Wipe the qandi from the stationmaster's Ganzi, the train looms large on the horizon. Don't let him embark with a Ganzi full of Qandi. He would be sticky and wet. He would be unable to perform his duties. That was a poem called The Stationmaster's Ganzi, written by Hollywood actor Edward Furlong, thank you, Edward. Welcome, everybody, to The Brain by podcast. Welcome to the new listeners, if this if you're a new listener, call us into some earlier episodes.

You can listen to this one and listen to some earlier episodes afterwards. If you're a regular listener, what's the crack? How are you getting on? How are you enjoying August? Is it crispy enough for you? It's not crispier, is this when the Czolgosz targeting Krispy? The last week of August, when I say Crispi now, I refer to the violence of a falling leaf from a tree. Crumbling underneath your face. August is a very odd month.

It announces itself. With sound, the sounds of leaves. On your face, trampling on the corpses of leaves. And just the sound that you don't really notice it, but just leaves fallen. You see them falling, but leaves make a little. A little microscopic, Todd. When they hit the ground, you know, but we're not there yet, we're not there yet, I'm still you know, you're still, I guess. The kind of Florelle.

That Florelle Bang. Of the evenings, you still get a bit of this. And it hasn't gotten cold yet, so I was out, I was out as soon as darkness hit. I was outside because there was a password marked password, how to pronounce that a password meteor shower happening tonight. All right. And the skies are clear. I didn't see any of them. Without them, I was not there for ages, but I was in and out looking up towards the direction of its Perseus, is that the name of the constellation?

I was using a fork in the night sky app on my phone trying to see some meteors, I didn't see any of them. I support what I did see, whether or not what I saw when I was looking for the meteors, which weren't happening on this lovely crisp night, I was. Pleasurably affronted by just that lovely, that smell of flowers in the air, wildflower, whatever it was, I don't know what it was, but there's only one word for it.

It's Florelle. You know, you have different types of smells, there's woody smell, is there citrusy smells, but when a smell is floral and it can only be described as floral and not a specific flower, but just. A generic pose of flower. And it hangs in the air and there's a heaviness to it. Isn't that interesting about the smell, about the smell of something floral? Like if I was to smell something that was citrusy? Citrusy is.

If I smell a lemon. That smell is it's stinging, it's like a wasp, it's like a little insect, the smell of citrus, it kind of shoots up your nose. And announces itself really quickly and then darts back out. But floral smells are heavy that they're just they're like a carton, a floral smell will never dart in and out of your nostro. It kind of. It's like a cushion that holds you up. I mean, so that's what I noticed tonight while not seeing any meteors, the lovely flower, a floral curtain.

And I like that.

I like that because it's what's nice about the floral curtain and the evening time. It lets you know that that summer hasn't been defeated. Yes. The flour carton disappears when. The night becomes crisp once you get into the end of August. You get that crispness in the air, the coldness and the crispness, the one that lets you know the leaves are going to fall soon and the floral carton can survive, what the fuck am I talking about? What the fuck am I talking about?

Trying to describe describe the fucking smells, describing the smells of the evening's. But you know what I'm talking about, when you smell the fucking flowers, it gives you a sense of hope. It's like there'll be a few warm days left. But as soon as you get that fucking cold night, which is crispy and citrusy, let's be honest, it doesn't smell like citrus. But when the evening gets cold at the end of August. Its personality is citrusy, it's a bit like a lemon or an orange rind, it has that quite a bite of it bites your nostrils, whereas the summer flowers smell will never bite you.

It just it wears you down, but not in a bad way, like a supportive friend. And then, of course, what happens after that? That's when you start getting those real cold September nights that that's what small leaves. Someone could have a fork and a chimney or a tar fire two miles away. And that smoke will cling to the cold of a September night. And that's not citrusy. That doesn't go into your nose. That goes directly into your throat.

Which I find interesting. And these are the things I thought about tonight while I was bereft of meteors from the Perseid meteor shower, I've I've never seen a meteor shower in my life. I've been present for loads of meteor showers. I've tried to attempt to see them. I've known they're happening. I've always I've never seen a meteor shower. No, I've lived in cities my whole life. I don't know much about the rural environment. So light pollution is a factor.

But tonight was a crisp, clear night and the meteor shower was supposed to be abundant and violent. Nothing, fucking nothing. So I'm contemplating smells. Another reason I'm contemplating smells is.

I was in an alley last week and they had, you know, that aisle in alley where they just they said no shit each week and they had. And LSD, aromatherapy diffuser was like 15 quid, and I enjoy anything that has LSD, and I think it's of beautiful. So it's just it looks like a big glowing teardrop. And you put water into it, and unless an essential. And it makes it a close. It breeds lice and then it puts this lovely fragrant steam into the air, which smells like whatever essential oil you have in it.

And I happened to have a bottle of citronella because I went through a Citronelle phase. About a year ago, right, citronella is it's an essential oil, I don't know what it comes from. What's interesting about the smell of citronella citronella is the smell you'd smell if you if you're at a barbecue with a child and someone lights a candle and this candles job, they were always in little. When you were younger, citronella candles were in red glass are orange glass with a honeycomb design on them.

Looked a bit like, yeah, they were in a glass and they smelled lemony and it kept mosquitoes away. That citronella and citronella reminds me of Spain, not because they're citronella plants. It just whenever I go into bathrooms in Spain or anywhere, really, they tend to clean floors, but citronella flavoured flower wipes, I floor wash, whatever you call it. So I fetishize the smell of citronella. I can't fucking say it now. I fetishize the smell of citronella because it reminds me of being in holidays in Spain, and I miss being I miss I miss the capacity to spontaneously go to Spain if I chose so.

