And then I take little clips of these videos and I put them on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and Facebook on Facebook in particular. It makes some people really, really angry and not just my Twitch videos. Sometimes, like if I go on something like The Late Late Show, which if you're not from Ireland, The Late Late Show is is this really big talk show in Ireland.

And I appear on The Late Late Show with my plastic bag on my head. Right. It makes people some people really furiously fucking angry, and what they say to me is, grow the fuck up, what the fuck are you doing with a plastic bag in your head? Or they say, what the fuck are you doing? Writing stupid songs about a video game? What the fuck are you doing? Grow the fuck up, you fucking child.

You're an idiot. I can't take you seriously. And. No, I don't give a shit about the comments, honestly, no, I'd like sometimes people say shit to me online and it does hurt me, that stuff. I genuinely don't give a fuck. I really don't give a fuck of what. The reason I'm speaking about it is that I'm fascinated by how angry some people are because I'm a grown man in his 30s who wears a plastic bag on his head and is very, very silly.

I'm a silly, silly person. I do silly things when I'm making songs, the video games. That's really silly. Now, I love doing it and I have no problem with silliness. And silliness doesn't hurt anyone. Silliness is harming nobody like so I don't give a shit, but it makes some people really, really angry. And I know from psychology that if something if me being silly are me wearing a bag in my head is is making someone angry.

Then that means it's threatening them and then I'm going to fight. Why is that threatening? Why would someone be threatened by me being really silly or wearing a bag in my head or having fun? And some some people are really bothered by it, really disturbed by it. And it's mainly on Facebook. It's mainly on Facebook. But and it's also it's not gendered. It's across the board. Man or woman of a certain age over the age of party will say.

Get really bothered by the shit I get up to and. Like I saw, I saw I saw people thinking that I'm having a nervous breakdown, like I saw these these men discussing amongst themselves. Did you see the did you see the video he's put on top of him singing the video games? I think he's having a nervous breakdown. I think the pandemic is given him a nervous breakdown. Their only rationality for me being creative was that I was losing my mind.

So I'm I'm thinking more and more. Why is this what the fuck is that about? What's so threatening about me wearing a bag in my head? Are me playing video games, are making songs. What's so threatening about that that people either have to get angry, are genuinely express concern that I'm going mad. So I've been thinking about this a lot because it doesn't make sense to me, it's. If someone simply like I don't like the lad with the bag in his head, I don't like the songs that he's making.

That's fine. That's criticism. But this is more than that, that this is an extreme emotional reaction which results in them. Charging me, telling me and begging me to behave like an adult, to stop behaving like a child, you're too old for this stop, you're too old. And the people saying this are usually 30 and older. So something about my behavior. Is challenging their perception of what appropriate adult behavior is and what it also tells me, too, is that these people's perception of how an adult should be and how an adult should behave, it tells me that their sense of self and their sense of identity is tied up in.

And idea of what how an adult should behave or what an adult is and when someone else who's the same age as them comes along and behaves differently, are contrary to that. It threatens their self-esteem to the point that. They have an intense emotional reaction of anger and demand that the other person stop behaving like a child. Are they simply think the other person is is actually mad? And I want to I want to tease us, I want to tease at the concept of adulthood, I have a heart.

I have a theory. I think that we have allowed adulthood to be defined by the forces of capitalism and consumerism. I think we have a distorted version of adulthood, which. Doesn't actually meet our needs as human beings, but meets the needs of advertising and consumerism and a lot of what we think to be being a good adult, being a responsible adult, is actually just being a responsible consumer. And I also think that this performance of adulthood, because that's what I'm going to call it, the performance of adulthood that a huge amount of people engage in.

It serves as like a Band-Aid or a patch. For people who are who are effectively very emotionally immature, like being an adult, I don't mean legal adult, as in over the age of 18, people with families and mortgages and cars and pensions who we would look at and call adults. But functionally, on a day to day basis there, they inhabit the emotional world of a child that their desires, wants, needs and pains are rooted in in childhood.

But then sublimated through this performance of adulthood. Now, real adulthood to me is emotional maturity, right? Emotional maturity means. Really understanding what your emotions are, being able to feel an emotion, feeling anger and understanding what that anger is, feeling fear and understanding what the fear is. Not sublimating those things. Like a classic example. You know, being jealous is someone like, OK, you're out with a group of friends and a new person is introduced to the group, and you find out that this person has got a really interesting job where they get to travel the world.

Are you find out that this person is a sergeant or a doctor and they are loads of money and have lots of prestige and everyone at the table goes, wow, you're a sergeant. If your first reaction is that person's a fucking prick, I bet they think they're great. If that's your first reaction and you run with this, you literally run with that reaction and you make up your mind, though, that this person who you've just met, who's a sergeant.

Is a fucking prick who thinks they're great. If that's your first reaction, then that's. That's emotion. That's an emotionally immature reaction, it's a lack of awareness around your own emotions, the emotionally mature reaction is. Ah, this person is a sergeant and everyone thinks they're great. This makes me feel insecure. This makes me feel as if I haven't achieved much. I feel threatened by this person because I feel threatened by them. I kinda know what to think.

They're a prick. Thinking that they're a prick, actually, it is is the easiest way for me to not feel insecure, and that's an emotionally mature reaction. It's OK to to be jealous of someone you can't control less but you don't run with. This person who have just met, who I don't know is a fucking prick who thinks they're great because I just found out they're a sergeant, you don't run with that as if it's true that the emotionally mature adult thing to do is to challenge that and go, yeah, I don't I don't really I don't have any evidence that there are prick.

