Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Welcome to I’m Not Even Supposed to Be Here Today, a conversational, culture-savvy podcast for folks trying to make sense of a world that has gone sideways. We’re here to unpack the issues that boggle our minds, all rooted in a little history, a little culture, a little humor, a little group therapy, and a little humility.
Desiree ep10 (00:00)
every single time you open up your Instagram, TikTok or what have you, you might see a drone footage of a decimated city like an Iran, then an ad for a holiday cell, then an image of a parent holding the remains of their deceased child, then a reel of your niece at a pumpkin patch or something cute like that. And this is all at the same timeline and it's every single time you log on.
Chris Bevolo (00:31)
Hey, welcome everybody to episode 10 of I'm not even supposed to be here today. Conversational cultural savvy podcast for folks trying to make sense of a world that has gone sideways. We're here to unpack the issues of boggling our minds all rooted in a little history, little culture, a little humor, a little group therapy and a little humility. I am your host, co-host, host and co-host Chris Bevelo owner of Bearing 287.
We're an organization finding the good fight to make the world a better place for all. And we're the sponsor of the show. I have joined as always by my cohost, Dez, who is the social impact comm strategist by day and spends her nights remixing history to make sense of the present. Welcome Dez.
Desiree ep10 (01:15)
Serving
as Chris's therapist for the day.
Chris Bevolo (01:21)
Yes, I tried to, could you tell that was a falsetto intro full of fake happiness?
Desiree ep10 (01:25)
settle.
He's channeling it, he's trying, he's going deep.
Chris Bevolo (01:32)
I'm trying, I will try listeners and viewers to not go into a hole in this episode. I'm already there and I'm trying to like get myself out of it. Partly for the topic we're gonna talk about, because we're gonna talk about the phenomenon of cognitive dissonance, which rules my life. What is it? It's...
whether it's bad impacts, because it has some really bad effects on folks and what can we do about it? So we're going to talk about that. But if we talk about that, Des, we have to talk about the shit in the world is causing this. So I spent some time before this episode today digging a little bit more into it. It just got me depressed and angry and confused and all of the things. So we'll dig into it.
But before we get to that, let's at least try to touch on something light. We've got the end of awards season is upon us and a week from yesterday as we were recording this, we're recording this on Monday, will be the Oscars. The Academy Awards is the more appropriate title for those. So what's your plan for watching? I assume you're going to watch the Oscars. Have you ever not?
Desiree ep10 (02:47)
Oh, oh no, every single
year I'm right there. In the past, in the before times, meaning before COVID, I would throw a party, like an Oscars party to have folks come over. And it was a lot of fun. But since we've been on the road, we haven't really exactly had community. But it's given us actually more time to like take in all of the different films and even some of the short films. So
Just excited. think we'll have all the snacks. Again, this is like my Super Bowl. So I'm super pumped and ready. Albeit though, it's St. Patrick's Day, the day before here in Chicago. So I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna go too hard. Both. No, just like, just it's Chicago St. Patrick's.
Chris Bevolo (03:33)
on St. Patrick's Day or the Oscars?
Okay. That's, I
feel like that's the place to be Chicago, New York are the places to be for St. Patrick's day.
Desiree ep10 (03:46)
Yeah.
But I'm not my twenties anymore, so I don't do all of that. But it'll be cool to see a, I've never seen a St. Patrick's parade and it'll be cool to see the river dyed green. So excited for that. And plus my partner is Irish, so it's, it's her, it's her community. It's her culture's weekend. So excited.
Chris Bevolo (04:01)
Yes.
Very nice. I used to be to do an Irish accent. And when I had a few in me, I could just go. I could just go. And it was kind of a mix of Irish and Scottish. I'm not even going to try now. Because it was one of those things that once I got going, it was just like innate and I could do it. But it's been years. And so I'm not going to try. That's as close to Irish as I get.
Desiree ep10 (04:22)
Mm-hmm.
One day I
will get you full of Irish whiskey and see what happens. For your accent that is, your accent.
Chris Bevolo (04:35)
Well, my favorite, my favorite Irish whiskey, as you are well aware, is Shanky's Whip. You ever had Shanky's Whip? Look at that. ⁓ Shanky's Whip is, is, is all over the place. It's the thing. It's more like, so it's not, it's not even close to Jameson, but you will find it in the Irish whiskey aisle, cause that's what it's labeled. But the way I've described it is it tastes like
Desiree ep10 (04:43)
never heard of that.