And because of fucking coronavirus, so I've been fetishizing citronella. But I kind of overdosed on this all week with this essential oil diffuser, this led Teardrops Essential Oil Aldy diffuser and I was giving myself too much citronella and citronella. I'm going to need I'm going to need to fucking back off in this word soon because it's not going to say it anymore. Citronella. You know, when you say a word too much, it means not an. Citronella.

Smells like how someone would describe a lemon. It doesn't smell like lemon. Rice, if I got you to sniff Citronelle. You'd never go Yum-Yum, what nice lemons you have blown by, it's not like that.

Citronella is like it's it's like if you if you shot a child a lemon and then got the child. To describe the smell of that lemon to a perfume maker, and then they made a perfume that is is based and if the perfume maker had never smelled.

Lemons, what had the smell of lemons described to them by a child, that's what Citronella is. All right, but I overdosed on it this week. It's a very invigorating smell. It's it's citrusy. Like I said, it's a it's a bit like being assaulted by olfactory wasps. It darts in and out of your nose. So I had to calm down on the citronella.

And instead, I said, sure, there's loads of smells, there's loads of different smells that I could use in this barn, so I went online and I bought myself 30 different essential oils that covered the entire gamut of potential smells ranging from citrus to woody to flower.

So I've just been like a mad bastard all week with this diffuser explore and the full spectrum of smells so bitter fucking orange and the citrus scale and lemon. I'm going to have citrus now because of the citronella. They moved into the Woody Woody sense and like the body sense are interesting, like. Just just back to the citrus one. Orange lemongrass that smells like Thai curries and then bergamot, which I had very strong Paragominas Earl Grey tea, if we ever had our great allegretti, the smell and taste of that is bergamot.

I couldn't do that right.

So I got rid of the citrus shit and started getting into the woody smell of these essential oils, putting them into the Aldy diffuser, let them spread around the room, and then kind of mindfully explore in the different emotions and visions that come up, depending on the smell that I was using and the woody stuff.

What I have cinnamon is woody cinnamon.

So where we're going to have Woody and have. How fucking citrusy, but like time, you know, the smell of time, you know, lavender, lavender, lavender is like a transition.

If if if the smells were a and you. Right. Starts off with citrus, then you're into the body smells and then, you know, the flower smells are coming next. Lavender is like a scene transition between the two, like the curtains close. Lavender is both woody and flower at the same time. Then I started getting into the fucking floral smells and the flower loyals that I got in there says sandalwood, good fucking lard, because I don't experience these in the wild.

Jasmine. Do not particularly people of a certain age who remember the 70s have got strong opinions on Pacioli, I never are people who live in Golway. I never experienced Pacioli. So it's no to me absolutely beautiful. This one called them Yangyang. It's Chinese. I believe it's Chinese fucking name. And they're just absolutely gorgeous, so that's that, I suppose that's why I've just spent fucking 30 minutes talking about smells. I've been. Enthusiastically. Using an aromatherapy diffuser with 30 different little bottles of essential oils, and it's really me, it's you know, it's it's.

It was causing me to view the world in my reality through the lens of a nose, I was really thinking about things from a small point of view, which I hadn't really done before. And that was interesting so far, the meteor shower. Fuck the meteor shower. What would a meteor smell like? Metalic. And sulphurous. And citrusy. If I had to wager, if I had to put a bet on it. All right, that's enough about Fokin smellers and a podcast, all right.

So what like what I would like to do with this week's podcast, I want to re visit a team of one of my earliest podcasts. I want to revisit the theme of collectivism and individualism I covered this topic on, I think it was like my tenth podcast back in early 2017. I possibly would have been 2017, early 2017. Now, the thing is, we're almost up to episode 300 here with this podcast. And not everyone who's listening has been less than one hundred percent from the start.

They haven't. In fact, to be honest from from what I've noticed, the people there are a few people who have been here for the entirety of the journey of this podcast, but mostly people come and go.

And now by nearly almost getting to episode 300, my my audience is mostly international now in twenty seventeen. It was an exclusively Irish audience and the audience has changed a bit. So I can't assume everyone has heard every single one of my podcasts.

So what was the name of the fucking podcast?

Can't even remember the name of it, but it was a podcast about collectivism versus individualism, and I spoke about it in 2017. And the reason I want to revisit it is that, first of all, to satisfy the hipster in me. By which I mean current events in the coronaviruses pandemic are hugely relevant to the topic of this podcast I did in 2017, it was I predicted something in a way by accident. By accident. And what I spoke about was how.

Quote unquote, Western cultures are what's known as individualistic and quote unquote, Eastern, our Asian cultures are collectivistic. And I want to expand on this and revisit this. In a 20/20 coronavirus pandemic context, and because I've got a hot take and I want to see if this take is answerable, what initially got me thinking about the constructs of individualism versus collectivism was a moment of culture shock that I had a few years ago.

I grew up. I'm. Seeing with, say, Japan and China on television would say on the news, and when I was a kid, whenever you would see news footage of people in Japan or China in a crowded city, we say it was usually Tokyo. In Japan, you'd see a crowd of people just like you would in New York or in Dublin or London, but within the crowd of people in Japan.

When I was growing up, there was always one or two people wearing a face mask. And I'm talking in the 90s. Wearing face masks and it all was stood out seeing it as a kid from Ireland, as really jarring. OK, it was like, what the fuck are they doing wearing face masks now I know that the face mask for medical, so I assumed all right, OK, so they're they're scared of getting sick. And when I was a kid, seeing people in Asian countries wearing face masks on news reports.

