Please stand up Why did you stand up? Please sit down The rebellious group Sit down if you want to Why did you stand up? You are asked nicely I don't think I did You said please Please stand up Did you stand up because I'm a nice guy? That would be a serious mistake I'm not a nice guy Any other reason why you stood up? You don't know What would have happened if you hadn't stood up? If you did not stand up What would have happened? So why did you stand up? I'm repeating the question What would have been the consequences? That's what I'm asking Then what would happen to you if I were angry at you? I can throw the coffee at you No I'll try not to So let me understand A total stranger Who did not introduce himself Yet Just a guy standing here Told you to stand up And all of you without a single exception Obeyed And then You are utterly unable to explain why you did this Am I right In summarizing the situation More or less Don't you think it's a Good display of madness Don't you think you are all a bit crazy? You know that Nothing new I think you stood up for two reasons I will suggest to you these reasons You can disagree with me But then of course there will be consequences With the coffee I suggest that you do not disagree You have counter coffee This is called counter coffee I will suggest to you two reasons First of all You have made a series of assumptions You had assumed For example That I'm an authority figure You had assumed That I have the right To ask you to stand up Because I'm in charge of this event And many other assumptions There was a series of assumptions That motivated you to stand up And then there was another thing If you were To not stand up You would stand out You would be the exception You were acting under Peer pressure All of you Motivated each other to stand up Imagine that she were To not stand up To be the only one It never feels good To be the only one The one who stands out You react To peer pressure Remember these two lessons When we begin to discuss Madness and normality Madness and normality Depend on context They depend on Where you are Who you're with They're not absolute things We'll come to it We're going to discuss a few Relatively controversial issues I'm going to mention For beating words like homosexuality And God And other things So those of you who are Hypersensitive and squeamish You have your warning Here's one important thing To understand What used to be considered Crazy 50 years ago Is normal today For example Until 1973 1973 Homosexuality was considered A mental illness We have a big book In the West It's called Diagnostic and Statistical Manual It is the Bible Of all psychiatrists And all psychologists Of psychology like me It's our Bible And in this Bible until 1973 Homosexuality was defined As a mental illness There were even programs Intended to make homosexual men Get attracted to women To reprogram them Somehow to cure them Of their homosexuality That was 1973 Not the Middle Ages Not ancient Rome It's 1973 That's not long ago Well, for you maybe, it's long ago I was At the time 12 years old So, you know, for me It's my history And then there were Seven years of debates Whether it is a mental illness or not And in 1980 it was taken out Of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual And people who were Considered on Monday Ill were considered On Friday perfectly normal This isn't an example Here's another example Most religions Most religions Especially monotheistic Religions such as Christianity, Islam Are founded On the words of prophets Messengers of God People who communicate With God on a regular Basis as long as there is reception And These people came back And brought us a message from God And this message had become Religion Had these people been alive today Each and every single one of them Would have ended in a mental asylum With very strong medications They are all All of them All the messengers, all the prophets All these people As Christianity and Islam and so on Would have been today Diagnosed as suffering from Psychotic disorder With delusional Dimensional, delusional aspect That requires very heavy medication They would have been put on Medication regime And they would have been committed To a mental asylum for Very, very long time So people who were Once considered to be Messengers of God People who gave us the religions We believe in By our own standards today Were mentally ill people Severely mentally ill People You see from these two examples That the landscape Is shifting Some things are crazy today Normal tomorrow Some things are normal today Crazy tomorrow It's not even medicine I'm a medical doctor also It's none of these things It's therefore Probably not a science At all Psychology and psychiatry Are not a science One additional argument That possibly we are Not dealing with the science Is that you remember the book The Bible of the profession Diagnostic and statistical manual It's called DSM There are two Bibles One Bible for Americans of course And I'm not available And another Bible for the rest Of the world The rest of the world uses ICD It's another Bible When the first edition Of the DSM was published In 1952 It had 100 pages When the fifth edition Was published in 2013 It had 1000 pages The number of pages In the Bible of psychiatry Went up 10 times Now this is a strong indicator That we probably have no idea What we are talking about In psychology and psychiatry There is no other Discipline in medicine Where The amount of knowledge went up 10 times Where There were 10 times more diagnosis Tuberculosis And cancer were here Are here today They were here 100 years ago They were here 200 years ago Nothing much changed The textbooks of medicine today Are more or less the same Like the textbooks of medicine 100 years ago It's not the case in psychiatry It's not the case in psychiatry You see an inflation It's beginning to be a bit funny Which is why I'm in the field I like to laugh It's beginning to be a bit funny Because for example If you drink too much coffee It's a mental illness If you sneeze without permission Shortly it will be a mental illness Also Especially if you do it repeatedly So drinking coffee Had become pathologized In the fifth edition If you use the internet too much It's an internet addiction It's a diagnosis In the DSM-5 If you fight with your teachers On a regular basis You're mentally ill It's called oppositional defined disorder It probably makes all of you mentally ill So There's a problem there There's a proliferation of diagnosis Everyone is Potentially mentally ill Big deep enough That's not okay That is not okay The profession is in crisis Because of this Society Society allows you To be mentally ill To some extent Society accepts That each and every one of us Is crazy sometimes Like in my case That each and each and one of you Has what we call Idiosyncrasies Behaviors which are typical only to that person And everyone else is mocking them Because of these behaviors It's totally actually Accepted as normal Society says you know what Everyone is a bit crazy And we're gonna accept some craziness The process of accepting craziness Is called sublimation So today I've learned many many new words Because you have no choice And you can't just get up and leave So I'm gonna teach you many new words So sublimation Sublimation is when Society allows you to be a little Crazy and it's acceptable Sublimation means That you no longer perceive Reality properly Sublimation Society says it's okay To not perceive reality Reality is too tough Too harsh If we are exposed to reality Without defences We will fall apart We will go really crazy In this case Society says okay We're gonna let you use a firewall An antivirus Anti malware We allow you to fend off reality We allow you To lie to yourself Society tells you it's okay to lie to yourself Because lying to yourself Deceiving yourself Makes life a bit easier And reality somehow More acceptable I'll give you a few examples of Sublimated lies Lies that society allows you To engage in For example Every problem has a solution It's a message When you have a problem What's the solution What's secure The truth is The vast majority of problems Do not have solutions That's not me, that's Jung Jung was a very famous psychiatrist And a mentally ill person Jung had psychosis He had psychotic disorder He spent five years In treatment, in an asylum For psychotic disorder He was one of the greatest psychologists Probably because he was crazy He was one of the greatest psychologists in history And he was Jung who said Most problems don't have a solution But society wants you To lie to yourself Encourages you to lie to yourself Every problem has a solution What's the solution Politics, what's the solution Solution is elections So they give you the illusion Or the delusion that you are in control So if there are politicians You can change them through elections It's a bit of a lie There are many lies around Which society creates for you So that you can somehow survive Another example of a lie Everything complex Can be made simple That's not true Most complex things Can not be made simple Because they are complex Another example Every fear can be overcome That's not true Most fears actually Cannot be overcome Otherwise I would be out of a job I'm lucky that most fears cannot be overcome Because fears become anxieties Fears become phobias Fear is the engine Of a lot of mental illness And the source of my income So Every fear can be overcome is nonsense That is Society allows you to tell yourself It's like the kid at night There's a monster in the cupboard But I'm hiding under the blanket So I don't see it And he doesn't see me Another example Experience is a good teacher No, it's not actually There's very little that experience can teach you First of all Because by the time you get the experience It's usually not relevant Experience is a record of failure Mostly And your fate And it's extremely rare For the same situation to repeat itself Situations are so different to each other That experience is actually A very poor teacher But we lie to ourselves Experience is a teacher Another example People are good People are honest You can trust them This is known This is a name even It even has a name It's called the base rate fallacy That's the clinical name And yet 95% of people Believe other people Without checking the facts Not 9% 95% Believe other people Without checking the facts Well over 81% of men And even women Would go with a stranger To his home To his apartment Without any problem 81% We trust other people And yet The fact is That people lie all the time There are studies by Dan