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Why Society's Rules Drive Us Crazy!

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Explore the arbitrary rules that shape our lives and sanity in this witty take on modern society.

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Transcript Entries: 2256

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Hey, have you noticed that everybody has gone  crazy over the last couple of decades? Well,   I think there's a reason for it and I think  it's fairly straightforward to explain and   it's one of those things that once you know  to look for it, you'll see it everywhere. See,   the problem is that everybody, including everybody  watching this, has certain rules they follow in   their life. Rules that they consider sacred. They  cannot be questioned. They get very emotional if   they see somebody breaking them. But those  rules, and I cannot stress this enough,   are totally arbitrary. The easiest example of this  is just modesty of dress. What part of your body   are you allowed to expose while walking around?  That varies wildly from one culture to the next,   from one neighborhood to the next. What you're  allowed to wear to one beach will get you arrested   if you wear it to another one. But none of those  rules are based on any kind of logic or reason.   It is purely just the customs of that society.  Other examples include things like table manners,   what foods you're allowed to eat with your  hands. There was a controversy recently where   a politician ate some rice with his hands, and  some people who are very anti-immigration thought   that was disgusting, that it was a sign that our  society had been polluted by outsiders because   after all, any civilized person would eat their  rice with a fork! But those same critics would   have no problem picking up messy chicken wings  and eating those with their fingers. A similar   rule is how often you bathe. In some societies,  you shower every day and some you only do it on   special occasions. Again, in neither case is it  based on any kind of logic or science or reason.   Societies have different rules about whether  or not you smile at strangers. In some places,   that's considered weird or creepy. Where I'm from,  it's just polite. Or, how much personal space   you grant to strangers when you're standing  in line with them. And a big one in my line   of work is what language you're allowed to use,  what words are considered profane or offensive.   This contradiction, this paradox that exists in  everybody's brain where I get highly emotional if   I see somebody breaking this rule, but I can't  explain with any kind of reason or logic as to   why? It just breaks people. It makes them act  insane. Now, you can go a long time without   ever having to confront that contradiction as  long as you stay within your own little group   where you all have the same rules and nobody is  allowed to question them. But in the modern world,   that's not possible. Now, if you're going to live  in a multicultural society, as most of us do,   or if you're going to exist on the internet, where  by nature you're going to be encountering other   cultures, then part of your education should be  in how to make the distinction between differences   that are actually harmful and can actually put  someone in danger versus the differences that   simply annoy you because they remind you  that your own rules are totally arbitrary.   But almost no one can do that. And so they  try a bunch of different coping mechanisms   to handle this contradiction and almost all of  them are maladaptive and bad. But you also see   them in the headlines every single day. The first  thing you'll see people do is try to come up with   some chain of reason or logic to make it sound  like their arbitrary rules are not arbitrary at   all. They may say that the way they eat or the way  they dress it was a rule handed down by their god,   in scripture. But the problem is you can very  quickly find somebody that practices the exact   same religion but does not adhere to those same  rules of dress. Or they may try to tie some sort   of hypothetical physical harm to it. This is  something you've seen on the left over the last   couple of decades where they said that certain  language isn't offensive due to their arbitrary   rules, but that it is medically harmful somehow,  that I read or heard these words and it triggered   a medical response in my body and therefore it is  a form of physical violence. Or, this language you   used could inspire some other hateful person to do  a hate crime. Therefore, your words again were a   form of physical violence. They can't acknowledge  that it's just an arbitrary rule about language   they personally don't like. So, they have to try  to invent some sort of a tangible harm from it.   The second thing you'll see them do is simply try  to attack or ostracize the person who has broken   the rule. Often by trying to tie it into morality,  that eating this way is not just our habit,   it is the morally right way to eat. That if  you eat this certain food with your fingers,   then you are a savage. You are uncultured. If you  wear these clothes that expose too much of your   body, then you are sexually promiscuous. You're  a ****. And the third, the one that I think is   particularly dangerous, is to try to build all of  these different rules into a narrative of decline,   that society is falling apart because people are  not following the rules like they used to. I think   a great example of this is when you hear old  people talk about how society has fallen apart,   they will talk about how women dress these days.  They're wearing skintight leggings and crop tops,   implying that sexual morality has just completely  gone out the window. But also, we're in a society   where objectively young people are having less  sex than ever before. They're having fewer teenage   pregnancies than ever before. So, do you see how  it works? They've conflated something that just   offends their personal sensibilities ("I don't  like seeing this much of a woman when she's out   in public") with an actual harm to society, which  isn't there. And when you hear somebody talk about   a subject like immigration, they will start by  complaining about things like crime. But if you   show them that actually the immigrants we have  here commit crimes at a lower rate than native   born citizens, they don't change their mind about  immigration. They just shift to something else or   they say, "Well, but if somebody comes across the  border and commits a crime, even if the rate is   lower, that's still one more crime than would  have been committed if they hadn't come here."   