It used to, I'd feel. Insulted almost, I'd feel like I don't think I'd like to go to that place. That doesn't seem very welcoming.

I viewed the Chinese and Japanese people wearing face masks in public places as as an accusation.

It's like if I was there and a person was wearing a face mask, I would say I would I would think that they're saying to me, you are unclean, you are dirty, you are diseased. Get away from me. I don't want your yoky germs. And I viewed it as this person is an ultra hypochondriac. Ah, they don't trust other people and they think other people are diseased and they're really selfishly protecting themselves from these diseases. And it's so irrational.

And I wouldn't like to go to Tokyo if everyone thinks I'm dirty like that. And that's what I genuinely thought growing up when I would see people in Asian countries wearing masks, surgical masks in public places. And it was a common trope, was a common thing. And the culture shock came. A few years ago, long before coronavirus, when I learned these people in Japan and China are not wearing face masks because they are afraid of catching a virus or catching a cold or catching the flu, the person who's wearing the face mask, what it means is they are sick.

So all those newsreels I saw in the 90s of a Japanese businessman wearing a face mask, it meant that he had a flu or a cold. I wasn't feeling well, but he still went to work and he was protecting the other people that had to interact with him in a space. He was doing his he was gone. I've got a cold. I better not give it to somebody. I'll put this on something, something which is actually quite kind and considerate and compassionate.

When I saw it out of context, I'd viewed it as the complete flip. What a selfish bastard. Who are you to call me dirty? Who were you to say that I'm diseased? And it took me back when I learned this one, when I learned that in certain Asian countries, they wear face masks to protect other people. I was like, fuck, wow, I got that so wrong. And that's what led me to investigate and find out about individualism versus collectivism.

So individualism and collectivism, the words that are used in in like sociology.

Right.

There are constructs used to describe something, but also it describes how we as a society, how we view ourselves in relation to our society and our social norms, what's considered rude, what's not considered rude, what's considered appropriate, what's considered inappropriate, what's considered embarrassing and shameful and what's not. And these differ depending on whether a society is individualistic or collectivistic now. Asian Asian countries tend to be collectivistic. That mask wearing business, I wear a mask because I have a cold and I want to protect other people from getting my cold, that's collectivistic thinking you're not thinking about your own illness.

You're thinking about I am sick and I am therefore a danger to other people. If I made other people sick, that would be really bad for everybody. I better do what I can to stop that happening. That's collectivistic thinking. But in Europe and in America, we don't think like that. If we get a cold, we think, fuck, I've got a cold. How to how to cure it. What can I do to stop my cold affecting me and pray coronavirus people didn't really give a fuck.

If you've got a flu or a cold, it's like it's not my problem. What can I do about it? I better go to the chemist and get get my LEMSIP and get my Panadol. And if I sneeze along the way or if I can find someone, I'm not thinking about that. Sure, it's out of my control. What can I do? I need to look after myself. And that's an individualistic way of thinking. Until this year, to be perfectly honest.

I mean, I'd be thinking about if I had a cold or a sore throat. If it's someone in my immediate group who I care about, if it's a family member and I've got a sore throat, I'm talking about 2018, no coronavirus. If a family member comes to my house and I've got a sore throat, I'm going to say I've got a sore throat. Maybe don't cut over. What am I thinking that way when I'm in Donze or Renaldi?

Am I thinking that way when I'm on the bus? Absolutely not. Never, ever, never thought about it. Never felt required to think about it. Felt that sure. I've got a fucking cold. If I have it, everyone else is going to get it. What am I going to do on a bus. It wouldn't have even entered my head that I would give it to a member of the public. Only immediate people that I care about.

But I never thought about the public and my sore throat or my cold, nor was I have already asked think about that. And that right there is individualistic and quite self-centered and individualistic cultures. And I'm basing this now on it's a 2019 sociological paper on individualism and collectivism as they exist in the social sciences.

But in individualistic cultures, people view themselves as having an independent concept of self, whereas collectivist cultures.

People view themselves as like an interdependent concept concept of self. It's a tough one to explain because. Most of the people listening to this podcast will probably because. A lot of individuals, cultures are also English speaking, so if you're listening to this, you probably come from an English speaking culture. You're a Yank or your European or Australian. We view ourselves as I am me and you are you. And we are completely separate beings, independent concept of self.

Whereas in a collectivist culture, even with. Like, if this individualist cultures, if you have a child, yes, your child is your fucking child, but you view them as a separate human. I have myself and they have their cells, whereas collectivistic cultures can view children as a continuation of self.

There's a fragmentation of the concept of self, your child or your parent or your brother or your sister.

There you are, you are both you and also they contain a part of you, which I can't really get my head around this.

I can't get like I'm very individualistic in my thinking even. Like the the psychology that I used to hate myself, my mental health, like cognitive behavioral therapy, it's a hugely individualistic, um, way of seeing the world. I mean, at the root of cognitive behavioral therapy, I have no control over what happens to me, but I have full control over my view towards it. It is not what happens to you that causes you to be upset, but it's how you react to what happens that causes you to be upset or are anxious and.

I subscribe to that because it's relevant to the culture I grew up into, the individualistic culture I grew up in, and it's effective for me. But cognitive behavioral therapy that isn't as effective in certain Asian cultures, in African cultures, it doesn't have the effectiveness it has in individualistic, quote unquote, Western cultures, individualistic cultures also view the self as completely separate to the environment, the nature. The environment, the nature is something within individualism. And individualistic culture looks as.