Ariely That show That people lie most of the time Actually Because it promotes their goals And because they're selfish The truth is That you cannot trust people And the overwhelming And the overwhelming Number of cases People are self-centered They're not good They can be good, but for their own reasons And most definitely What they say, you have to verify and check It's another example of a lie That you're telling yourself Because without this lie Reality would become very frightening And very unbearable We live in a cosmos of lies And self-deception In order to survive And society encourages you Then there are all the lies that are known as Magical thinking Magical thinking Is the pathological belief That you have An impact That you can affect Your environment That you can have an effect on the world It's pathological because it's untrue Most of you Most of the time have no effect On anything and anyone It's a lie It's self-deception And we call it magical thinking I'll give you a few examples of magical thinking God God is a form of magical thinking It's a belief that there is some supreme being Or supreme power And it's a good supreme power It's a benevolent supreme power It's a supreme power Which loves you And would take care of you On a personal basis almost Like he has nothing else to do Well It raises of course Interesting questions such as Where was God in Auschwitz So God is a form of magical thinking Another form of magical thinking is If you only put your mind to it You can do anything You have this message from Tony Robbins and other coaches You know Awaken the giant inside you In all this nonsense If you only put your mind to it There is nothing that is beyond your ability to accomplish You can achieve anything Nonsense of course Nonsense All of you are limited I am limited Even I am limited imagine All of you are limited Every human being has limitations Skills and talents And intelligence Are not distributed equally Luckily for humanity Even your height Determines many things For example Whether you will play basketball But even more importantly If you are tall You will make more money Beautiful people Especially beautiful women And tall men Make more money Than short men And ugly women It's a fact Unpleasant fact Very highly unpleasant lecture Because we are going to confront reality Finally I hope So there is this If I only put my mind to it And you see online on YouTube Awaken the giant within There is no giant within There is only you And then there is the law of attraction You know If you If you decide If you focus strongly The universe The whole universe by the way The whole universe including my wife Will arrange itself Will arrange itself to cater to your needs By the way the police is here To arrest me immediately after the lecture So justice will be done At the end of this lecture Don't worry I will be punished For everything I am telling you No good deed goes unpunished I am not available The law of attraction The universe will arrange itself To cater to your wishes The truth is of course That the universe does its best To frustrate you And to prevent you from accomplishing Almost anything you want It's exactly the opposite of the law of attraction If anything there is the law of frustration If anything I don't think there is this All this the universe of course is Indifferent to you Isn't different You are meaningless In the big scheme of things You are meaningful only to yourself You are The engine of your own meaning Do not rely on anything Outside you for meaning Because no one gives a shit Simple Next example of Magical thinking yes Voodoo I take a doll Yeah I think of a psychology professor And I stick it with pins The psychology professor Drops dead hopefully It's a form Of magical thinking the only one Who suffers from this is the doll So it's an example of magical thinking Another example Of magical thinking Another example of magical thinking Is what we call placebo nocebo effect I don't know how many of you Have heard of it Nocebo effect simply means That I can give you a pill of sugar And I will tell you that it's a medicine And you will have all the effects of the medicine It's called placebo I can even not give you anything And tell you that I did something Remotely And about 30 or 40% Of you will have the effects of a medicine Even though I didn't give you anything It's called nocebo I'll tell you about an experiment We vicious psychologists Had conducted As you saw at the beginning of the lecture We love to conduct experiments On suffering human beings And of course the constituency The main people who suffer are the students We are so lucky to have students We would have invented them had they not existed So The famous experiment we had conducted Was with alcohol We took water Simple water I say we I mean psychologists We took water And we added a flavor of alcohol But only the smell There was not an ounce of alcohol in the water It was water, simply water With the smell of alcohol We gave it to people They drank it They got dead drunk Many of them went into blackout Which is an extreme form Of alcohol poisoning where you lose The ability to form long term memories You don't remember what had happened Most of you are not lucky enough to You will remember this lecture So This is the nocebo or placebo effect It's a form of magical thinking We can even get people drunk With water This is how strong the mind is Over the body But not over the world And that's a big source of confusion Your mind has Huge impacts on your body But that's the only thing It has an impact on It has no impact On the world Do not confuse the two I can hypnotize you And I can take this pen And put it on your skin And I can tell you that I'm burning you During the hypnosis And then your skin will form Burn We form a welt Your skin will react as if I'm burning you That's the power of your mind But on the other hand If you were to focus very hard Hoping that I burn Nothing will happen to me You have no effect on the outside But you have almost full effect on the inside There are yogis in India Who control their heartbeat To the point that they can stop Their heartbeat for almost half an hour Without any disunderable impacts So This distinction is very important We call magical thinking A delusional disorder It's a special form Of delusional disorder And delusions are very important Because we are Contradictory Creatures We have contradictions If you have a cat Cats have few contradictions They want to have food You happen to provide the food They pretend that they like you That's a cat And some husbands You have a dog The dog is conditioned It's called operant conditioning The dog is conditioned It hits your guts He wants to eat These are relatively simple Creatures or machines Everything can be described as a machine We are not like this We are the only species At this stage We are beginning to think That maybe there are other species Like this Squeeze Octopus We think they are actually Complex creatures We know that dolphins Have complexity But no one Is remotely as complex as human beings With exceptional politicians Human beings are complex And when I say complex I mean our programming Our programming Is full of glitches and bugs Is bad programming But it is exactly Because the programming is bad That we adapt The programming is not rigid It's not fixed So it is flexible Our programming is flexible So today there is climate change We are going to be different human beings We are going to adapt But there is a price for this And the price is That our programming is unpredictable The price is madness Hans Eiseng Who is a very famous psychologist Said That creativity and psychoticism Kuku Creativity and psychoticism Are one and the same And everyone will tell you That a genius Is very close to madness And it's very true You need madness To adapt somehow Madness has a role But we are complex creatures For example we want love Right Or your generation doesn't We want love But we also want freedom I have a surprise for you They don't go well together In most cases They don't go well together But we still want both This is our complexity We want We have aggression But we also want collaboration We want to collaborate We want to belong to a social group But we are also aggressive Again This contradicts each other We want to be accepted And validated And rebellious But at the same time We want to be special And rebellious These don't go together Either you belong and you're accepted And validated Or You stand aside, you stand alone You're unique You're a rebel against the group Either you're for the group Or you're against the group But we want to be both Against the group We want to accomplish things We want achievements and accomplishments Yes, everyone dreams of Red Mercedes And a beautiful girl Oh boy And so we want Accomplishments and so on This is only one minor problem We are built to minimize Investment Biologically Biologically We are built to minimize investment We conserve energy Because the body Evolution Told us that we need energy That's more By the way, why people get fat People get fat because They eat and the body refuses Stores the energy There's a hysteria In evolution there's a hysterical approach to energy So we conserve energy So we want to accomplish things But we're lazy We're lazy We're entitled The path of this resistance It doesn't go together We're curious We're all curious And curiosity killed many more men And women than cats We're curious But at the same time We are terrified of risks We are risk averse We have an aversion to risk We are very afraid of risk Look at the global reaction to Covid Everyone was in mass hysteria One way or the other But you can't be curious Unless Unless you take risks Every curiosity Every act of curiosity Involves taking risks What am I trying to tell you? I'm trying to tell you That your programming sucks It pushes you one way And disables you the other way It's like a work processor That Looks perfect on the screen But you cannot type For example Or a browser that never leads To any address on the internet So Our programming is a problem There's one more thing We are unpredictable creatures You think you're predictable Why? Because you go too slow You don't shoot Your parents You sit here In peace I mean, you think you're predictable There's an impression of predictability Because society punishes severely Anyone Who is not predictable But you are not predictable Because you're complex In the 1980s and 90s There was a very frightening development People at that stage Were trying to develop Artificial intelligence coding Or programming So they