Chris Bevolo (05:05)
butter, butterscotch and caramel. However, it's not cordial level. So it's not like super sweet. You're supposed to mix it with Coke and Dr. Pepper, which I find offensive. I just poured over ice and that sucker is so smooth and so delicious. And the bottle, like go find, even go look it up online and look at the bottle. think the bottle is like an ostrich in a, like a race, like a chariot or something.
Desiree ep10 (05:19)
Good.
Chris Bevolo (05:34)
It's just like old school. The bottle shape is old school. The label's old school. It looks like something from 1842. And it is, I've got like four bottles at home of Shanky's Whip. Everybody knows I love it, so they keep giving it to me as gifts.
Desiree ep10 (05:45)
Okay.
We'll have
to check that out. I'll have to get some of that.
Chris Bevolo (05:53)
You get some for the Oscars. I will have a shanky sweep for the Oscars if you have a shanky sweep for the Oscars.
Desiree ep10 (05:57)
Done.
Done deal.
Chris Bevolo (06:00)
You should be able to find it in any like mid-level liquor store.
Desiree ep10 (06:04)
especially in this town, yes.
Chris Bevolo (06:08)
You might have to drive to Wisconsin though if you can't find it Chicago, but you'll be able to get it. Just Google, Shanky's whip near me. And I am not responsible for what pops up in those search results. Well, that's great. I'm glad you're doing something fun. I don't think we have plans for St. Patrick's Day that we may. So we'll be in Wisconsin with our friends and maybe we'll do something fun.
Desiree ep10 (06:11)
Jesus.
Chris Bevolo (06:37)
And for the Oscars, I'm sure we'll just watch them. I mean, there are years where I haven't watched the Oscars, shocker. ⁓ I don't know why, just because the show used to be so damn boring. Like I can't do the, they've done a better job the last couple of years of shrinking the musical numbers and the, you know, there's so much cheese. It's too much cheese, Des. The cheese to excitement ratio is way off. It's like a,
Desiree ep10 (06:48)
done.
Too much cheese.
Chris Bevolo (07:06)
Triple stuff Oreo cookie. Nobody needs all that stuff in there. So we'll watch it We'll watch and I'm looking forward to it and I have ⁓ very strong opinions, which we will save till next week and I'm going to be very disappointed if I'll be more disappointed if somebody wins or some things win than I will if some things lose Does that make sense?
Desiree ep10 (07:10)
We don't.
Thank
Delightfully
vague, let's do it.
Chris Bevolo (07:34)
I just think like some of the movies and some of the roles, there's a number of options that could win, but there's a couple that I'm like, do not, this better not win. I'll be angry. So we'll see.
Desiree ep10 (07:45)
have some guesses,
let's hop into a different dumpster fire.
Chris Bevolo (07:48)
Do you?
Let's move on. So we can talk about something that's so fun, which is cognitive dissonance. ⁓ Or ⁓ what was that movie with Mel Brooks, History of World Part II or something. I can't remember those movies that have like the, they have like the subtitle. Or how do we go about a normal day when the world is a dumpster fire? Yes. So, so
There's so many examples this does and there's different ways to come at it and we're going to come at it primarily in one way, which is I'm just going to share this little story because I think it just captures the kind of cognitive dissonance that just really is causing me pain. So at a high school basketball games, we have really good friends in Wisconsin. Their son is on the high school basketball team. We'd love to go watch and play whenever we can.
And it's a small town. think it's like 8,000 people. It's just pure Americana. know, sometimes the band is in there. It's not like super high level basketball, so it's not super intense, but they're good. And so you're just there with your, you know, with your family and your friends and you're watching this great, you know, just piece of like life, right? That's what life is about. So we're at this thing. This is, this is, I don't remember, it was a couple of weeks ago.
So halftime comes, halftime routine is you get up, you stretch, know, the bleachers aren't great on an old back like mine. Go get some popcorn, because the popcorn's like super salty. And you got like 15 minutes to kill. So as people were kind of talking and I'm just sitting there eating my popcorn, I opened my phone and this must've been a Friday and the headlines like DOG releases another batch of Epstein files, right? And this was, this was in the last few weeks. So it was this,
significant release that was related to Trump. And, and I'm just sitting there this like, in my, in my life, Des, I'm just trying to live my life. And here is this, you know, like, the power brokers of the world, child, pedophile ring, that just keeps getting worse and worse and worse. And we're not doing anything about it.
And oh, the second half is going to start. We got to start the second half of the basketball game. And I'm just sitting there just going, I can't, I can't, I can't do this. Um, and so I want to talk about that feeling. I want to talk about why I think we may be in the worst. We're going to, we're going to try to do some compare and contrast to other times in American history. Like we're not going to go back to the 14 nineties in the, in the black.