A mountain are a forest and says, what can I take from this mountain and forest that benefits me? Where is collectivistic? Cultures will look at the mountain and the forests and think, yes, there are resources there which benefit me, but there's a bit of a symbiotic relationship going on. I'm not entirely separate from this tree. I'm not entirely separate from this mountain. If I take and take and take and take, then nothing will grow back.

So there needs to be a balance going on. Similarly, if I take from this tree or this mountain, it's better to share that with the people around me rather than to try and hoarder's and a lot of the world's. You might have got it up until this.

You might have gathered so far that individualism kind of makes you a bit of a prick.

All right, a lot of the world's problems, I ask myself. And along enough lines in a thousand years, whatever the fuck the world looks like, then most likely complete ecological collapse. That's that's what science is saying. OK.

Individualism will be frowned upon if you look at the shittiest things. Like, look at what colonialism has done, colonialism is pure and utter, individualism, rights, colonialism is I'm going to take, take, take whatever the fuck is there for me, me, me. That's colonialism. And I'm going to use whatever type of rationale to quote unquote, discover and take resources and get real, really greedy. That's individualism, OK? It's not ecological. It doesn't think about the environment.

It takes about exploitation. Just look at what's happened since the Industrial Revolution, 300 years, 300 years of that shit.

And we're facing the possible extinction of the human race within the next 200 years or 300 years unless some serious shit is fucking don't. Change our attitude towards consumption and greed, but it's colonialism that decides to look at a mountain in Africa and view it as a giant pile of gold or coltan or uranium to be completely extracted. Ah, it's colonialism that looks at the Amazon rainforest.

And instead of actually seeing what it is because nature is collectivistic, the Amazon rainforest, it going to the Amazon rainforest and deciding yum, yum, yum, look at all that wood and flooring, all of it and taken all the wood to build buildings and furniture. It's really short term greedy thinking. It's not ecological and it will eventually lead to the extinction of all our other creatures. Whereas to look at the Amazon rainforest as this is a resource and I can take some, but I must only take enough so that the fucking rainforest can replenish itself naturally.

And now you've got a relationship if you go to the Amazon rainforest and take what you need. Then the forest is like, oh, you're a human, all right, well, you're part of nature and nature is a system where we're all part of the system together. So you can have some of these trees, not a bar. I can afford these 10 trees, and that's what you need. Take the 10 trees are grown back, no hassle.

But when you go in with the individualistic mindset and take all the trees, then the forest is gone. This isn't symbiotic here. There's no relationship here. This is just you losing the forest and that's individualism and it's destroying the world and it has destroyed the fucking world. I don't want to be completely binary and be like individualism, bad collectivism, good extreme. The extremities of anything is usually always bad. And colonialism is an extremity of individualism.

To take lands for the resources and completely exploit them, regardless of who lives there are that's an extremity of individualism and that's bad and the extremity of collectivism.

Maybe, maybe what's going on in North Korea? Elements of the Soviet Union back in the day. That's the extremity of collectivism and that didn't work out too well either. So collectivistic cultures have an interdependent sense of self. Individualistic cultures have an independent sense of self total independence. I am me and you are you. Whereas with collectivism, it's like, yeah, I me and you are you. But we're going to have to have some type of involvement here together for the benefit of the both of us.

If we're both just fucking being me and me, I don't know how that's going to work out.

I'm sociologists say the collectivistic cultures just to say countries China, India, Brazil, Japan, Mexico are used as examples of collectivistic cultures where people have an interdependent sense of self. And that interdependence is expressed as people sharing resources. And not just now. Here's here's one for you.

When I say sharing resources immediately, you're thinking food, property. You know, money, things, whereas in collectivistic cultures that the sharing of resources, that there's material resources, but also nonmaterial sharing, time, affection, fun, Ireland was, they say was fairly not strong, had elements of collectivism in pre colonial times.

We use the word Mahle to refer to this. Mahle is like it's a Gaelic Ghalia word that means. Like a team, and what it refers to is an Irish cultural, a rural Irish cultural thing where. In a village. Or in whatever community are living in if what if something happens to one of your neighbors? I don't know, the fucking thatching falls off the roof of their cottage. Everyone gets together to help that person.

OK, I'm. If their crops fail, if you have something, you give it to them, if they need help harvesting their crops and it's that's called Melle Mel in Ireland.

And I I would imagine humans naturally should be collectivistic because we're social animals cooperative. We cooperate for the survival of the entire group through kindness and sharing rather than. The kind of single minded. Cruel Darwinism of individualism, where you only look out for yourself, and if you try as hard as possible, you can succeed.

But if someone if someone else doesn't succeed, it's their fault. And that's one of the huge you see it today with our foreign government, it's anytime a government wants you to dislike poor people. That right there is extreme individualism. What that person is homeless because they didn't try hard enough selling people. The idea that we're all completely equal and we all have absolute equal opportunity. So if if one person is a success and has a job and a mortgage and has loads of money, if that person is really successful, then the person who's on the streets, who's homeless, well, then they failed.

And that's that's how toxic individualism tries to get us to look at ourselves. And it's a tenet of a lot of Western societies, unfortunately. You're told to believe that a homeless person is hot, it's their fault. Why aren't you homeless?

Because you tried really hard and you worked hard and you got up early in the morning and that's why you've got your mortgage. But that person's homeless because they didn't try and they had the same opportunities as you. And that's just not the case. It's just not the fucking case. Equality, equality of opportunity, which means giving everybody the exact same opportunity is it's bullshit because it doesn't take into consideration things like privilege, extreme individualism. Also, it sells people the notion if you can convince people that this person is really wealthy because they just worked hard and tried really hard and played by the rules.