started to write artificial intelligence programs And because at that time Computers were much slower And humans much faster So they wrote the programs and they went home They went home And they came back in the morning And the programs The artificial intelligence programs Did things which were not in the code The artificial intelligence programs Performed functions and activities That were nowhere to be found In the program of the code And the reason is complexity This is known as emergent order Mergent order Or if you want to impress your girlfriend Epi-phenomenal So epi-phenomenal or epi-phenomenal This is when complex systems Complex systems produce Totally unexpected results That cannot be reduced Or attributed To any part of the system That comes from nowhere We are like that That's why we have serial killers Psychopaths, narcissists The manifestation of the unexpected outcomes Of programming, of our programming Is what we call madness Insanity is the unexpected outcome Of our coding If we think of ourselves as computers Some of us do things That cannot be found in the code And we call these people crazy And these crazy people According to Iseng and many others Are actually the creative types If you were to take a hundred rock stars A hundred painters A hundred authors A hundred poets And a hundred psychology professors Dressed in black You would find that the majority of them Suffer from diagnosable mental health disorders Mental health instability Is intimately linked with creativity We need this We need to produce things That are not in the code Our code is DNA We have cultural code and so on But we need madness Madness drives the species forward So what is to be normal? Let's make a joint exercise Let's make a joint exercise What is normalcy? I would like you to define for me Normal Do you guys understand English? Because rather than that Or translate? Really much I admire you for staying here With nothing to say or don't say That's an example of unexpected outcome For me I would like you to help me A poor foreigner professor of psychology To define what is normal Depends Normalcy is In the most cases Defined by humans By society Sometimes Something for me is normal But for me it's not Do you think everyone has different definition of normal? Yes Do you believe that? Society tells us The normal of everyone Everyone should have something normal In common Society homogenizes I think it shoves down your throat Completely taken Do you disagree with these standards? Do you find them wrong Or unacceptable? Some definitions of normal You would disagree I'm not talking about behavioral standards I'm talking about who is normal One answer was Everyone has their own definition of normal Then there was modification Society homogenizes this Finds the common denominator It's like Venn Diagram You have this And this What's your name? Yannis Yannis has this definition of normal And your name? Diana Diana has this definition of normal So they disagree Yes? But they agree on this They would have something in common They would have some Agreement on some things That are normal I think that's the case I think it's a Venn Diagram The question is about What problems you get About Not normal things Welcome to that By defining what's normal We will get to the abnormal But first let's agree what is normal So we agree that there are some common things There's not total agreement On what is normal Of course I fully agree That there is no agreement But I also The majority of human beings share some This Some common ground As to what is normal But what is normal, what is this I want you to define this What is this How would you, for example Would you say that I'm normal Forget this question Would you say about each other That you're normal Would you agree that you're normal What is normal I'm a man We call it autology It's defining itself How do we agree on this What's the procedure to agree on this What procedure are we using To get this The things you have in common By experiencing similar Things we have in common Feelings, emotions For example I think that normal It's normal to feel bad But it's not normal to feel heavy It's normal to want to be loved And it's normal to want relationships with others How do you know that Because everyone feels this Everyone Statistics It's a statistical concept By the way, it's a statistical concept In statistics you have normal It's a Mathematics Mathematics I'm sorry Yes, it's a social concept It's a society-wide concept If you're alone on an island Only one It would be extremely difficult for you To define normality And after some time It would be extremely difficult for you to be normal Our normalcy Our state of normalcy The belief that we are normal Depends on constant comparison We constantly compare to others That's why we have fashion Fashion is a form Of normality Comparing to other people We always compare So it's a statistical thing We agree on this at least Better for you to say yes Okay So statistics Here's an interesting thing When you have three people It's more difficult to define what is normal Than if you have three million people Statistics Is much better More people you have Of course The concept of sample The bigger the sample The more significant the outcome So if you have three people You're comparing to each other They're comparing to each other They can't be sure that they are normal They're not sure that They're not quite sure that they are normal They can't be sure that they are normal But this group Okay It's safer to think of normal Than if you compare three million people It's safer Of course if you compare to three billion people You feel safe You feel sunny This is what normal people do Normal people don't pee in the street Forget that Okay Okay, statistics Is there any other way We can derive normalcy Any other way to define normalcy Not statistically For example I meet 20 people And I have to say if they are normal or not I work with patients Imagine 20 clients come to me And I have to decide for each one of them If he or she are normal or not What would I check Behavior Of course I would observe behavior But what in the behavior Would convince me that they are normal or not For example Yes Examples of function Their vision Or something Thought I'm just taking what you're saying And making it bigger Imagine 20 people come to me And I don't see the families You will ask them What they need I can do that But there is such a huge variety in this That it will not help me much Some of them will love their parents Those who love their parents need medication So It will not help me much But Yes I would observe the functioning Including thoughts Including what we call cognition I would observe the functioning How they report emotions For example If I tell them a very sad story That my mother just died I would tend to think That there is a problem either with them Or with my mother And so on So functioning is very critical Which includes cognitions And so on I would also ask if they are happy I would also look if they are happy Not happy It's something called ego-syntony I would look To see if they are highly uncomfortable Highly uncomfortable Like uncomfortable If they are uncomfortable or comfortable But for normal people I would say happy And indeed The modern definition Of someone who is Abnormal Who is not normal Is someone who doesn't function properly And is not ego-syntony Is not happy That's a modern definition So if someone comes to me Like Jesus Christ I am extremely happy with this And I make millions I have a loving family I go on trips every second month And life is great I would not treat him I would not treat him The two tests are function And happiness Is functioning in all other fields Is functioning His belief that Jesus Christ Has no impact on his functioning So I would see no need to intervene I would see no need to make him unhappy You know Why would I make him unhappy? Is he happy with Jesus Christ? You know we all have something I believe I am intelligent Everyone has delusions So The second definition is Functional Operational definition Both definitions are wrong And both of them suck big time I will Give you examples to show you The first definition is statistical You look around you And say well I am like everyone else So I am normal Now imagine That I take all of you And I transport you back Into the 1930s Even in Romania 1930s I don't need to take you to Germany In Romania there was a pro-Nazi regime In the 1930s Imagine I take you Back to the 1930s And I take you to Nazi Germany In Nazi Germany The majority of people The vast majority of people Believed that the Jews Should be exterminated Should be killed And there were Millions of people Who enrolled In the SS 3 million were members of the SS For example In other words Psychopaths Psychopaths Succeeded in Germany And generally the entire Population Had Types of beliefs That we considered to be Insane The belief in their own superiority The belief that they should kill other people That it's a morally commendable Good thing to kill other people By improving the world They had delusions about many things The entire population Of Germany at the time Or vast part Of the population Would have been easily diagnosed as mentally ill Today And yet If you were German And looking around you You would feel totally normal If you were German And you thought that And you should hide Jews in your basement You were mentally ill In that environment You were mentally ill And people were put in mental asylums Because of these beliefs In the USSR In Soviet Russia People who did not Believe In certain things For example people who did not believe That the aristocracy should be executed And so on and so forth They were put in mental asylums For life What am I trying to tell you Looking around you Statistically Is not a good idea Because everyone around you Could be crazy Like Nazi Germany Everyone around you could be crazy Or delusional Like in Soviet Russia And so you would look around you And it's great fun because everyone likes to kill people And I'm totally normal Insanity Is infectious And can affect collectives We have collective Insanity Even clinically we have collective insanity It's called psychogenic Mass effect So all collectives All groups of people Can go insane simultaneously And do Looking around you Statistically Is sometimes a good idea And sometimes not a good idea Now in science If you have something that works Sometime and doesn't work At other times Then it's not a law I mean you can discard it It's not scientific Defining What is normal based on statistics Is not working Sometimes