Desiree ep10 (10:47)
.
Chris Bevolo (10:48)
plague or
whatever, black death, right? So those were some pretty bad times, but there's components of it now that make it worse, which we'll talk about. ⁓ But when you think about the things that are going on, so the Epstein files is just one. We have climate change that continues to be a real concern moving forward. We have our democratic institutions being assaulted.
by an authoritarian president. ⁓ We are a week two of a war with Iran. ⁓ The economy is in the shitter for most of America. ⁓ and then we also have AI that's coming for us all, right? Whether it's for your job or just it's gonna at some point determine that humans are just not worth the energy and gonna push us all into the sea or something, right?
And so all this is happening, right? And there's all the layers of it. And we'll talk about some of the layers, but I don't want to get too gross because the layers are deep. we have to live our life. We're trying to live our life. And how do we do that, And so that's what we're going to talk about because this is driving me to distraction.
Desiree ep10 (12:08)
Yeah. And it's like,
meanwhile, you know, you're supposed to just have like a normal day at work. And for me, it's getting on like, it's the 5,000 zoom calls you get on and they all start the same way. We're like, Hey, how's your day going? Like, fine. And yours. And it's like, I've stopped responding. I've just been like, like, they're like, yeah, like, and let's, let's move on. ⁓ but what used to be this break from all of that, like you,
You know, you have a bunch of meetings, you're like, let me scroll and see some stuff, maybe play game or whatever, which is supposed to take your mind off of things. It's you're getting inundated. You're like, it's getting shot with an email. You're getting stabbed with a social media post, a carousel or me. You're like, ⁓ God. There's like no way to get away. Anyone you walk up to, they're like, did you see him? Like, I, it's kind of why I stopped talking to humans.
I don't even really engage with people because I'm like, know what you're going to bring up and I don't feel like talking about it. So, but yeah, it's, it's all over the place. But again, meanwhile, supposed to just live a normal day and act as if nothing is happening. So.
Chris Bevolo (13:18)
Well, let's for a second before we get deeper into this, because we want to go back in time a little bit and study this phenomenon. What do you think is worse? Because I used to be where you're at. I used to be in the constant meeting all day long. And I do remember like, OK, so we're just supposed to ignore this happening and
and just go to work, right? So there's that disconnect where you're just like, you just have to physically, like you can't even process it because you've got all these things. I'm in a different space now. One of the most beautiful parts of the space I'm in now is I have like three meetings a week, Des. I don't have 10 a day anymore. ⁓ But that also means
that I'm more susceptible to be pulling down into this. And also by the way, I've chosen as my new chapter in life, fighting the good fight. So if I fight the good fight, I have to know what the fight is and I have to keep up with this to some degree. ⁓ And so I still feel like I'd rather be where I'm at today than where you're at. That's my personal, because I think it's, I'd rather have time to process it and give it the time if I want to give it the time. And I think,
Desiree ep10 (14:28)
Yeah.
Chris Bevolo (14:30)
You
tell me which role you'd rather be in, where it's back to back meetings, you can't even, you see this thing, you're like, okay, I can't even go there, which is worse or better.
Desiree ep10 (14:39)
Well, well, to be fair,
now that I'm not an agency, my calls aren't as bad. ⁓ but I, but I too am fighting the good fight. So I do get more, ⁓ like a, ⁓ a breath of fresh air, kind of some steam around like, okay, like I feel like I am doing something, you know, because my W two is a part of doing something. ⁓ so it's not as bad. ⁓ but yeah, sure. What I love to be like, not that you're retired or anything.
But sure, would I love to just like have my day to myself and like make art? Like, absolutely. ⁓ But I will say, I am glad that I'm not in agency land. That would be, that was tough because you're just, you're taking it all in on so many different sides and levels outside of just like what's going on in the world, but like navigating like client stuff and internal stuff and changes and da da da. So I'm kind of where you are except for like my, I have more hours of.
Chris Bevolo (15:09)
DOOM
Desiree ep10 (15:36)
my day that I have to do the things. ⁓ but it does feel at least like, okay, like I'm, I'm, I'm actually learning more about, you know, solutions and that people I'm actively talking to people who are doing things, ⁓ against this or to support those who have lost things because of legislation and these rules and like, they don't even feel like laws are just like this, these weird rules from like your weird uncle.
who is like on a tirade, but yeah, it feels better than it did about a year ago.