And this person is really poor because they didn't. And if they're a failure, quote unquote, if you can convince people of that. It's how you get this strange. Phenomena of billionaire worship. You know, you find people online defending billionaires, you find people in Ireland defending Apple, not paying any tax in Ireland because what what what the system has done is convince these people that. You're simply a billionaire, that hasn't happened yet. So people will defend a billionaire because they they think unconsciously that they would become that person.

And a lot of America. England, Europe, Ireland is now within capitalism, under capitalism is very much.

Extremely individual, individualistic in our way of thinking and how we view ourselves and how we view others and this now we now have an identity crisis because a coronavirus we have an extreme identity crisis because of coronavirus. Coronavirus is utterly exposed and. Individualism and its flaws just tell you briefly, why are some cultures individualistic and other cultures are collectivistic?

One theory that anthropologists have right. One theory is. If it it depends on the historical source of carbohydrates that that culture is now, I know that sounds bizarre, but. If the culture historically relied upon Rice as its source of food, these are the cultures that tend to be collectivistic because. Rice, in order to be grown, required a community effort, you can't just grow your own rice in your back garden. There needs to be a communal rice paddy.

Everybody chips in for every part of the way and then everybody gets fed. And one theory is that cultures that relied upon rice is the staple. Food tended to develop a collectivistic in an interdependent sense of self. And countries like China and Japan are examples of this. Then if instead you had a culture of whereby their main source of carbohydrate was Grass's wheat, barley, grain, OK, these are things that you you could grow your self in your back garden.

If you wanted some wheat or some barley, you could grow some for yourself, for your own family and feed yourself. And your neighbor could do the same and feed themselves. And what you end up with then is a way of viewing yourself as not necessarily needing your neighbor that much. And if your neighbor doesn't grow enough fucking wheat, it's because they're shaded growing wheat and you grow enough wheat for yourself and you feed your family and Western European cultures and countries that European people then went on to colonize.

That's where you see individualism and then colonialism and aggressive capitalism coming from these cultures.

On that note, it's time for a little Macarena pause. I don't have an acronym. I've got to shake off this week because it's more pleasant than the year and you're going to be a digital advert is going to be inserted. A digital advert is going to be inserted. All right. Hopefully it won't be the British army. A lot of controversy last week about advertising, British army advertising and podcasts. If you've been listening to this podcast a long time, you know, the British army tried to advertise in this podcast.

I said no. They came back. I made it a hostile environment by listing out their war crimes as digital anticolonial.

Guerrilla warfare against the British army. And the sovereign space of this podcast. All right, but anyway, look, you're going to be sold an advert of some description here which will appeal to your individualistic self.

You're going to be sold something and most likely it won't sell you the product will try and sell you a better version of yourself, which is a tentative individualism. Consumerism operates within individualism. Don't sell them soap. Sedum, how to be sexy won't get a soap advert. It'll be for beer or something. I don't know. It's up to you. Whatever your searching online is, what will be digitally inserted. So here is the sharecropper's.

So there you go. Joshua, you didn't get a great support from this podcast comes from you, the listener.

All right, via the patrie on page Patriae Entercom forward slash the blind by podcast. I don't know, actually. Yeah, I don't know. I won't be going for a long, long time, OK? I won't be gigging for a long time. I don't know when we're going to have gigs. Again, it's Grand Forks. The Patreon is what is giving me a regular source of income. So if you're listening to this podcast, if you're enjoying this and you're working and you can afford to give me the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a week, please, the Patriot dot com forward slash the blind by podcast.

This podcast is now my full time job when I'm streaming as well. But the podcast is my full time job. It's my sole source of income. And if you become a patron, also, what you're doing is you're allowing the podcast to be 100 percent independent editorially and in editorially independent, which I can't pronounce my ls this week, man. I can't pronounce my fucking remember that citronella and that let's not get back in citronella, and this is an independent podcast, I can speak about what I want.

I am beholden to no advertiser. And this is all possible because of the patrons of the podcast. So if you can afford it, please pay me for the work I'm doing. Basically, it's a lot of work doing this podcast. I'm Harson True academic research this week. Let's it's not no Wikipedia shit here. I'm going through academic articles. So pay me for the work I'm doing, please, if you're enjoying this, but if you can't afford us, you don't have to.

If you you can listen for free if you can't afford it because someone who can afford it is paying for you and everyone's fucking happy. Everyone is happy, then that's almost a collectivistic way of looking at us. It's it's a community benefit. It's the community of everybody who's listening to what I make in the podcast. I'm getting paid. And if you're paying for it, you're paying for my work and you're listening to it, but you're also paying for someone who can't afford it.

And it's a nice little model. There was a few people asking, are there parks?

Are there more things I can do for patrons only? Right. I'd rather stay away from this. OK, that's not what I want to do. The patron is more pay me for the work I'm doing. I don't want some people. I'm Patreon are like, here's an extra podcast once a week just for patrons. Here's extra stuff. I want to avoid that if I can. Because of the aforementioned model, I do it like a little lottery.

One patron every month is picked at random and I send you a hand drawing in the post. That's it. I think that's fair enough. But unless people start screaming and roaring first, I'd rather not. Afford a hue, a different level of privilege to patrons. OK, I am I plugged the pattern every week because people come and go, so I have to do it. People subscribe for a while and then they don't subscribe. And then more people come in.