I'd love to think that there would not be so simple if this person was a prick, but they're actually quite sound and yeah, they're after making me feel really insecure, maybe I should have done more of my life and that's fine. That's human. But that's the emotionally mature response. But some people. Literally run with the thing. And then before the night they've got two or three points and now they're starting an argument with the sergeant, their friend's friend, who's a lovely man, who just happens to be a sergeant.

Now they're having digs at him. They're treating them as if they are a prick, so that's that's that's a grown adult right there who's exhibiting emotional immaturity and an emotionally mature adult. You're allowed to feel a bit of jealousy, it's just the emotionally mature adult is able to challenge it so that it doesn't result in antisocial behavior. Another example of emotional maturity is the ability to delay gratification are put off gratification altogether. Gossip is is a perfect example. Humans like gossiping.

All right, gossiping is a very easy way for us to bond. When you're gossiping with someone, you feel a connection with the person you're gossiping with. But gossiping has real life consequences. And ninety nine point nine percent of the time, gossiping is a bad idea. Gossiping is only a good idea when you're doing it to keep people safe. If you find out something out about someone and you're like, this person isn't safe. So I need to tell you that this person isn't a safe person to be around, then that's good gossip, but.

When it's other types of gossip, I'm going to tell you some shit about someone that we both know because it's entertaining, it's just getting some dirt on someone to tell someone else you have a bit of bonding. That's not good. So people who do a huge amount of gossiping, that's an example of emotional immaturity. These people can delay gratification. It's gratifying to say, like, if you hear that fucking. Anthony from accounts has a gambling addiction and is in debt.

If you hear that about someone. And that's damaging private information about another person. And you then want you want to tell it to your friend who you know would be interested in this, and you want to go to him and you want to say, did you hear about Anthony from accounts with gambling addiction? And you want to say this, but you know that if you say to your friend and it got out there, you would cause embarrassment and harm to Anthony from accounts.

But you do it anyway. You do it anyway. You can't not gossip. You have to go and tell your friend the private harmful information about another person and you do it anyway. That's the inability to delay or pull it off completely gratification. The emotionally mature thing is. I heard that Anthony from Accounts has a gambling addiction. I'd love to have a good ol bitch about this with my friend, however, if I do this, I might actually cause harm.

So I'm going to shut the fuck up and mind my own business. That's the emotionally mature thing to do. Some people don't do that. They can't delay the gratification and they go for the gossip even though it will have consequences. So they're just they're just two examples there, right? The inability to delay gratification and. Jealousy sublimating itself into unchallenged anger. Those are two examples of many of. As someone who was visibly a grown adult. Who was actually driven by the needs and desires of a child, the emotional maturity of a child, and there's a lot of people like that.

And I'm not judging these people because. It can be a significant source of mental health issues, stress, addiction, real, like like just let's just look at those two examples. They're just two fuckin examples. You starting a fight with someone because you think that they're a prick because they've got a better job than you and now you're gossiping about someone, think at the amount of stress that you could have brought into your week by doing those two things.

Do you know what I mean? So people who have who are emotionally immature, their lives tend to be filled with quite a lot more conflict. And rejection and drama than people who have emotional maturity. These people are fragile adults rather than functional adults, so. The stress of of living your adult life while struggling with intense emotional immaturity, people who are dealing with that, I tend to find are the ones who engage most in what I'd call the performance of adulthood, the outward performance of appearing to be.

AOK and having their shit together. And it is these people, these people desires for the performance of adulthood. This is what consumerism and capitalism massively relies upon. These people are really, really easy to sell to. And these people get themselves into quite a lot of debt in order to continually engage and keep up the performance and appearance of adulthood. I'll give you an anecdote that a buddy of mine told me I'm. It's an intensely Cringely story. He was working in some company years ago, right, and they had the company Christmas party and you know, the deal with Christmas parties and companies.

Right? Usually the workers are there. Then you've got. The bosses and the bosses, kind of the bosses tend not to drink, the bosses tend not to drink to the bosses, they remain sober or they drink snake fucking shots of water, they remain sober. And then the that average worker, the ones drinking, and then the bosses pretend. So anyway, what happened at this Christmas party is. So I'll set the scene, look, it's a Christmas party in a hotel function room, a race, a pretty large maybe 200 people.

They're playing fucking shakin Stevens, they're playing wham, all this Christmas stuff, everyone's having a great crack. The workers are letting fucking loose drink and hopping up and down having fun. And then there's two bosses who aren't drinking. Let's call them Declan and Brendan and Declan and Brendan are watching the whole crack. Now, what's interesting is that the the workers are really letting loose. It's a Christmas party, their farm and conga lines. They're laughing out loud.

They're giving each other the bumps. A room full of grown adults would have been a drink. They're effectively behaving like children. You know, it's like Playskool, but they're healthily behaving like children. They're not harming anyone. There's no harm in roar and shouting. There's no harm in conga lines. They're just having fun.

Whatever it is about this, Declan and Brendan, the bosses who aren't drinking, it's it creates tension, it creates anger. So the workers are having crack and then they notice. Phuket, Mannatech, Declan and Brendon shouting at each other, they're raising their voices. And now Declan and Brandon, the sober bosses are screaming at each other and their wives are involved and now people are sober and up, the workers are sober and up because it's like, fuck, man, the bosses are fighting with each other.

What's going on here? And it gets to the point where people are worried. Are they going a scrap? Is this going to be a physical fight? So someone intervenes and Declan and Brendan are, you know, raw and big insults. This company be nothing without me. You're only a lackey. You can't do your job, whatever the fuck you lost the account, whatever rich cons roar at each other. So they are now having this big public argument.