you will get the wrong answer Like Nazi Germany Everyone is crazy there Everyone was psychopathic If you were a psychopath you made millions You became powerful Being a psychopath was a great idea In Nazi Germany It was a positive adaptation But no one would say that a psychopath Is normal except another psychopath So It's a bad definition So statistics Is not a good idea Let's look at the other Functional So if someone is functioning And he is happy He is not insane It doesn't need help But is he normal If I firmly believe That I am Jesus Christ But I give lectures I teach students I believe I am Jesus Christ I call myself Jesus Christ I change my visit cards So am I Functioning? Yes Am I happy? Very What? It didn't end well so I don't know It's a great idea but Am I normal? Clearly I am not Here is a very important lesson To be normal Doesn't mean to be mentally healthy There is a huge confusion In psychology Even by experts Even by professors They confuse to be normal With To be healthy You can be normal But not mentally healthy You can be mentally healthy But completely abnormal Not typical For example If I were To live in Nazi Germany And I would think that you should not kill other people I would be mentally healthy But not normal In Nazi Germany I would not be normal But I would be mentally healthy It doesn't go together Always, sometimes But not always Why am I telling you this It's a seriously bad idea To accept what society tells you It's a really really Seriously bad idea Because society can Program you Or affect you in ways that would Make you feel normal But actually would drive you Would drive you to Insanity or lack of mental health Society can make you Mentally ill By deceiving you Into thinking that you're normal We have abnormal societies That make people feel that they're normal But they actually make These people became mentally ill Societies are very dangerous Very dangerous constructs And we should be very careful with this Actually there's a whole movement It's known as antipsychiatry Antipsychiatry is a movement Of psychologists and so on and so forth And they believe That the whole profession of psychology And psychiatry is a form Of social control That we invented psychology We invented psychiatry In order for us to control Individuals That do not collaborate with society If you don't collaborate with society If you hate rules If you hate law If you're rebellious If you're defined I have the power To define you as mentally ill I have the power To compel you to take medication And to lock you up In many ways In a prison Society uses Or abuses psychology And psychiatry very often Very frequently And the anti-psychiatry movement claims That Psychology and psychiatry are not Sciences They are not sciences But they're forms of social control It's a bit of an exaggeration It's a bit of an exaggerated claim But it has definitely a grain of truth And you may wish To read this guy It's a non-pronounceable name Because he's Hungarian And so He's The father of this movement Called anti-psychiatry In a way I belong to the anti-psychiatry camp Because I do not think That psychology is a science I do not think actually that psychology Can ever be a science I think it's nonsense For various reasons which I will not go into If you are very, very interested You can go to my YouTube channel And on my YouTube channel I have a few videos That deal with the issue of why psychology Is not a science It can also never be a science It's not a question of thinking differently Or putting some effort In principle psychology can never be a science Because it's subjects Of people But I'm not going into it right now So I don't believe it's a science I believe it is classification system Like in botany You have classification of plans And I believe it is literature A form of literature Very nice form of literature So I belong in a way to the anti-psychiatry Movement Now the psychiatry We are scientists We use statistics Astrology uses statistics So what? Other physicists My original PhD is in physics Give me a break Physics is a science Psychology is not a science It's a wannabe science They are very grandiose and they want to be scientists White codes and everything The use of mathematics The use of statistics does not make you a scientist Mathematics is a language Like Romanian If you use Romanian It doesn't make you a scientist Breaking news for people Similarly if you use mathematics And statistics it doesn't make you a scientist So I don't believe it's a science So I belong in a way to this To this group Okay, here's my advice to you Here's my advice to you On how to maintain Mental health Not dependent on society Mental health is all yours And fully under your control Without reference To anyone outside To anyone outside And to any many outside Just you as the main point of reference And you as the main engines of me You are your own masters Mentally You are the only The only source of meaning In your life That's not me, that's another Jew Victor Franklin So you can become A totally self-contained and Self-sufficient system When it comes to being normal Of course you should collaborate with each other You should have sex You should make love You should have love You should do many things with each other There's great many fun things you can do with each other And many not so fun things But if you do things with each other It's great But you should never give power To someone else Never give power to someone else Over you In any way shape or form Not emotionally and not in any other way Surrendering your power Is a seriously bad idea In terms of Mental health So I'm going to give you a recipe For self-contained Self-generating mental health Which you can take with you To a lonely island Without anyone except two monkeys Still you would be mentally healthy If you follow this recipe But I'm not going to do anything I'm going to strike until I get coffee That's it I saw that some of you Took cookies without permission And you had been reported In authorities here So Say goodbye to your parents Three months in prison Okay So I'm going to describe A system That you can apply to yourself Should apply to yourself Without reference to Anyone else That's a critical issue We often use other people We use them To regulate our internal environment We want to feel good for example So we use someone to feel good We Consult people and let Their judgment and opinion influence us We regulate our emotions To other people We use other people all the time That is not a good idea It's not a good idea because other people Don't have complete information about you You know about yourself You have more information About yourself than anyone else By definition Now you may misinterpret this information Could be That you don't understand the information Properly or you misunderstand the information But you still have More information than anyone else So why would you Give anyone else power It's a question of power It's not a question of not having good friends Should have good friends Not having another It's not a question of not collaborators Friends You should have all this No one is telling you to go isolated To go of degree And become, you know, atomized That's not what I'm advocating But there is a big difference Between being with other people And giving other people power Over you Ask yourself Does he or she have power Over me If the answer is yes You need to change the relationship You need to reframe the relationship And if that other person Is not interested in you Except when he has power Walk away Cut him off or cut her off If you have a good friend And You know, your friends and you hang out And everything is That's great But if she has power over you And when you try to take back that power She doesn't want to be with you Good for you Never give anyone power Over you Anyone The power should come from the inside And the first test Of this power is known as boundaries Boundaries Is a clinical term in psychology It simply means Communicating to other people What is acceptable behavior And what is not acceptable behavior How do you know what is acceptable and not acceptable It's very simple Anything that makes you feel bad Is not acceptable End of story Anything that makes you feel good is acceptable Anything that makes you feel neutral Not bad and not good Is up to you Three simple principles It makes you feel bad It's not acceptable Communicate to other people This This makes me feel bad So I would ask you To not behave this way And if the other person Insists to behave this way Walk away You have the nuclear weapon You and Vladimir Putin Have the nuclear weapon And the nuclear weapon Is walking away You can withdraw Your presence This is the ultimate In weaponry In modern warfare You can withdraw your presence Do it Set boundaries Boundaries come from inside Not from outside Boundaries come from inside First you should have a dialogue with yourself You should ask yourself Does it make me feel good Does it make me feel bad Does it make me feel good Or does it make others feel good And I feel good because they feel good This secondary good Like I feel good because they feel good Is watching It's not real No, if you feel You set boundaries According to your genuine authentic reaction Gets mad and you don't want to cut them off Then you love yourself less Than you love the other person And that's not healthy You should love yourself most You're number one Always you're number one There is no ever No other person who is number one And that applies to parents And children Lovers, friends You're always number one If something is wrong with yourself love You will not be able to properly Love other people They will be damaged too So if you sacrifice Your sense of well being For another person Seek help I will give you a discount You set boundaries You're number one Remember that You're not number one because you are such geniuses You're not number one because you are so You're number one because it's all you have It's all you have You have only yourselves Don't kid yourself Throughout life And until you die Which is where I'm going shortly That's all you have You discover as you go through life That the only person you really have Is you So take care of you Because you have nothing else And so you decide This makes me feel bad I'm not gonna stand for it You're making me feel bad Or change your behavior and stay You don't want to stay You don't want to change your behavior Don't stay by-by Yes it involves pain Of course any break up Is heartbreak But that's a price It's a short-term price If you stay in such relationships There's a long-term price And it is a price of denying yourself Now we have a name for that When you destroy yourself gradually Incrementally until you disappear How do we call this?   