The people leave. So I got to keep plugging in every week because this is the sole source of income from the podcast I'm on Twitch Twitch that TV Fiberglas to blame by podcast I livestream three times a week. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday at eight thirty pm. Maybe the weekends as well, but guaranteed Wednesday, Thursday, Friday you can come online. You can see me making songs, playing video games, chatting, responding to your comments, come along also like the podcast and leave a review that also helps you get back to the podcast.

Even in individualistic cultures, we still have friendships, we still have relationships, we still have kindness.

But. Sociologists would argue this. In an individual, OK, here's a classic example, those YouTube videos for people help homeless people in filmis. When someone on YouTube or Facebook buys food for a homeless person or gives a homeless person money and they filmis and put it up online. That right there is complete and utter individualism. It is an act of compassion and kindness for another human being. But ultimately. It serves the individual self of the person doing it because it increases their social standing within a group, it's it's the it's a colonial farm of helping.

It's in pure individualism to help a homeless person like that and then to broadcast it on the Internet to do it first for yourself. It's like resource mining. Instead of it being to help that other human being, it is that person has resources and this resources is is social clout, which you can then obtain from that person by buying them a sandwich in the eyes of other people. Therefore, ultimately, it being a selfish act with myself, I help homeless people.

I will buy a homeless person the sandwich. I will give a homeless person money. I share things online for charities. I donate to charities. I do all these things. But I've said it before teh. Like, all right, I'm not going to fucking buy a home as part of the sandwich and take a photograph of it and put it up on Facebook and tell people that's not going to happen. I'm comfortable with that being a private interaction and me telling myself I'm doing this to help the person in need.

But ultimately and I'm I'm kind of OK with it because I don't know any other way, because I'm raised in individualism.

When I perform acts of compassion for other people like this, it's it's to help my mental health. If I do something kind for a homeless person, buy them a sandwich and buy them a new pair of boots, whatever it is I'm doing that day. Yes, there's empathy involved. Yes, there's compassion. But I walk away from it feeling like a good person. I don't need other people to see me doing it. But ultimately, it's for me, it's the individualistic.

It's complete individualism. I don't know any other way at the test. This out with Japanese children now.

One thing I want to flag because. I want to be very cautious about generalizing entire cultures, because that can be problematic. So the stuff that I'm talking about here, I'm taking it all from a few different sources. But the main source I'm using is a published sociological paper from the Cornell University. And one of the authors is actually Japanese American in this study. And so what they did is they looked at both American and Japanese schoolchildren and they found that they were both motivated to learn in school when they were individually rewarded for learning.

Right. So the kids are learning and then they're given a gold star at the end of the week if they do well. And this motivates them to learn what the Japanese children were motivated to learn, even if their teacher was rewarded. So if at the end of the week those kids are studying and doing tests, but they don't get gold stars, their teacher gets a gold star. The Japanese kids, this didn't faze them. They were like excellent teacher gets a star.

But the American kids were like, what do you mean teacher gets us there? Where the fuck is my stare decisis? And that there is that individualistic. But the Japanese children's reaction is interdependent, collectivistic way of thinking. Viewing the teacher as not a separate, are not a hierarchy, are not they are in control, but rather the teacher is in this classroom and we are learning and this is a system, this is all systematic.

And the teacher. Is sharing knowledge with us, and if they get rewarded for us doing hard work, then it's all part of the system. Everyone benefits from it, so it's grand. Another interesting thing in this study was how they observed how collectivistic cultures and individualistic cultures with set goals for themselves writes collectivistic culture will are willing to subordinate their own individual goal if it benefits the goal of the collective.

But within an individualistic cultures, people will pursue their own goals that are important to them. And even change the relationships with other people, depending on them and what you see here is a higher rate of divorce in individualistic cultures. Now, I'm not shaming divorce or saying that divorce is a fucking bad thing. I don't give a shit about that. Happiness is is if if divorce makes a person happy, then get divorced. And I've taken a more realistic view on divorce.

But what I'm saying is. With the within the context of individual cultures, this study is used in divorce as an example of a lack of compromise. Whereas in the collectivistic culture. People change their personal goals. Around the strengthening of a bond and relationship, whereas in the individualistic cultures are like, no, this is what I want to fucking do, and if you don't fit in with that, then we have to part. I want to be cautious now that I'm not presenting.

Collectivism, good, individualism, bad, each social construct has Gus positive and negative parts, harmful parts and beneficial parts.

And within collectivism, for example, they found in this study that it like how the individual.

Relates to larger society within collectivist culture, larger society, not just your immediate family or friends group, but not the entirety of society, and there tends to be quite a lot of pressure within collectivist society on the individual. So in individualistic culture, you've got greater permission to be an individual, pursue your own desires, your attitudes, your values, your beliefs.

And because everyone else is individualistic, there's a greater degree of mind in your own business. If this person wants to do that, that's their fucking business. Leave them off. I'm doing my thing. What, in collectivism? When it comes to the whole society. People are less likely wanting to stake out conformity, the pressure to conform is a lot higher. You have a much higher amount of social norms, a higher amount of what's considered appropriate, what's not much more rules about how you must behave.

And with collectiveness, collectivists, willingness to to accept the opinions and views of others, their willingness to conform leads to their concern for face saving are gaining the approval of the collective and fair. Saving is is an important construct that guides all communications and collectivist cultures. However, in the individualistic cultures, people are not guided by saving face. It's more important for people to speak their mind and tell the other person directly how they feel rather than hide their feelings to make the other person comfortable.

And that's directly now from this sociological study.