It's very embarrassing. Everyone's watching. They've let themselves down. They are now clearly a pair of toddlers thrown tantrums, screaming at each other. And these are supposed to be the adults in the room. These are the bosses who didn't drink. These are the people with the money. These are the people going, we've paid for all of this enjoy. And now they're screaming at each other. So what happens is Brendan then decides, I'm leaving, I'm going to be the bigger man.

So Brendan leaves with his wife, but then Declan follows them out into the foyer, still drawn and shouting at him. And there's workers follow in to because they're worried about, you know, man, we don't want someone Trone dig's if they're going to shout at each other, find what we can't have drawn because this is mortifying. So Brendan decides to be the bigger man and it's all now after spilling out into the car park at the hotel and Brendan and his wife, he gets into his seven series BMW.

And as he's about to leave, he shouts at Declan in front of everyone. Whatever, Declan. Why don't you give me a call when you can afford one, two days? Get into his BMW revs the engine really, really loudly, this is a man in his 50s, revs the engine really loudly and then immediately reverses into a wall. There's a huge big bang. There's a cloud of smoke. All the workers gather around the car. Everyone is now stone cold sober because of the sheer injection of collective cringe.

It's horrendous. Brendon's not heart. He's just in there looking like a fucking dickhead with smoke coming up. His collar, his wife's got her hand, her head in her hands. People are asking her if she's OK. Declan's gone back inside, it's so embarrassing, the night is fucking ruined, the two lads have made themselves look like big silly age. It's the crash has caused Brendan to immediately come down off his emotional hijack to go, oh, what the fuck did I do there?

And the two sober adults in the room just just did some mad, crazy shit, and it's a story that when I heard that I haven't stopped I've heard that story 10 years ago. I haven't stopped thinking about it. And. First of all. I think what got them angry? Was all the workers behaving like children, the the workers alcohol? Allows us as a society to. Expressed the child within is in a healthy way through phone. Right, so the workers were expressing the child within them, not the toxic child, the free child within them by having fun and doing conga lines.

And this was deeply threatening to Brandon and Declan, who were sober. With their performance of adulthood and it was so threatening that our performance of adulthood that had forced them into an argument to turn their toxic child came out, the forces of immaturity that the drive them came out. And it's like, we can't be we can't how do we do this performance of adulthood that works perfectly in the office? How do we do it here? Now everybody is behaving like happy toddlers.

Oh, my God, this is terrifying. Let's have a fight. Let's scream. Personal insults at each other in front of all the employees. Let let's let's race, let's risk our jobs, let's not delay any gratification, let's throw tantrums and scream at each other like toddlers despite the consequences. And the most telling thing of all for me is when Brendan gets into his BMW and his parting words to Declan were, give me a call when you can afford one of these.

And that right there, his BMW, it's like unconsciously he knows he's behaving like this giant angry toddler, but it's like, how can I be a toddler?

I've got a seven series BMW. I'm an adult. I have arrived. I've arrived. I'm somebody I'm an adult. Look at this BMW and that they're. It's where I think consumerism and capitalism, right, feeds upon. A type of person who is deeply emotionally immature and in order to. As a coping mechanism, they need to perform adulthood, certain advertising caters to the performance of adulthood. Typically, luxury items, rice and. A perfect place, if you want to see, all right, if you want to see where are the adverts that are selling people adulthood, crack open a copy of Men's Health magazine.

Luxury items. Like watches, you know, gold watches, like Rolex shit like that, gold whisky's. Fuckin BMW things which we would consider luxury items, right? If you look at the advert. What do you think you think they're like or what they're said in here is status? Yes, it's status. But when you look at how status is sold to men and women, what's actually being sold is adulthood. It's a performed version of adulthood.

Think of. The ads for the BMW, one thing you will never, ever see in a luxury advert is. Fuckin humor, humor is not present, if you think of an ad for, I don't even know, offensive, I'm just saying Rolex at it's the only fancy watch. I know if you think of a Rolex advert, what you have is. A male model looking very serious on a business trip in his private jet. If you think of an expensive whiskey, Sam, she's very serious, no humor, fancy suits, fucking Hugo Boss.

What's being sold here is the performance of being an adult. So no matter what your emotional immaturity, if you can get this watch, if you can get this car, if you can drink this whiskey, if you can get this face cream, whatever it is, it's like I said, Men's Health magazine, open up Men's Health magazine, whatever the fuck those adverts are, the luxury items right there selling you the performance of adulthood. And the interesting thing with luxury goods, luxury items are one of the few items that will actively advertise the people who can never afford them.

Because they're playing upon their exclusivity, so because I always wanted this, you know, the odd time I'd buy a fucking men's health to get some exercises in it or whatever, and I'm gonna hold a fork reading this magazine is going to be able to afford a 10000 euro watch. With all due respect, and the odds are most nobody really maybe five people who are reading men's health can afford the watch. But it doesn't matter because. It wants to advertise it wants to advertise the watch or advertise the car to the person who can't afford it as well, because then that opposite's exclusivity.

But Brendan there who'd gotten into his BMW, he he's like unconsciously was aware of a fuck of just trying a massive tantrum at the fucking Christmas party, he needed to latch onto his BMW, his totem of adulthood. What these things are, Saidnaya is not status. It's you're a fully functioning fuckin adult, like even even just just type like Luxuria advert into Google Images and all the shit that comes up. Jewelery, Gucci bags, watches, cars, fancy hotels, cruise liners.