They're secondary Talk to yourself I used to please others Instead of pleasing themselves As humans should please ourselves first Yes I wouldn't say please It's not a question of pleasing yourself It's a question of not feeling bad Look it's minimal, I'm giving you a minimum condition Not telling you you should please yourself Other people's expense I'm just saying don't feel bad It's not allowed to have power For us to control People have various motives Power is only one of them They may be exactly the opposite They may be weak And they take their energy from you They take their power from you Something they want to control They have power, they're weak So we have this in codependency for example I mean how to allow or Go use that kind of power For a good reason Nothing good comes out of Power play or power asymmetry Don't kid yourself Nothing good ever comes When you are Not on equal power With someone Whenever there's power symmetry Not equipotence Not equal power Nothing good comes out of it I think that power should come from ourselves Not from the other person We should decide what's good for us Yes, power is an internal Power is internally generated Never allow someone else To have power over you Never mind what he gives you Because if someone drives you With love With teaching, with money We have a name for this And in Romania You all know this name It's called corruption You're corrupting yourself If you allow someone To give you something And in exchange you give them your power Corruption It's a good definition of politics by the way It's exactly what happens in politics We give the power To others And they have unmitigated power over us Result? Corruption Not only in Romania, don't kid yourself Everywhere Power corrupts? Absolute power corrupts Absolutely So don't allow yourself to be corrupted Sooner or later If you allow yourself If you give power to someone else For example by wishing to please them People please us If you give power to someone else Sooner or later You disappear Completely We have mental conditions Mental health conditions, mental illnesses Where this is the core For example borderline personality disorder In borderline personality disorder There's a total transfer of power To the intimate partner And what is left behind Is an emptiness Avoid Usually in the form of a beautiful woman Avoid Do not go on the in-depth path Boundaries Core identity Core identity You have many voices inside you These voices have a name Like everything else in psychology We love names because it makes us feel special So it's called introjects You have many internal voices These voices are known as introjects Now one introject belongs to your mother There's another introject to your father Introjects from I don't know teacher role models Peers, influential peers, influencers We have many introjects Core identity Simply means Knowing to tell the difference Between voices that are Other people's voices in your head And your voice Now here's something to help you You have only One voice If you hear more than one voice It's not you You have only one voice And that voice is you It's called the authentic self So this voice is authenticity Voice of the authentic you All the other voices are not you Now you can consult these voices Of course Your mother may have some Useful advice to give If she's unusual I don't know a teacher But again there's a question of power To consult these voices But you should never give them power The only voice that matters Is your voice The authentic voice If you have voices inside you That Criticize you all the time That blame you That attack you That put you down That insult you That give you no hope That tell you you're no good That predict failure If you have this kind of voices inside you These are not your friends And I don't care if this happens To be your mother's voice These voices are not your friends They're your enemies, they have a name even It's called the inner critic Or Freud called it the super ego The sadistic super ego These are not good voices You should silence them You should ignore them And again I don't care Of your mother Nor should you You should also not care These voices Are negative voices that make sure That you will never get anywhere And you will never be happy And so you should silence these voices You should listen only to voices Who are conducive to your health And development And you should listen to these voices In advisory capacity As you would listen to a good friend You go to a good friend You should never give these voices power You should never let these voices Make decisions for you They are there Just to advise you if you want There is one voice It's the core identity Find it And this is you It's very easy by the way to do You hear a voice And you say is it my voice Or did my mother tell me this Simply label Tied these voices Until you are left with only one voice And you listen to that voice Only And this leads to something called self-regulation We all have emotions I hope And we all have moods Regrettably And these emotions and moods Change Of course We love, we hate Together And so on We have emotions and moods And sometimes we use other people To regulate These moods and emotions For example we feel depressed So we use another person to feel happy Or we feel We feel that we love someone And so we give that someone power So we use other people To regulate Because we are like an ocean We are like a storm Everyone, every human being It's chaotic It's like hurricane And so Using other people to regulate Your internal environment Gives them power Of course If I'm in control of your mood If I'm in control of your emotions I have almost total power over you If I can make you feel bad For example That's a lot of power Wouldn't you say? If I can make you feel love That's a lot of power Regulation of emotions And moods is power If you let other people Regulate your moods and your emotions If you let other people dictate to you How you feel And what you feel These people have power They have power over you You remember the first principle Never give people power over you Never let anyone Change your mood Or tell you how to feel Or cause these feelings in you Now we have Mental health conditions For example Dependent personality disorder Also known as codependency Codependence Are men and women Who need other people To regulate Their internal world Their internal environment So they become dependent on other people It's a form of addiction Sometimes we become dependent Not on other people But for example on alcohol Or drugs They have the same function exactly Alcohol and drugs regulate Moods and regulate emotions And so we can easily become Addicted to another person If he is as tasty as alcohol You can become addicted to another person It's very easy Addiction is indifferent As to what it is that you get Or who it is that you get addicted to Never allow yourself to become addicted Addiction implies Surrender of power It's all about power You heard of Darwin It's a Darwinian world I'm sorry That I'm not a nice guy I'm telling you all kinds of fairy tales The world is about Power And so power Is your currency Power is the only asset you have Don't give it away so freely To other people Don't let them regulate you Regulation is what the state does And it's not Always benign Don't let other people regulate Self-regulation is critical How do you do that? How do you self-regulate? For example, I'm in love with someone I'm in love with someone So every time she shows me Attention and the sky I'm happy Every time she doesn't I'm under the carpet Together with the cat So she has power over me Because I'm in love Right? Moods She can make me feel elated Or she can make me feel depressed Because I'm in love Right? Wrong, actually That's not love It's not love It's dependency I'm dependent on her She became what we call a regulatory agent She provides external Regulation It looks like love It sounds like love, masquerade Is love, but it's not love Definitely not love So it's a form of codependency Never allow anyone to have this power How do you know that they have this power? Because you know that they have this power If there is somebody Who can make you feel depressed And then can make you feel happy Walk away If he uses this power I know it's unbelievably difficult This advice is easier said than done If you're in love with someone If someone uses His power over you To regulate your moods Or regulate your emotions Walk away That's not love That's prison It's a one-man prison Now I know it all sounds to you very abstract And easier said than done How can I do that?   You're fighting with yourself because You still love yourself But you Extremely few people love themselves properly Here's the problem Why do you need to love yourself?    Am I accepting myself in a way That will make me change And grow and develop and evolve Or am I accepting myself in a way That will keep me stuck And dead If it's a second It's not you, it's the inner critic It's that other voice You must be very careful Because That was the first lecture I gave In Romania To another group of victims So In that first lecture I discussed the concept of the self And I explained in that lecture In that lecture that the concept of self Is bordering on idiotic That's absolutely not such thing We are collections We are collections of voices We are collections of voices Collections of sales We have self states So here's the problem You're not one person, you're a zoo There's a whole zoo The zebra, elephant, giraffe And you're In the zoo and you say am I the elephant Or am I the giraffe You have a giraffe self state And you have an elephant sister And you're not sure which of these is you It's a lot of work to find you To find you in this crowd Because it's a crowd It's a lot of work and many of these people They look exactly like you They're copies, they're clones like identical twins So you say well that's me Yeah I recognize myself in the mirror That's not you They're suffering They pretend that they have your best interest in mind They pretend they love you They pretend you know But I'm providing you with simple tests Do they have power over you Bad, they're wrong They're not real voices They're not authentic Do they drive you to stagnate Do they drive you to not grow To not develop These are enemies Even if they look like you If there is a concept of tough love You know It's a mother for example Who would tell you