So in the individualistic culture, you you can. You can express your distaste more, you can express if you're unhappy with someone, you can express your anger more without having to worry about being shamed for that action or making another person uncomfortable. Another thing I find fucking mad interesting about something historically within individualistic culture vs. collectivist cultures.

So individualistic cultures writes the exchange relationships right now I just mean transaction and it doesn't mean money. It can go straight back to barter in individualistic cultures. Historically, people will provide a service or give a gift to another person with the expectation that the other person is going to return us with something that's about equal value in a short period of time. That's individualism. I scratch your back, you scratch mine and the scratch that you're going to give me will be similar enough to the scratch that I gave you last week.

And this is understood and normal within individualistic cultures. But in collectivist cultures, the exchange thing, it's it's less. It's less a battery. A person in a collectivist culture will scratch another person's back. Not necessarily expect a scratch back, and if the other person responds to the scratch in a month's time, what a hug. It's grand because what's valued the value is placed on the transaction or value of what's been exchanged, but rather. The quality of the the relationship is such the fact that positive interactions are happening and bonds are being developed is more important than the condition of those bonds.

And this study is even hard for me to read.

And I can tell that the people of rightness are also strong because they are coming from the even though like one of them is Japanese American.

But like. Even the way they write the study, you can tell that they're trying to explain concepts that you can't fucking understand and individualistic culture, so they describe it as the value of the relationship, the relationship valuing within collectivism.

You can't understand that as simple as simply as a as a feeling affection for the person. Our feeling are worrying about another person which are almost exchanged based when you think about it, but rather it's about establishing. A sense of oneness. A sense of of oneness that's, you know, it's not the individualistic. I just did something nice for you, and now you are happy, I know I can sense that you are happy and if you're sad now, I am sad because you are sad.

It's something different. It's it's a holistic oneness. Which can be hard to get your head around. But basically, what I'm trying to get around to is all of this within the context of now coronavirus and what our society is facing. And my kind of. My thing that I'm wondering about is. Our collectivistic cultures are doing better in coronavirus than individualistic ones. Yes, absolutely. That's what outfoxing question because. The collectivistic cultures were the ones who mask wearing social distancing, everything that contact tracing, quarantining, everything that needed to happen happened very rapidly and normally without question in countries in Asia.

And you just look at their numbers compared to and you just rank it with the worst country in the world is fucking the United States because of rampant capitalistic individualism in Ireland. What doing? All right. But we were we were still able to bring a little bit of collectivism into it. It's like the Mel, as I said, when. The Hajazi, which is our National Health Service, announced that they need violent needed volunteers, like about 100000 Irish people volunteered this sense of smell, the sense of we must all get together so we still have it.

But America's forked America is is just knock. It doesn't even want to address this thing.

People are dying in Britain, the same fucking shit, two hugely individualistic countries and in the individualistic cultures and colonial cultures, and when you see things like mask wearing is the big one.

I've got friends who are living in China and living in Japan and the people in in the same way. When I was a kid and I was seeing China and Japan and people wearing face masks and me thinking they're selfish, they're hypochondriacs, my bodies are saying that Chinese people and Japanese people and Korean people, they think that we are mad. They can't understand what the fuck is going on with that, with people refusing to wear masks.

People I mean, there's so many viral videos every week of of people violently refusing the mask as they go into a shop.

Individualism is sold to Americans mainly, but it's sold as as freedom. You are free to be you and people are going into shops and they're saying, please wear a mask. And the person is violently screaming, having to be pulled out of the shop because their very identity has been attacked there. They believe that their sense of freedom is being attacked and they're calling masks, muzzles, even though the evidence is is proven. It's like if if everyone wears a mask collectively, all of us together, it's like taking a pill that reduces your chance of coronavirus by 60 percent if everyone wears a mask.

But everyone has to do it and people just aren't getting it. It's an attack on their identity. And I myself have had to have numerous arguments with well-meaning people, people who aren't being assholes, well-meaning people who just can't understand the mask concept when like people on Facebook or Twitter who say, blind guy, why do they keep talking about these masks? How can a cotton face mask stop me getting coronavirus? And then I have to explain. You have to think about it differently.

You're not wearing a mask to stop you getting coronavirus.

You have to wear the mask to stop someone else getting it. And then you have to trust that they were the last to stop you getting it. And only in this new way of thinking where it's a cooperation thing can you actually have an impact here. And it's a tough one for us to get our heads around. It's it's like if I fall backwards, will you catch me type thing? If you go to the shop and you don't wear your face mask, then you've negated the efforts of everyone who has.

So it has to be you wear a face mask and there wear a face mask and you're both protection protecting each other, but thinking about yourself doesn't work. But we can't think about this without framing ourselves completely as selfish individuals. We don't know any other way. So finally, two weeks ago, they did a study in the University of Kent literally looking at collectivism versus individualism and how does it relate to coronavirus and the spread of coronavirus.

And the research came straight out and said that people who adopt a collectivistic mindset are more likely to comply with social distancing and hygiene practices to reduce the spread of covid-19 people who. In their minds, it's if you just start you start saying to yourself, what I started doing early on because I was reading a book, because I had an awareness of collectivism and an awareness of individualism, and I have an awareness at all times that I'm from an individualistic culture.

So I have to be conscious of am I being a selfish prick at all times and have to try and think collectively where appropriate when I can, as part of my even that as part of my as part of my own mental health regime, taking it back to being a selfish prick, but. Like. What I started doing from the start was thinking. You pretend that you have the virus, you have to pretend that you have coronavirus, and now that you pretend you have it, then you start thinking about other people.

But if you start thinking about I must not get coronavirus, I can't get sick. I don't want to get infected by all these people. All these people are a threat and they're going to infect me.