The one thing that's noticeably absent from all of this is humor. There's no humor ever in a luxury advert. There is none whatsoever. It's really boring generic models looking dead serious down the lens. Fucking David Beckham, David Beckham with a watch on look and really boring and serious. And what they're in us all is adulthood. You are an independent adult and you are a big man or you're a big grown woman. All right. And you're miles and miles away from your parents and you've got your shit together.

All right, on your private jet with your Rolex, your shit, you've got your shit together, you're a fuckin grown adult, you have no reason ever to introspectively. Look our question, look at our question. Any of your emotions are motivations, are feelings. Fuck that shit. You're a success. You have arrived. Just look at everything you've got. You're you're a fucking adult. Well done. And it's dead serious. And why is there no humor, because humor and that type of humor and expression and fun.

Right, that's that's the behavior of the free child. We have two types of child within us. There's the free child, which is the healthy expression of childhood, which is the part of us that's spontaneous, creative, humorous, living in the moment, having fun, not giving a fuck about what people think. That child that's within us as adults. That's a good thing that helps us to connect with who we really are. But then there's the other child, which is unhealthy, which is what's known in transaction analysis as the adaptive child.

This is the child within us that's effectively emotional immaturity. This is the child within us that draws tantrums, that gets jealous of people, that seeks revenge on people. But if you're in your 30s or 40s or 50s or your 20s.

When that child is is more Divinia inside and its toxic. The only thing that can soothe this is an advert that sells you. This version of adulthood, this packaged version of adulthood, and that's what luxury stuff is, it's not status or if it is status, something about society is telling us that the highest amount of status you can get is when you're a really fucking boring adult and everything's great and serious and yachts and hotel rooms and champagne and whiskey and Rolex and BMW.

And that's adulthood. And it's fucking horseshit and. Like I said, with luxury advertising, luxury advertising is one of the few types of advertising that can advertise to people who can never bias and still work because it upsets exclusivity, boss.

I know people who are in incredible death because they went and bought the BMW. I know Gledswood with BMW and Mercedes that they took out mortgage sized loans for, they can't really afford and. Look, here's the thing, though, I'm not sure I want to make this distinction here, because this is important. If you love cars, if you actually love and adore cars and you're passionate about cars or if you love and adore watches and you're passionate about watches or fashion and you're spending silly amounts of money to get these things that you genuinely love and have a passion about.

That's fair enough. Sihamoni you. That's that's none of my fucking business. All right. There's many people who love fuck and they just literally love cars. Right. What I'm talking about here is motivation. I know people who are in severe credit card debt because a Gucci handbags. I know people in severe credit card debt because of fucking Hugo Boss suits people spending and buying far, far beyond their means to purchase these luxury goods paper with just regular jobs.

These people are also fucking giant children. You know, I'll be honest and I mean that in a compassionate way, but anyone I know who's gotten themselves into severe debt are is in debt with credit card companies. They also have some shit going on, you know, that they rarely sustain any long term relationships, continually changing between partners, very frequently fighting with people and then making back together. They've got big lists of enemies that their lives inhabit that the consequences of.

A legal adult who has the motivations and behavior of. As a screaming child, there are troubled people, and I don't mean like people in credit card debt now because they had to buy shit they needed. I mean, I'm also not talking about people who treat themselves. Sometimes someone will buy something beyond their means as a treat because they want to. This is what they want to do. I'm talking about a pattern of behavior of parties and things you can't afford.

To impress other people, even though it consistently lands you in hot water. Someone who has put themselves in a hugely, hugely unnecessary death because they bought things not because they needed them, but because these items very powerfully and strongly projected the performance of adulthood outward. It's purchasing a car, a suit, a watch, whatever, so that you can impress other people or let other people know I'm doing OK, I'm a success. Chillout. And then they're in there in huge death.

They're getting chased down by debt collectors because of credit card bills. That's a real thing that's fucking common. And it's really sad if that's that's really, really sad for for those people. I know someone who. Legged it from Ireland, someone who left Ireland because they did ran up so much debt on frivolous things they couldn't afford left Ireland. To go to a different country to hopefully earn the money there in order to pay off the debt in Ireland and then as soon as they got to the other country, ended up buying stupid cars and stupid clothes and stupid watches over there and then got into that debt over there as well, because advertising has sold them the concept of.

Being a functioning adult when they really are not and and right there, there's the self-fulfilling prophecy. A person who who puts themselves in massive death because of the purchase of things that they definitely don't need and can't afford. That's right. There is an inability to delay gratification that that's a that's a profound amount of emotional immaturity right there. It's it's like really three fucking credit cards.

Are you serious? You're not aware of what's going to happen because you needed you needed everyone in Kalki to see that you had a jet ski. Fucking one day a year. On the beach, like, what the fuck? So after the ocarina pause, I'm going to get into the psychology of this behavior. I'm going to I'm going to speak about Carl Rogers, who have spoken about before long ago in a podcast from 2018, I believe I'm going to speak a little bit about Kyle Rogers and explore the psychology around this stuff.

But right now, it's the ocarina pass. So I'm going to play my ocarina and an advert would be digitally inserted. I don't know what the advert is because the advert depends upon your search algorithm. So if you are someone who spends ages on the men's health websites looking at luxury watches, you might get advertise the fucking luxury watch. Ask yourself, do it. Do you really need this? Do you need and want this thing? Are are you purchasing this to your partners to impress other people?

And if you're buying something to impress other people, that's a waste of money. I'm sure the fucking advertisers love me. Christ. All right. Here's the ocarina.