horrible things about yourself And she would tell you this for your own good Tell you this for your own good So that's not for your own good I know it's tough to accept But Even the people with the best intentions Around you Which include your parents Are not always your friends Not always your friends You must be very very careful Sometimes It is exactly the people with the best intentions Who are your worst enemies You must be careful And sometimes You are the enemy I have seen the enemy And it is I It's a mind field Life is a battlefield To quote a great mind Okay Self-trust and self-efficacy Self-trust After you develop self-awareness After you develop self-awareness And self-acceptance You become your own best friend Not only you become your own best friend But in many ways you become your only friend Not again I'm not advocating social isolation I'm advocating Intimate self-recognition And For you to have the only power So At that point you can trust yourself Because you are your best friend You can trust that you have your best interest in mind You can trust that you have your back If you are in trouble you can trust yourself You become self-sufficient You are not controlled by anyone No one has power over you So you begin to develop self-trust Many of you don't trust yourself That's why you go to friends And to family And you are never sure You are indecisive The minute you self-accept And become self-aware that is resolved automatically Self-trust comes automatically You don't have to work on it You simply learn That you know yourself well and you know what you need And that you pursue your best interest Having done this a few times You begin to trust yourself And then when you trust yourself You develop self-efficacy Self-efficacy Is when you Obtain the best outcomes You Extract the best outcomes From the environment Self-efficacy simply means that when you want something You know how to get it Not everything Again, if you are meter 60 You will never be in the NBA Except if In pigmillan, yeah You will never be in the NBA So when I say self-efficacy It doesn't mean that any goal You set your mind to Actually You are going to achieve very little And very few of your goals will come true Most of your life You will spend in frustration And defeat And failure Sorry, but If you learn to accept yourself And to trust yourself It will not matter You will not care You will keep trying And sometimes you will succeed Life is about losses and failures Life I repeat is about losses And failures These are the engines of growth There is no other engine of growth Accomplishments Are not conducive to growth Ask any rockstar Ask Kurt Cobain from Nirvana Accomplishments Do not help your growth And do not make you happy Loss and failure Make you grow Accept yourself and accept this Be self-efficacious In the sense that you set realistic goals You pursue them with your own power And whatever you obtain Whatever you accomplish It's 100% yours It's not your mothers It's not your husbands It's not your partners It's not your childrens It's not your cats And this is called self-efficacy The belief That you are capable Of setting realistic rational goals And then achieving them Goals that are beneficial for you It's a simple recipe Sounds very complicated But it's actually pretty simple Start writing Get to know yourself Start accepting yourself the way you are Imperfect You are imperfect You are not accepting yourself Then start taking the power back From anyone you gave it to Then you become powerful Start acting The more you succeed The more you trust yourself The more you develop self-efficacy And above all Embrace loss Embrace loss Embrace failure There are no better friends in the whole world Than loss and failure I know this From personal experience Better personal experience So This is the message I have for you As young men and women It's not an uplifting message It's not optimistic No coach would tell you this Because then you will not make money And many many adults will lie to you Because they want to protect you You're innocent No You have a modicum of happiness Until you discover reality Adults are trying to isolate you From reality They're trying to protect you from reality They're trying to firewall you They don't understand these adults That they prevent you from growing They prevent you from growing Today The definition of adolescence Had been extended And we consider people Under the age of 25 This is studies by 20 and others We redefined adolescence under age 25 One third of people One third of people under age 35 Live with their parents And have no intention to move out People don't want to grow up anymore People don't want to grow up They don't want to become adults And they don't want to grow up and become adults Because we the adults We had been way too protective of you We need to throw you to the lions We need to throw all of you To the lions Because reality is about Lions And you need to learn how to fight In the arena Like gladiators Life is tough and harsh And will not give you Any concession Life is indifferent to you It doesn't care Only one person cares about you You Only one person cares about you You I'm not saying that no one loves you Many people love you Your parents, hopefully But only one person is invested in you For life There's only one person You are stuck with Only one person you cannot divorce Only one person you cannot say goodbye to It happens to be you So it's like a roommate A roommate you cannot evict Better get used to the guy Or to the girl Thank you If you have any questions Feel free to ask You will make All the others angry Because they want to go away So I'm open if you have any You all seem to be in a state of shock Consternation Considering to jump from the river Because it's a lot of information It's a kind of information Kind of information that I don't think You will get any words It's It's not that people are trying Not people are lying to you But as I said, I think they're protective They don't think you're capable I find it Insulting I find it demeaning They don't think you're capable Of coping with reality I think you're capable of coping with reality Absolutely What I did today was an act of respect So I told you what I think To be the truth Because I think you're capable of dealing with it If I had been a typical coach Or a typical psychology student I would tell you a lot of bullshit Love is there Yes, there is love, of course The world is full of love It's full of genocide It has movies And serial killers It's like a little part A little thing part But all in all Life is tough And life sucks Especially if you're not your best friend Then it really sucks And you will discover that you're stuck with yourself Whatever happens, you're stuck with yourself In the West, for example Your chances to divorce are 50% Almost And second marriage is 70% And third marriage is 90% 31% of people in the West Live alone Until they die Their life won't sink Another more or less 17% In between so-called relationships Loneliness has become the norm And so we have to acknowledge Reality, people are much more lonely Than they used to be My mother No, my mother's mother She grew up in an extended family There were multiple generations In the same household So it was a small community My mother and father lived Only with us And I lived only With my wife I could have easily been single It's pretty typical today I think it's not okay That we are not teaching people To be alone This is becoming the standard And it's not okay that we are pretending You know, we are pretending There's no elephant in the room There is an elephant in the room We need to teach loneliness skills And we need to teach self-love And we need to teach everything I just tried to convey to you And we are not doing this We are betraying We are betraying your generation in any case We are betraying your generation with With the environment We are betraying your generation with gender roles We have made a mess of things My generation made a huge mess of things For you And I will exit soon I'm on my way out And you will be stuck with the garbage You will have to clean the party I had the party and you will clean the And this is how things stand I'm sorry to say And one of the major betrayals One of the major betrayals of your generation By my generation Is that we are pretending That everything is fine We are pretending that There had been no party We are pretending that everything is Used to be in the 50s or 60s or 70s And it's not It's not And it's not And we are not giving you the basic skills We are teaching you everything Everything you don't need Everything you don't need you can study Universities called even on YouTube Everything you don't need For example 99% of all the material online Is about relationships And yet The vast majority of people Spend most of their time alone Not in relationships It's a fact It's a statistical fact It's like teaching a quadriplegic how to run It's not It's inappropriate So I decided in this lecture To give you a quote Because I respect you And I'm talking to you as I would talk To adults You're not adults, I'm not an idiot But You're not adults, I'm an idiot But I think you deserve Honestly I think so And I think anyone who is dishonest with you You should show all the women Next time Because this is an act of self-love Do not accept Disrespect Do not allow anyone to disrespect you And not telling you the truth Is the ultimate form of disrespect It's called gaslighting I do appreciate your love And you are realistic with us Because all this protective side Of most of the adults Doesn't really help us To prepare for the future Life isn't easy And we are told that everything is pink And rainbows are everywhere in the sky But this lecture Really helped me to realize that It won't be that easy But instead you told us How hard it will be But a way to cope With everything that goes in our life You have a huge weapon You have your best friend With you, it's an enormous gift You just refuse to be friends With the guy, you know, with the girl But you have already with you Everything you need Everything you need to survive Everything is there inside But you don't grant yourself access Because you are focused on other people You are focused to please other people To love other people To let other people have power over you And so on When actually you have inside everything you need You're totally self-sufficient The whole concept of society And children, these are all new things You think this is like As old as humanity That's not true Until the beginning of the 20th century There was no such