Chris Bevolo (16:15)
Yeah, yeah, that's what I think too. Because I think when you're in the, when you've got back to back meetings all day long, ⁓ that's just its own pressure. And that's its own drain. I mean, that is so draining.
I know that sounds like, you know, for anybody that works with their hands or does construction work, probably like, yeah, it must be really tough sitting in front of Zooms. Let me tell you, it is soul-sucking. No matter what the meetings are, if you have like one half hour break and you've got meetings back to back all day. And so I think that that actually is worse because you've got that whole level of stress. then when you do have a break to your point earlier, you're.
you're hit, like you said, stabbed with the carousel of hell. Yeah.
Desiree ep10 (16:59)
graphic over here. I will say,
when I was at my worst, was because I was doing DEI work for a company those years ago. And this was, I'll say summer of 2024, when it was becoming very apparent that DEI was like going away, not a thing, but like just sitting there and I'm like, I'm supposed to be talking about this and pushing it forward when everything else out here is saying that
we're getting rid of it. And so then it was like this exit existential dread of like, what am I even doing with my life? That was, that was definitely my lowest part point.
Chris Bevolo (17:40)
Yeah, yeah, well, I can get into some little parts, but I'm going to stick to current day, which is low enough. So let's go back in time a little bit because I want to, I want to give people, you know, a definition of this and talk about some of this stuff. But I also want to do a fun exercise, Des, which is like, let's go back. I did some research on the worst year in American history and then pretty consistent answers. But I want to talk about a few. think there's a couple that may beat where we're at in some ways.
but I think there's differences that make it as bad or worse today. So we're gonna talk about that. So first of all, cognitive dissonance, let's give credit to Leon Festinger, 1957. I should have looked up pronunciation. Leon, we'll call him Leon. He wrote a theory of cognitive dissonance and he defined it as, and we're gonna refer to him a couple of times,
in terms of the impact it has and how people avoid it, that kind of thing. When a person holds two or more cognitions that are inconsistent with one another, or when their behavior contradicts their beliefs, they experience a state of psychological discomfort that motivates them to reduce the inconsistency. Okay, so we're gonna get to the ways that you reduce the inconsistency, but I think there's kind of two ways to approach this.
this idea of you're holding two beliefs at the same time. And the way I'm gonna spend more time on it, as you can go where you want to, is what we kind of alluded to before, when the world is on fire and you're supposed to like play video game and enjoy it, right? But there's kind of another kind where you hold, it's related, they're similar, but ⁓ it's where you hold two thoughts in your brain and they don't align.
and you can't get past them. So I'm to give you a few that some people will recognize and I'm sure you'll recognize least a couple of them. Michael Jackson, maybe one of the greatest musicians of all time, also might be a pedophile, right? A lot of evidence to that. it always, like it always stops me when I see somebody, same with Kobe Bryant, by the way. Kobe Bryant, one of the best basketball players of all time, also not.
wasn't convicted of, but had to settle on a rape case, right? And you're just like, people celebrate Kobe Bryant, and they're okay with the rape part, or they celebrate Michael Jackson, and they're just overlooking that. That's kind of this two thoughts in the brain. Another one is AI is undoubtedly the future. Like there's no way around it, but also AI is going to have a lot of really bad things as a result of it.
being employed. And so it's kind of hard to keep those two things in your brain. And then just one more, this is a shout out to Jeff Spear, our old buddy, Jeff Spear. The MVP of the NBA is a guy named Shay Gilgis Alexander. His team, the Oklahoma City Thunder, won the NBA championship last year. He is clearly one of the best players in the league. That said, he is, for me,
one of the worst basketball players to watch because he goes so far out of his way to do what's called foul baiting. So he tries to draw a foul and he gets calls from refs when he's not even touched. He's flailing all over the place. It's just an embarrassment. So how do you hold this guy who's clearly a good basketball player and doesn't need this, who still is just like, dude, what are you doing? So those are some examples I have of
of kind of the more focused kind. Do you have any that stick with you?
Desiree ep10 (21:33)
I fully agree. Like mine has always been the Michael Jackson one for sure. Cause he was my guy and then I avoided watching the documentary that I did one day and I was like, damn, he did that. ⁓ And I can't like, I can't listen to his music anymore.
Chris Bevolo (21:45)
Yeah. Yeah.
Desiree ep10 (21:48)
⁓ But I yeah. ⁓ I guess for me, I guess I think more about just some of the contradictions that we see ⁓ in our day-to-day lives. And part of that, think is for me, it's that part of like, okay, we've been told if we do this thing that we will reap this other reward or what have you.