So whatever you were just sold there, ask yourself if you actually really need it, if you don't get it, if you're trying to impress somebody with a purchase fork that you don't need, that I'm. What you could do with the money instead is subscribe to my Patreon on page Patreon tocome forward, slash the Blind by podcast. This is a 100 percent independent podcast. It's my sole source of income. It's my full time job. It's a lot of work.

So if you're enjoying the podcast, just please consider paying me for the work that I'm doing. What you're also paying for is for me to have full editorial control, to make what I want to make. Because what I've been thinking about recently is I love making this. I fucking love making this podcast. I really, really do love doing this. And. The reason why is I'm I've been working in TV, you know, for 10 years.

More or less and 90 percent of the ideas that I pitch to TV channels, they don't even they don't make it past the piece of paper, the initial pitch, and then the ideas that do make it to TV shows. I'm never 100 percent fully happy with the end result, but what my podcasts, I'm always 100 percent happy with them. And then surprise, surprise, my podcasts are far more successful than any TV I've ever made in terms of of reviews and people actually consuming.

And the reason is, is that just like the model of TV. And radio is the model is broken. If I have an idea, a hot take a hunch, I have to convince a commissioner to give me money to make it. But often they don't see the vision that I have. And you have to compromise and compromise until the initial good idea that you had by the end, it's no longer that original idea and you're left with something new and weird that you don't like.

But with full editorial control on this podcast, I'm the artist and I make list and I'm just happy with the results. And this is all possible because you're supporting the podcast financially. So if he can afford it, if you can afford the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month, that's all I'm asking for. Patriae on dot com forward, slash the Blind Buy podcast. All right. If we're in a lot of debt because you bought a lot of Hugo Boss, don't have to your grant if you can't afford it.

If you don't have a job, you don't have to. It's grand if you can afford it. Pay me for the work I'm doing, please. If you're enjoying the podcast and then you're also paying for the person who can't afford to listen, everyone gets a podcast. I earn a living. Fucking fantastic. All right, catch me on Twitch. Subscribe to the podcast like the podcast, you know, the crack. So the kind of hot take this week is that.

Lots of people are. Navigating their lives. Effectively functioning as as fragile adults while being motivated by the desires and emotions of children, their children inside their they're screaming like children and this emotional immaturity is leading to real problems in some people's lives. And I believe that advertising, Luxuria advertising in particular, has figured out a way to soothe these people with a temporary, never ending solution by packaging an agreed upon version of adulthood. So luxury advertising is not selling success or status, it's selling us adulthood.

And this to me is evidenced by a complete and utter lack of humor. So I want to look at this using the psychology of Carl Rogers and also a little bit of transactional transactional analysis, which is a school of psychology. So Carl Rogers is. Considered to be one of the founders of modern psychotherapy, right, and Carol Rogers has a theory of human personality. And one aspect of it is. Rogers calls the real self and the ideal self.

OK. So Roger states that humans have. A real self. Right now, our real self is. Who we actually are, our real self is is the person that we are when we're genuinely happy, the person that we are around, people that we love. The person who you are in private, your real self, is the person you know, when you're laughing, when you're connecting with, when you're rubbing a dog, when you're enjoying a nice meal, when you're walking out in the woods and noticed in nature when you're having these moments.

For you, don't give a fuck about what anyone thinks about you or what you think about yourself. It's the real you. It's it's where it's where your tears come from. It's where your love comes from. It's the very essence and being of who you are. Is your real self and we all have a real self. But the thing is, we also have what's known as an ideal self, not the ideal self is. How you would like other people to see you, OK, now, sometimes with some people are real self and our ideal self are very, very different.

So if who you actually are is quite different to how you would like other people to see you, then that gap in the middle is known as incongruity. There is in your ideal self and your real self are not congruent. And that gap in the middle is where emotional distress and mental health issues can come in. Sometimes, like when we have insecurities, anxieties, toxic anger, emotional immaturity, when we are motivated by kind of toxic, childish emotions, we can try and soothe these things with the ideal self.

We can try and fill that hole with things that. Meet our Editta self, so let's take it back to the the work party that we had earlier, where Brendan and Declan, the two bosses of the company, had gotten into a huge, big, immature fight, screaming and roaring like toddlers. And then when Brendan left. He said to Declan, Give me a call when you can drive one of these. Now, what happened to Brendan there is Brendan, the BMW for Brendan is his ideal self.

Brendan would like other people to think that he is a successful man with a big BMW. He has been sold the idea. That's in order for him to be a good person, in order for him, in order for Brendan to have worked as a human being, his worth depends upon other people thinking that Brendan is the dude with the BMW and Brendan bought the BMW. To try and feel whole, to try and feel complete, Brendan bought that BMW to.

To feel for his sense of self-esteem, but the thing is, Brandon's sense of self-worth isn't based on who he really is, it's based on other people's perceptions of him. And that whole can never be filled. Now, if Brendan. If Brendan. Was living more in his real self, whatever that is, the part of him that's able to laugh and have fun and express love, he wouldn't be getting into a fight with Declan at the party.

He may not even have the job that he has. He might be doing something completely different. He certainly wouldn't have the BMW. Because we can ascertain from Brendan's behavior that he didn't get the BMW because he likes BMW. He got the BMW so he could say to Declan, give me a call when you've got one of these. It's a status symbol. Brendan wouldn't need the BMW because if his sense of self-worth actually comes from within with his real self, then the BMW, just a big chunk of metal is like, what the fuck do I want to go spend that 180 grand on that for?