thing as a child There was no concept of child Louisa May Orcott Wrote a book About six-year-old girls So today we would call them children, yes The book is called Little Women That's the book It's called Little Women Because they were no children Even the concept of children is totally new Romance is totally new Concepts It's about 60 years old All these things that you think they are forever And like since the cavemen Romance with them With them This is new, these are all new People didn't get married because of romance People got married for Self-interest, for economic reasons Love, the concept of love Is very, very New There was love in the 13th century 14th, but it was chivalric love It was a form of social signaling So for example In the 13th and 14th century If you were in love, you never ever had sex Absolutely not The night The night was in love with this lady But he would not dream in his wildest dreams To have sex with her To have sex with her It was a form of social signaling Many of the things we take for granted Like they are totally They are very new Extremely new And probably temporary Probably temporary And so If you have a historical perspective You realize that social institutions And all this is nonsense It's passing It's fashions, these are fashions And so if these are fashions Why would you invest everything you have In transient things And why would you give power To other people Invest in yourself And power yourself And then you will be in the position To share, collaborate And so on But not before Not before That's the message I have for you You're learning fast Okay guys I wish you Better continuation of the day And thank you for coming I appreciate it


Okay, we're back. We're live. We're here on Think Tech. We're doing a show on life in the law with Chuck Crumpton, who's been practicing law for a long time. And he and I have both followed a specific letter. This is a remarkable letter by a retired district court judge, James Thannenberg, to John Roberts, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Welcome to the show, Chuck. Nice to have you here. Jay, a pleasure as always. The letter, as Thannenberg said, speaks for itself. But I think we ought to talk about it. And to talk about it, first, we need to read it. It is a remarkable letter. It's a once in a lifetime letter. And you got to give tremendous credit and admiration. So it's to dear Chief Justice Roberts. I hereby resign my membership in the Supreme Court Bar. By the way, that's the United States Supreme Court. This was not an easy decision. I've been a member of the Supreme Court Bar since 1972, far longer than you have. Then you have Chief Justice. And I've appeared before the court, both in person and on briefs on several occasions as deputy and first deputy attorney general of Hawaii before being appointed as a Hawaii District Court Judge in 1986. I have a high regard for the work of the federal judiciary. And I've taught the federal courts course at the University of Hawaii Richardson School of Law for a decade in the 1980s and 1990s. This due regard span the 10 years of Chief Justice's Warren, Berger, and Rehnquist before your appointment, Judge Roberts, and your confirmation in 2005. I have not always agreed with the court's decisions. But until recently, I have generally seen them as products of mainstream legal reasoning, whether liberal or conservative. The legal conservatism I have respected, that of, for example, Justice Lewis Powell, Alexander Bickel, or Paul Bader, at a minimum enshrined the idea of stare decisis. And it's true the idea of radical change in legal doctrine for political ends. I can no longer say that with any confidence.  You are allowing the court to become an errand boy for an administration that has little respect for the rule of law. The court, Supreme Court of the United States under your leadership and with your votes has wantonly flouted established president. Your conservative in quotes majority has cynically undermined basic freedoms by hypocritically weaponizing others. The idea of free speech and religious liberty have been transmogrified to allow officially sanctioned bigotry and discrimination, as well as to elevate the elevate the grossest forms of political bribery beyond the ability of the federal government or states to rationally regulate it. More than a score of decisions during your tenure, how overturned established precedents, some more than 40 years old, and you voted with the majority in most. There is nothing conservative about this trend. This is radical legal activism at its worst. Without trying to write a law review article, I believe that the court majority under your leadership has become little more than a result oriented extension of the right wing of the Republican Party as vetted by the Federalist Society. Yes, politics has always been a factor in the court's history, but not to today's extent. Even routine rules of statutory construction gets subverted or ignored to achieve transparently political goals. The rationales of textualism and originalism are mere fig leaves masking right wing political goals. Cheer, Kazooistry. Your favorite pronouncements suggest that you seem concerned about the legitimacy of the court in today's polarized environment. We all should be. Yet your actions, despite a few bromides about objectivity, say otherwise. It is clear to me that your court is willfully hurtling back to the cruel days of Lochner and even Plessie. The only constitutional freedoms ultimately recognized may soon be limited to those useful to wealthy Republican, white, straight, Christian and armed males and the corporations they control. This is wrong, period. This is not America. I predict that your legacy will ultimately be as diminished as that of Chief Justice Melville Fuller, who presided over both Plessie and Lochner. It still could become that of his revered fellow Justice John Harlan, the elder and honest conservative, but I doubt that it will. Feel free to prove me wrong. The Supreme Court of the United States is respected when it wields authority and not mere power. As has often been said, you are infallible because you're a final, but not the other way around. I no longer have respect for you or your majority. I have little hope for change. I can't vote you out of office because you have life tenure, but I can withdraw whatever insignificant support my bar membership might seem to provide. Please remove my name from the rolls. With deepest regret, James Stannenberg. Whoa. Remarkable letter. So, Chuck, what are your thoughts hearing that letter? Deeply moved and saddened for those of us who have put most of our lives into trying to make this a system of justice, attentive and responsive, to the disempowered, and to equal justice for all people. The other thing that it brings to mind, I've known Jim Dannenberg for many, many years, most of my 42 years of practice. Jim has always been a person of impeccable integrity, conscience, character, and courage, and this letter exemplifies it. I think the fact that no one prior to Jim Dannenberg had exhibited that combination of qualities in an active way by doing something like this publicly, and the response that I've seen, for example, Facebook has a page called Lawyers for a Good Government. This letter was posted on that page. Within hours, there were over 350 likes and over 35 deeply supportive comments. It's been widely circulated, and I think the other thing that is worthy of attention is that every single person who has commented on this has done so with deep support and respect for his courage, for his incisiveness, for his wisdom and his judgment in bringing this out at this time. The importance of it systemically is that our governance, our people, our rule of law depend more than anything on the checks and balances that require a truly independent judiciary. We no longer have that. This letter makes that deficiency, that departure crystal clear and sadly clear. And the fact that among hundreds and hundreds of lawyers dedicated to the rule of law and good government, every single one of them recognize the rectitude and the accuracy and the importance of this letter speaks to its truth. I have not heard one negative comment or one rebuttal. The legal authorities that Jim Danny Byrd cites to, the Lochner case in which the ability of governments to control unfair labor practices, excessive hours, was stricken down. Fortunately, the Lochner decision has since been overturned. The Plessy v. Ferguson case, which was the case that established the separate but equal doctrine, that discriminatory facilities were okay as long as they were claimed to be equal. We've learned in the decades that have since passed that those also indefensible and ethically suspect positions cannot be sustained with the values that this country depends on. If there's anything that's critically important now while we're experiencing challenges to our very connections with each other, it's to understand that what this reflects about our leadership, judicial, executive, and legislative, is a need for all of us to stand up for those core values that Jim Danny Byrd has really eloquently set forth and defended in this letter to the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Adorable, well written, thoughtful, professional, profound even, and it opens up a whole conversation. I would like to see thousands of lawyers write concurrences to this letter, jointers to this letter, repetitions of this letter, because there are thousands of lawyers in this country who would agree with this letter. The question is, what is wrong with the Bar Association and the profession that there's been only one letter like this so far? I would like to see every lawyer who has studied constitutional law come forward on this and critique what is happening in our government. The worst time has been under the Trump administration, but it's been going on. The politicization of the Supreme Court is something that started a long time ago, and now it's come to white hot, and hence the need for a letter and commentary like this. But what did George Washington say? The true administration of justice is the firmest pillar of good government, and the implication is without the true administration of government, of administration of justice, you have bad government. And I think we do have, we have bad government. We've lost it. We've lost the essence of the Constitution. We've lost Congress. It's dysfunctional, nonfunctional. It doesn't follow the letter or spirit of the Constitution. And we've now, clearly, we've lost the Supreme Court. It's been compromised. It