That's that individualistic, hostile thinking. That's where you get reactionary. But if you think instead I am sick, even though you have no evidence that you're sick or not, I am sick and my job is to not give the sickness to other people, then it's collectivistic thinking. So the study found straight out people who think in a collectivistic mindset or who adopt one consciously are the ones who will comply with the measures to keep this thing down. But the individualistic mindset, these are the conspiracy theorists.

These are people who are. Conspiracy theorists and who also feel terrified and powerless, the people with individualistic mindsets were unable to view coronavirus as something that might happen from the chaos of existence. These are the people who believe that it was deliberately created in China as like Donald Trump, like there's an individualistic man, absolute and utter, pure, unbridled American individualism, grew up with order of shock and privilege, would view poor people as people who have failed.

And Trump, like Trump, is punishing China at the moment. Trump is very aggressive to China. I'm saying China like him. He calls it the China virus. This wasn't created by it. It started in China. It wasn't created by the fucking Chinese. No one of any regular saying it was man made in a fucking lab except Trump and Trump is going at it from that transactional point of view. All right. So you made a virus and gave it to us.

You just scratched my back. Well, I better scratch yours. And he's unable to think outside of it that it might be from just the chaos of nature. So the Mike Bilston, who's a psychologist in the University of Kent, who was part of this study, he said for a finish, he said they have found a collectivistic thinking is. Most likely to encourage social distancing and compliance around what needs to happen to keep the flat and the car of individualism is all conspiracy theories and people resisting compliance, he said.

Interventions that focus on collective empowerment and champion are we are in this together mentality will encourage people to comply with guidelines and will reduce the spread.

Promote and collectivism could also make a positive difference to future public health.

Crisis is to, as leaders look to improve response strategies. A collectivist mindset might also make people less susceptible to conspiracy theories and misinformation that can negatively affect their behavior. So there you have it. That's the study. Global warming, climate collapse, biodiversity. These are also all things that are going to require us to.

Collectivistic, we're going to have to deal with it in a collective way, we're going to have to deal with it holistically.

We're going to have to seriously understand that we are not these special individuals, but we are all a part of a Fokin system and we must behave as a system symbiotically with each other and with nature, because this individualistic business of just hoarding and taking and stripping resources for the short term is what we call our extinction. And here's the extreme hot take. I've said it before, you're entitled to laugh at me, not take it seriously, boss. You know, what do I see a future of rampant individualism and I've mentioned, you know, rampant individualism, colonialism, that we've been tricked into worshipping billionaires because we believe that we will one day become the Marseille's take, take, take.

It's going to end with a small amount of billionaires. Eventually figuring out the technology to leave the art and colonize Mars and do that shit over there while the.

Majority just burn on art. I know that sounds extreme. I'm aware of it, but that's kind of what their planning might be 300 years in the future, but it's kind of what they're fuckin planning.

NASA isn't a thing anymore, really. It's it's going over to the hands of private companies and space tourism and Elon Musk and SpaceX, they want to colonize Mars. They want to get humans onto a different planet because. The intention is to eat up all the resources here, find a new place, do the same shit there and just keep happening and happen. And it's not going to be you and me that gets to go on that spaceship. They'll tell us and convince us that we can become the billionaire.

It's going to be a group of 10000 people of the ultimate Elise. Assuming something like that ever fucking happens, whatever, everything else burns and everyone dies because of all the Darwinian individualism, and they'll tell themselves that the people who get left back on Earth as the waters rise, that these people had the same opportunities as us, equality of opportunity.

And I guess they were just lazy. And that's why I'm on my way to Mars. With crimes. I'm. Heartache Clouds roster roster. Call me a shithead if you like, that science fiction level heartache. I'm not making a conspiracy theory prediction. I'm just.

I think it's what it's worth thinking about, it's worth saying out loud, at least, you know, are we all collectively understand ourselves as being part of a system in an ecosystem which includes animals and plants and everything. And we change how we consume and we change our relationship with each other and we change our relationship with the environment. I think coronaviruses is the opportunity for it. There's so many class opportunities that now come. With the coronavirus world in terms of working from home, thinking collectively and thinking more locally.

Like. The affordability of global travel is, without question, a driving factor for coronavirus. Let them have this look at how quickly it left China and went all over the entire world because of international travel, you know, so that's this week's itinerary is it's not a heartache because I back the whole thing or put an actual scientific study.

So it was more a hunch that I was happy to find a scientific study which addressed this and then that batched bit at the end about colonizing Mars, where we are drawn, which if you want to go Fokin. No, we're not going there.

We're not going there. Sometimes I wonder about the cyclical nature of time. I know when I go in there. How do I say this without looking, I just find it fucking strange, I just find it odd. No, I find it interesting is it is it excites the creative part of my brain. I'm not saying it's true. It excites the creative part of my brain. That's flawed. Mythology is such a huge part of world religions. You have it there would fucking Noah and the fucking Ark, one of our origin myths of humanity which came from the collective unconscious, the collective unconscious of humankind.

And then the fact that. You know, time, what the fuck is time I had a quantum physicist on talking about it before, you know, time is not linear. That's just how our brains understand it and our collective unconscious and this flawed MIT and maybe the flawed MIT. Isn't the past, but it's the future. That's me thinking out loud, let's don't pick on onto the Internet, send blind boys after getting into Christ, he's he's found a quantum interpretation of the Bible and he's telling everybody that Noah's Ark is in the future.

All right, I'm thinking out loud. These are things that I find interesting. I'll talk to you next week of Go Fuck Yourself.