Fuck that. That's what's that going to do? But Brendan's leaving so much in his in his ideal self that he's dropping 180 grand on a BMW to try and feel whole and he doesn't even know that's why he's doing it. And the people who I was talking about, who I know who. I have run up, you know, huge credit card debt because of handbags or watches. These people. Again, like I said, that the troubled individuals.

With issues around emotional immaturity or anxiety or depression and. They are ideal self is to be seen as I must be seen as an adult, as a successful adult, like like the the lads like David Beckham in the watch. Ed, I need people to see me as this person. And I believe that if people see me as David Beckham in the Hugo Boss suit with the Rolex watch, I believe that if people see me as that, I will feel happy, I will feel good, I will feel complete.

So I must buy these objects. In order to feel whole, but these are unconscious processes, but the ideal self is being fed and you can never, ever feed the ideal self will never be satisfied because it isn't real. The only thing that can be satisfied is the raid itself by. Here's the conundrum. Someone who is struggling with with feelings of emotional immaturity, they don't have the emotional vocabulary or language to understand their own emotions, so to be able to identify who they are in the first place.

Where does your ideal self come from? Well, like I said, we all have ideal selves and realize that real sense, having a bit of an ideal self is normal. We're human beings. We exist in a society. It's OK to want other people to like you and to think good things about you. That's fine. It's it's if you live entirely in your ideal self. If your entire sense of self-worth comes from. What can I do to impress other people, then you will never fill that hole and you'll be upset, you're at risk of anxiety, at risk of depression.

So where does it come from? The ideal self will. Roger says that it comes from a society, parents, teachers, peers, when you're a child. So Rogers describes. Conditional, positive regard and unconditional positive regard. So when you're a child. If so, children don't have criticality, children don't have the maturity to be to be critical. So if an adult says something to a child, the child tends to believe what the adult says as as truth, and the child will internalize that.

So conditional, positive regard is when an adult, usually a parent, teacher or older sibling, gives a child praise only on the condition of certain things. So let's just say that condition is the for example, the the parent likes to dress the child up in really nice clothes and to have them looking really nice, that appearances are very important. Again, nothing really wrong with that. Dress your child up nice if you want. There's nothing wrong with that.

But let's just say the parent puts a big emphasis on it. So the child starts to notice, fucking hell, when my mom or dad puts me in my nice Sunday clothes and my hair is all nice. Jesus, they give me they give me a lot of praise. This feels really, really good. But then the child goes out and they get their shoes dirty and they get their nice Sunday jump or dirty and their hair is messy and they get in trouble.

The child then learns when when my outward appearance is very, very nice and I look presentable and have all these lovely clean clothes, the adults tend to love me. So then the child turns that into self-love. The child turns from conditional, positive regard into conditional positive self-regard. The child then grows into an adult who is only able to love and value themselves on the condition that their outward appearance to other people is impressive. Now you've got an adult who is only capable of a census of what they believe to be self-esteem.

When they feel that other people are going, fuck me, look at their watch, look at their bag, look at this. And that is that person's ideal self. So the ideal self gets formed in childhood through what's known as conditions of words. If you receive conditional, positive regard around your appearance as a child from your parents, that they could be harmless doing it. But if the success of conditional, positive regard it turns into on a conditional positive self-regard and then an ideal self is formed, I am worthy when I meet these certain conditions only.

The healthy way is unconditional, positive regard, so basically that same child, the parents can still like dressing the child up in nice clothes, they can still like having them having a nice haircut. They can still value appearances because that's a perfectly normal thing to do. But the difference is, is that the child doesn't receive praise. Only when they look nice are only when they're presentable. They receive praise regardless of that. So when the child is done up in their Sunday clothes and they get loads of hugs and kisses from the man there and the man that take out the camera and say pose for a for an hour, which are lovely, no jeans.

That's the next day when the child is wearing their fucking pajamas with snots hanging on their nose, that they're still receiving love and hugs and the child doesn't differentiate between I get love and hugs when I'm presentable, but I also get love and hugs when I'm not presentable. So I guess they just love me for who I am. And these clothes that I wear on my hair doesn't matter. And if the child gets their Sunday clothes dirty, they're not orally chastised for it.

It's like. It's made clear to the child that you should not get your clothes dirty because clothes aren't supposed to be dirty, but it's not like you're a piece of shit because your fucking shoes are scuffed. Basically, the adult doesn't get emotional. I remember seeing that when I was a child. I remember. I remember seeing my friend get a box into the face of his ma because he'd gotten over his fucking Sunday clothes and I remember thinking, fuck me, my ma would never do that to me.

But that right there, that's that's bad. That's pure condition. If you get your jumper dirty, your bad, you are so bad that I'm going to hit you. And a child doesn't know the fucking difference. And on the subject of emotional immaturity. Parents who hate children, right, parents who hate children. That's the height of emotional immaturity, that's that's that's a parent thinking that they're disciplining a child and what they're actually doing is making their own very immature needs of revenge and anger and taking it out on a child.

And that's why it's so toxic. And I always said, you see it on fucking Facebook. Some can't go on. When I got hit loads of times when I was a child and I turned out fine, I was like, you didn't body because now you're in a Facebook comment argument for why children should be beaten. So you didn't turn out fine at all. So the ideal self basically is formed when we receive conditions of what, as a child and then we internalize that as self conditions.

We then we then determine our own worth based on conditions we learned as children. So if you know, if you've got a. A serious credit card bill because of a couple of Hugo Boss suits and you know damn well you're like going, how did I do this? Why did I do this? I'm in so much pain right now. Why why can't I stop myself doing this? It's because the Hugo Boss suits. They're not suits. It's the unconscious attempt to purchase self-worth because your self-worth is.