But at that point, you're not arguing against  immigration. You're arguing against people.   Like you're saying that we shouldn't have more  people because those people might commit crimes.   But it doesn't matter, because if you go to any  space where people are collectively complaining   about immigration, they will move off of the crime  stuff very quickly and they'll start complaining   about how at their local park kids used to gather  and play baseball and now it's "just a bunch of   Mexicans playing soccer" or "suddenly there's  taco trucks everywhere!" "They're playing their   Mexican music!" Whatever - it's just "different  culture" stuff. And the big one, the one that   seems to be the most triggering for these people,  is just cleanliness. They will complain that the   foreigners smell bad. And in fact, if they travel  abroad, they will complain that everybody there   smells bad, which is a bizarre thing to say.  There literally is no such thing as a society   where everyone smells bad. That's just the smell  of that place. It's different. It's bad to you,   but it's obviously not bad to them. And people get  really upset when you say this because they will   say, "Well, cleanliness is an objective thing  like something can be sanitary or unsanitary.   That is scientific." Which is true if you're  talking about something like food preparation or   sanitation in terms of like sewage or disposing of  garbage. But in terms of personal bathing habits,   no. There's no scientific basis for bathing every  single day. And I actually think this is a point   that's worth stopping to discuss for a moment  because aside from crime, personal cleanliness   is the one thing I see brought up more often than  anything else when discriminating against another   culture. It's saying they are dirty. Like people  will go to France and complain that the French   smell bad. But logically, daily bathing has not  been a thing in any time or in any place except   for a few countries in the present day. They just  didn't have access to that much fresh water that   they could waste so much bathing every single  day. And it *is* wasteful. We buy and throw away   a whole lot of products that exist only to repair  the damage to our skin and hair that's caused by   bathing every single day in hot water. But if you  encounter somebody who doesn't do it, if they only   bathe once a week or they just wash selective  parts of their body when they get too dirty,   you don't just think of that person as being  economical with how they use their water. We   think of them as a bad person. They are slovenly.  They are lazy. their life has gone off the rails.   But here's the thing: If you ran into somebody  who bathed 10 times a day, like every 90 minutes   they were in the shower, you would think they  were crazy. You would think they were wasteful.   You would think that they had some sort of a  superstition about germs or something because   that's "crazy." That why is that any crazier  than bathing daily? This is when the arbitrary   nature of our rules becomes the most clear. It's  when you imagine running into somebody with an   even stricter standard than you have. The same guy  complaining about the foreigner who eats rice with   his fingers? If they went out with their friend  and that friend tried to eat their chicken wings   with a knife and fork, they would laugh at them.  Everyone who complains about maintaining standards   in society and we should keep our standards high,  the moment they encounter somebody with a higher   standard than them, well then that person is just  oppressive or they're fussy. The kind-hearted   progressive who has banned certain words from  their own language because they are offensive,   the moment they run into a religious person  complaining about profanity, they will laugh at   them because that's such a silly superstition to  think that mere words could be unholy or profane.   In the internet era and in the social media era,  these conflicts happen millions of times a second.   There is no easy way to solve it because these  arbitrary rules are important. They're important   for signaling reasons. For example, if I complain  about the language somebody is using, it would be   very easy for that person to say, "Well, all  words are permissible. There's no such thing   as dirty words!" But profanity serves a purpose in  language. You need certain words to be reserved as   profanity. Language that is specifically designed  to be unacceptable in many settings such as work   or at a place of worship, but that is okay to  use in more informal circumstances. That's why   that language exists. It's to signal to somebody  else, "hey, we're in a more informal setting" or   it may be signaling that I'm very upset. "Here's  language that I would normally not use. The fact   that you're hearing me use it tells you something  about my mood." There are some cultures where to   raise your voice or to get too close to a person  means you're basically ready to physically fight   them but in other cultures, it's just a routine  type of interaction. But it is important to know   within that culture what that means. If you're  going to effectively communicate with me, you have   to know what the thing I'm doing or saying means  in my culture. Does this signal that I'm upset or   does it just signal that I'm excited? If you try  to judge my behavior based purely on your culture,   then we are never going to connect, because what  I'm doing is not going to make sense to you. In   other words, the one thing that everybody wishes  they had will never exist, and that is a universal   set of rules that everybody follows. And the  things that people think they want that would   accomplish that can't happen. They either want  to completely close off the country so that only   people of their culture live here or they want to  impose their rules on everyone else in the world.   Even if it was morally right to want those things,  they're not possible. It's never going to happen.   But when you see people talking about  how we need to close down the border,   we need to start teaching Christianity in schools  again or we need to start teaching basic manners   where "basic manners" means "exactly what they  grew up with." When they talk about how the world   is falling apart and the savages are taking over,  it's all just different ways of expressing this   same anxiety, that "I am being exposed all day,  every day to people from different cultures who   demonstrate to me that the rules I think of  as sacred are really just purely arbitrary."