doesn't follow the rule of law. It doesn't follow the ethics of good government. And this leaves us kind of a drift. I wonder how the man on the street feels about this, if he knows about it. I wonder how people in general respond to this letter. It's gone, it's gone through a number of publications. People have commented on it. I guess, Chuck, that there'll be more commentary on it. But we need a ton of commentary on it. And we need to, you know, take a close look at the way Congress and especially the Senate and Mitch McConnell is confirming judges on an industrial basis. They confirm them the same day. They only need a majority to do that because they changed the rules already. And they confirm anybody who's proposed by the Federalist Society. And Trump takes the advice of the Federalist Society, which is a right-wing organization. And they have appointed and confirmed a ton of incompetent judges, unqualified judges. Where is the American Bar Association? Where is its influence? Where is its public statement on the subject? So not only do we have judges, you know, throughout the federal system, Trump has appointed hundreds of them. And we haven't seen an awful lot of commentary about the individual judges, unqualified judges that have been appointed into the federal bench at all levels. But now it's clear that the Supreme Court itself has been compromised. Wait till you see Roe v. Wade come up there. You already know what the decision is going to be on the basis of the politics. Not the law, not the benefit of the country, not, you know, to preserve the values of the country, but simply on politics. So this is, it's a call to action. It's a statement that we are in deep trouble unless we do something about it. And the problem is that it's all happening around us, but we don't have a whole lot of ways to respond. Aside from writing letters like this, Chuck, what else do we do? I think that's a great question. I think giving attention to those two extremely important phenomena, one, the mass appointment of judges, even including a larger number of judicial appointments that were rated unqualified by the American Bar Association than any other president. They are being ramrodded through. Secondly, we need to pay attention to the change in the appointment process that Mitch McConnell was able to engineer. The previous requirement for many decades, hundreds of years, was a two-thirds majority in the Senate. McConnell changed that to simple majority so that once the Republicans got the majority of the senators, they could put in anybody they wanted, no matter how unqualified, no matter how biased, and no matter how tarnished their conduct or their reputation might be. We now have people on the federal courts who exhibit all of those elements in their history. This is not something designed to promote respect for the rule of law. So I think the only honest response to your question, what can we do, is for not just lawyers, but for those sincerely interested in a legitimate system of justice that respects the rule of law and that protects the disempowered against the abuses and manipulation of the excessively empowered, have to step up. They've got to run for office. They've got to get votes out there. We have to convert it to actions and decisions. And I think Jim's letter indicates, and I'm deeply afraid, that if we don't make more humane, saner, more responsible choices in November, that our ability to recover from the damage that this leadership continues to do, unrestrained by the Congress, by the Senate, unrestrained by the courts, especially the Supreme Court, and certainly unrestrained within his own administration. The likelihood of recovery, the difficulty, and the duration of recovery will become like Sisyphus rolling the rock up the hill. You only get halfway each time, and you never really get there. One of the great things in this country has been the evolution of the law. It's known around the world as a place where the rule of law governs, and that is under tremendous threat these days. But the question comes to me, Chuck, is whether people on the street realize what that means for them, that they really integrate the notion of we may not be a country of the rule of law anymore. We may be totally politicized in our courts. This is a problem because I don't think that people realize that an abandonment of the rule of law will affect them. I think in the public mind, in the public thought, the public conversation, if you will, people think that it won't affect them.  But if you think about it, the federal courts have a big effect on our lives. They determine judicial policies, they determine so many things, so many aspects of our lives, our society, our institutions, our rights, our privileges, that ultimately, and that may be very soon ultimately, we will all be affected. Every one of us, you know, if you didn't think the Trump administration would affect your life, think about coronavirus. Think about what this administration could have done to protect us, but fail to do, and it's still failing to do. I've said throughout this administration that he's coming for us, that he will affect us, and now you have a stark example of that in coronavirus. It threatens all of us, it threatens our lives and our fortunes, and all the things the country has provided to us over the years, all the things that we are proud to be living in this country about. In the case of the law, it's more like the frog in the boiling water. We may not see it right away, may not burn us the same way coronavirus is burning us and will continue to burn us. It may be this slow, relentless deterioration of our legal infrastructure, of our rights, of all the principles that we've relied on and developed in the law over all these years. So I think the average person, the man on the street, had better wake up to this. This is not a drill, this is real, and the rights that he has enjoyed and that everyone has enjoyed over our lives in this generation are at great risk, and Dandenberg's letter points that out. He's right in so many ways. I think that's an especially valuable insight, Jay, because one of the things that the fear tactic, the bullying tactic, the threatening tactic, the retribution tactic, the vengeance and vindictiveness tactic that this administration has uniformly and consistently exercised is that it scares people away from understanding their connection with and identifying with the disempowered who are the primary victims, the helpless victims of most of these attacks.   If you are a woman who, for whatever reasons, needs to make a choice to terminate a pregnancy in the early stages for your life or the child's life or the family's best interests, those rights are being eroded. If you are a worker, a teacher, a farmer who depends on stability of the economy, of the rule of law to protect not only our rights, but our environment, those rights are being eroded. No president has eroded environmental protections to the extent that this one has. No president has disregarded the rights of women, migrants, indigenous peoples to the extent that this one has. To the extent that people who vote don't identify with those people, distanced themselves from them, they need to remember the old saying. First, they came for Group 1. Exactly. Last, they come for me. We have to be in this together. If there's anything the coronavirus pandemic needs to teach us, it's that we need to address this with respect, understanding, and compassion for each other. And we need leadership that puts those first. Amen. You talk about voting, for example, and voting the existing administration out of office at the earliest possible time. Talk about reversing some of the things that, in fact, many, many, many of the things they've done, many of the bad policies that they've incorporated into government. But let me refer to a show that ThinkTech had back 10 years ago with Jack Balkan, who was and is the Dean of Constitutional Law at Yale. And I asked him, suppose we have a president who makes all kinds of backward steps, and we do have that now. Can't we just return to the way it was after his term of office is over? And Jack Balkan said, no, you don't understand. Everything that happens, everything on the timeline is built into the future. It's all relevant going forward.  You can't change its course like a yo-yo and go back to the way it was. Now, you have to work to achieve the benefit you want. Merely voting this administrative, this administrative, this administration out of office, merely throwing Trump out at the end of this term, it's not enough. For example, you talk about environmental laws. It took years, decades, a number of decades to reach our level of understanding, our level of incorporating science into our laws, a level of protecting the environment. That wasn't overnight. It wasn't just one person decided that. It was leadership and it was the gathering of many people and Congress taking many actions. And so if you vote Trump out of office, those laws, including a lot of judicial you know, rulings still apply. You have to go and reverse them. You have to fight the same fight we all fought before to get where we were before. It's about environment. It's about climate change. It's about immigration. It's about it's about kindness. It's about morality. And we're going to have to fight those fights again. It's not like the whole country would say, yeah, you're right. Let's let's go back to the way it was. We're going to have to reestablish our principles. That's not easy, Chuck. And I think that's exactly what this letter talks about is that the very core values and principles that are the foundation of the rule of law, of our society, of our governance and our judiciary are under direct attack and are being eroded. And we need to stand up for those. Jim Dandenberg, thank you from the bottom of my heart for doing that at the time and in the way that is most needed. Jim Dandenberg, thank you from the bottom of our hearts. And your letter does stand 10 feet tall as a monument to the profession, to the rule of law, and to the core values of the country. I sincerely hope that we can preserve the idea of your letter going forward, that we can change things and return to a higher level of moral principle as soon as possible. And thank you, Chuck, for coming down to discuss it. I hope we can discuss it again because it's not just one discussion. It's a series of discussions that we need to have on this very point. Thank you, Chuck Crumpton. Thank you, Jay. And I'll leave you with three words, remember in November. And beyond. Aloha. Take care.