Based in material goods. And many people can have different can have different things, whatever conditions of what that we could have been conditioned from childhood, that's where we can place that energy. If if you received conditions of work that your parents only give you praise when you were excessively polite. You could be someone who has an inability to say no to people and you say yes to everything, no matter what people ask you. You say yes, you don't meet your own needs.

You let people be rude to you. You're scared to get into fights. You're scared to say no to people. You're scared to to pull people up when they rang you because your sense of self-worth is based in how polite you are to strangers and you're fuming, angry inside and very unhappy because you don't know how to meet your own needs. So that's another condition of worth. So advertising and particularly luxury advertising, luxury advertising knows that people have got ideal selves and luxury advertising knows.

I'm going to sell these people. This idealized version of adulthood. Because that's what they're searching for. They want to be seen as these this performance of adulthood, which is someone who's secure, good looking, successful, all of this, and they're going to keep lapping it up to the people who can afford us and the people who can't afford it are going to keep reaching for it. And they might even get themselves in debt looking for it. But it's never ending.

And that's what that that's what the luxury advertising is. It's. Selling people adulthood, but who is selling it to are people who are not motivated by adult needs. It's not set it the people who are living in their real self, it's people who are living who who have an excessive ideal self, which are needs rooted in conditions of work from childhood. It's a form of emotional immaturity. So what about the real, the real, the real you.

The real self? You know, unconditional, positive self-regard. Like, if the child's parent didn't raise them with the condition of you have, what if you are well presented? Instead, you have worked regardless of your behavior, you have intrinsic worth and we love you anywhere, regardless, which is a healthy that's a healthy way for someone to be raised, for them to have healthy self-esteem. And you see. If if if you're raised to believe that the adults love you regardless, then you're then you grow up to be an adult who is able to love themselves regardless.

There's no conditions on your self worth. It's like I have intrinsic worth, regardless of my behavior, how I look, what I own, how other people see me, they're nice things. But ultimately, who I am is who I am. And you have this intrinsic sense of what someone who had the privilege of being raised that way is going to grow to be an adult who has emotional maturity because. The inner world of your own emotions, when you have self-worth and unconditional, positive self-regard and you kind of tend to live your day to day experiences living and who you really are when you are that way.

Emotions aren't scary. So you understand when you actually feel angry, you understand that you feel anger, you don't you don't confuse jealousy with anger. If you feel frightened, you actually understand that. You feel frightened. You don't. You understand that's. Purchase an expensive things to impress other people isn't really going to impress anyone or do anything on it. There was you'll end up in death. I mean, the person who let's just say the person did have a few quid on the side.

They're not going to buy the the ridiculous watch to impress other people. They're going to see that as a waste of money. They'll take that money and spend it on something. Probably that's experiencer, they might spend that money on someone they love, they might get a gift for someone because they're spending it on an experience but another person or they might spend that on a holiday where they go and experience things. Or they might buy an object that has to do with like a person with a solid sense of self can still buy.

An expensive watch if they're actually truly in love of the craftsmanship of watches. That's the difference. It's not the object, it's the motivation. Because I'm not sitting on watches, there's people who love watches, I don't get watches, I don't understand them, but there's people who love the craft, the watches. I love the craft of guitars. If I won the lottery tomorrow, it's been three grand on a Les Paul Gibson Les Paul guitar, because I love playing guitars and I love music and I love the craftsmanship of them.

And there are also 100 percent people who own that exact guitar for three grand and they put themselves in death. And why did they have this guitar? Because they're in a wedding band and they're embarrassed to be seen with anything but the top guitar. Those people exist, and that's an ideal self purchase. It's the same guitar. The motivations are different. So let's take it back to where I started, what I was speaking about. Adulthood, childhood, so.

My main heartache is, is. Adult, certain certain people perform adulthood, and this adulthood is sold via advertising, the version of adulthood, and people will try and perform this adulthood by purchasing objects that convey the sense of, I am an adult, I'm successful, I've got my shit together. But I also spoke about. Both the child, the child that's that's within us, so I'm going to mix in a bit of transaction analysis, psychology transaction analysis says that within us there's two types of child rights.

There's the free child and there's the adoptive child. Now. Taking it back to Rogers with the real self and the idea of self. So you're free, child, that that would be routed closer to your real self, but your adoptive child is in the ideal self and I'm what I mean is that certain emotions that drive us throughout the day and these emotions. Are much more the road and much more in in how a child would behave than how an adult would behave, and they can be both positive and negative, emotions are negative motivations.

So adaptive child is. It's the some of the stuff you'd you'd associate more with emotional immaturity, adoptive child of childhood forces within us as grown adults, that when we express them, they're in no way helpful to our adult life. So those two lads, those buses that were fighting at the Christmas party, Brendan and Declan, they were both in their adoptive child mode. All right. They were screaming and roaring at each other. They were getting personal with insults, they couldn't delay gratification.

When you get into a public argument with someone and you lose control of your emotions and you're behaving in anti-social way, they were at the Christmas party and the entire workforce are looking at them. They're wrecking everyone's balls because they're screaming. So that's anti-social. They're acting anti to what is considered socially acceptable. Then they have this huge fight. Everyone's worried that they're going to physically fight because they're so verbally angry that they're both throwing tantrums. Those these are the behaviors of toddlers.

So toddlers behave, but it's in grown men's bodies. Then Brendan gets into his fuckin car and says, look at this car. Call me up when you have one of these, that's straight up. I'm taking my ball and going home. It's place on is worse than an object. And then he gets so overwhelmed with the emotion of anger and fury like a two year old that he reverses his fucking BMW into a wall, creating utter chaos. So this is a toddler that's a toddler in full blown adaptive child mode.

Also, this this adaptive child mode is complimenting his ideal self. It's the the adaptive child is soothed by the BMW, which has been sold to his ideal self. And the ideal self exists to suit the unhealthy, unhelpful, adaptive child emotions. But then you've got your free child and your free child are kind of, I suppose, emotionally, I dunno.

I don't think emotionally immature is the right word. Motivations that are rooted in childhood playfulness. That's what the free child is. It's the motivations and is rooted in childhood. But the goal is fun. Laughter, play and creativity. OK, and I think so. Free child is something that all of us as human beings have people who live more in their real self than their ideal self tend to express their free child. More free child is running around the place with a dog.

Free child is creating art for the sake of it. Free child is banging pots and pans to make music for free. Child is sitting down watching TV and roar and laughing at something. Scream and roar and laughing and not caring what people think because you're 100 percent engaged in laughter. Free child is hugging and loving someone. Free child doesn't give a shit about what people think of it. It's just about. Made very wholesome fucking. Good feelings and needs, and when you're expressing your free child, that's uniquely you, that's where you can achieve meaning.

When you're in a state of free child, you're in your real self. And the thing is, when adults express free child. It can actually be quite threatening. So the difference between free child and. When you're in free child, you're kind of aware of us, you're aware that you're laughing, you're OK with the fact that you're laughing if you're doing a little coloring book or you're messing with pain, so you're playing with a dog, you're aware of the fun you're having.

It feels OK. You're enjoying this. So when you express free child, you're kind of open and aware about it. When you're in adoptive child, you're not aware of it, it's unconscious. You're kind of ashamed of it and it's being pushed down when you're. When you're in a temper and you're throwing a tantrum, you don't know what to turn and throwing a tantrum, you're continually trying to rationalize a true adult behavior. It's this continual rationalization, so adaptive child when it expresses itself negatively, you're not fully aware of it.

You're trying to keep it down, keep it in control, and it controls your behavior without you knowing about it. But what free child? Laughing, Having fun with a dog, creating, you know, you're doing it, so the thing is and here's my theory about why the two lads went nuts at that office party. One of the ways that most people express free child, one of the ways that's considered socially acceptable now, I don't think it's a healthy thing getting drunk.

All right. Now, I'm not encouraging to get drunk. What I'm saying is I think free child is kind of demonized in society. And when a group of adults together get drunk, it becomes socially acceptable to express your free child. So at this Christmas party, the workers are drinking, they're doing conga lines, they're dancing, laughing, roar and shouting, having fun. They're all expressing that lovely, fun, free child part that's uninhibited, not caring what people are thinking.

This collective expression of free child threatened the two bosses who were sober. And it threatened them so much that they're. They're fucking adaptive child exploded and they had to fight with each other because humor and fun and laughter is always very threatening to positions that are solemn. People who are in adoptive child. Like I said, they're always covering it with something. And if we take this back to that heartache about the advertising, the luxury advertising. What's the one thing that's not present in any luxury advertising humor?

There is no humor anywhere because it's all 100 percent solemn and solemnity is the performance of seriousness. So all these I mean, if you get a fucking one of these adverts with fucking David Beckham looking all cool and Brody in it in a winter coat, what a fucking Rolex watch. Troll fucking clown wig on him, see what happens then it doesn't work, the advert doesn't work anymore. It needs to be solemn and serious and adult in order to work and humour and fun destroys that.

It utterly destroys it. So that's why I think the two lads had a scrap at the fucking party because everyone was in free child. And it's also to take it back to my original point. It's why I think certain adults get furiously angry with me if I make and songs on Twitch or if I'm wearing a plastic bag in my head because when I'm on Twitch.

Creating because what I'm doing is I'm writing songs in the moment, and you have to be silly to do that, to create to be creative at its most initial stages, you must engage in play. You can create all serious. And Browdy, that's horseshit. If you're to create any piece of art, its earliest genesis must come from play. And who plays children play adults don't fucking play. Children and artists play, so when I'm on Twitch make music, I'm playing like a child and being silly.

And this makes some adults fuckin furious, and I know what I'm doing because I'm as part of my mental health process. As part of my act of recovery and to try and make sure that I'm always trying to be in touch with my real self, I incorporate the free child into my day as much as possible. And I do it through creativity. I make sure I make time every day to and play to play and have fun like I'm three years of age because it's an it's a healthy expression of who I really am.

But society tells us, knock that out of yourself once you get over a certain fucking age, fuck that.

Play with Lego, play with a dog, get a coloring book, mess around with paint just for the sake of doing it, just for the sake of fucking doing it and letting your free child out once a day so that maybe we're not completely dominated by this toxic, adaptive child within us that has a strong tantrums, gossiping and being jealous of people. Being possessive, all the negativity. And toxic emotions. They're fine when you're three years of age, but they're not useful trying to live in a society as as an adult and our brain will figure out a way to try and make them acceptable, acceptable through this false performance of adulthood that's been sold to us by advertising.

So there's my heart take, you can't. Robert Dog. Put paint on a piece of paper, build something out of Lego. Fuck around with some crayons. Turn on a stand up on a Netflix and Roar laughing, engage with your free child once a day, make it part of your process, make it part of your process to know who you truly are.