But what happens when like the thing that we're told to do is actually like, doesn't help or isn't the thing. So ⁓ this was actually a really interesting post that I ran across. is Elsa Mahary of Elsa Loves You. And she just so eloquently captures that yes, but have you seen the, account? Yes, but it's like a imagery. It's like cartoons. It'll sh well, yeah, it's on Instagram. I know you're not on there. ⁓
Chris Bevolo (22:39)
No, is it on or is it at Instagram or something?
No, it's all right. Maybe they're somewhere else. I'll go find them.
Desiree ep10 (22:46)
I love those, I
love when they come up, because it's like, yes, but, and so anyway, she pulled together a bunch of these and I was like, yes, every single scroll is like, yes, yes, yes. So it essentially, starts off as simple as, ⁓ like eat healthy and you'll last longer, you know, live longer. And I'm like, well, all of our food is poison. All of our food is fake. That's been the biggest piece for me for the last couple of years is that,
I'm gonna like, I've changed up my diet. I'm gonna eat clean. I'm gonna eat this and I'm gonna eat organic. But I'm like, but that's just like a label. That's literally just like branding or marketing. I learned through the years. I remember Fairtrade coffee when it was like, no, that was just like, that was just marketing. ⁓ And then you get into the, and some friends of mine have been talking about this, like, you you recycle, be sustainable, you know, do your part. But meanwhile, the polluters, the people that are dropping all the oil in our water.
Chris Bevolo (23:27)
Yeah.
Desiree ep10 (23:40)
who are doing the fast fashions, they're ruining the planet. Trust the institutions, the institutions are completely failing us right now. To your point, that job security of AI where I'm coming from a marketing world where they're so bullish on AI, like, got to get in here, got to learn AI, da da da da.
And then I go into more of a nonprofit world and it's very much like, no, we're not touching any of that. But then also that threat, like you're saying of like the robots are gonna just like take us over. And then of course, this, which ⁓ the big piece of all of this is like, it's about that color that's the most important, green, right? And that in a way, didn't, I mean, I was alive, like I was a kid in the eighties, but I don't know what was like really going on as far as like the extreme like wealth and like Wall Street.
like bros and all that. But like we are living in a time of the most extreme abundance. We have people who are going to maybe become trillionaires who could never spend that amount of money in their lifetimes. if the, even if they spend like a billion dollars a day, like they could never get through that, but they're hungry for more. They want all of that. And like, Oh, you want $20 an hour for you. can't do it. You can't do it. My guy.
Chris Bevolo (24:33)
Over here, moving in the front. Thank you.
Desiree ep10 (24:58)
And so it's all of
that, but what really just hits the hardest is that idea of, you know, try to live a nice stable life. like, well, there is instability every single place you look, just like you'd mentioned. it's like, so how are we supposed to like navigate all these things? So me, it's more of that like concrete, yes, but no, that we have to navigate. And again, it starts in.
For me, it always just starts in the grocery store and I'm like, well, where do I even go to shop? Because you can't even really go to Whole Foods anymore because even that's not as organic as these be. So that's kind of where my brain goes when I think about all of this.
Chris Bevolo (25:40)
Well, and you can take those contradictions even deeper because there's, and this is probably coming from a place of privilege. ⁓ But the things that certainly I grew up with, and I will say into my twenties or thirties, there were just like no knowns about how the world works and who this country is. ⁓ I've been completely obliterated for me, but some of that is just because I was privileged and sheltered and all that kind of stuff.
But some of it is also due to the times, right? We're supposed to be a nation of laws. What the fuck happened to that? Excuse me, like this is where I just get so angry. Like these, the bad guys keep getting away with bad shit over and over and over. We used to be at least, you could look at the federal government and go, there's, know, one thing that made us different from other governments in the world was there was not corruption. Was there corruption? Probably, of course there was.
Desiree ep10 (26:17)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Chris Bevolo (26:40)
But you know what? It was so bad that they tried to keep it hidden. Now it's just everywhere. It is everywhere, right? So that's another example. ⁓ It just, the things that you feel like kept you tethered to reality or hope for the future, or all those tethers are just getting snapped in front of me at least. They may not be surprises for other people, but
Desiree ep10 (26:43)
Turn around.
Chris Bevolo (27:09)
The degree to which we just have, I mean, the other thing I'll say is like censorship. Like the degree of censorship and bias from our corporate media in this country is insane. It's really, really insane. And so all of these things have been stripped away, at least for me, and they're contradictions to what I believed.
Desiree ep10 (27:32)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Bevolo (27:38)
and their contradictions to what I think are important. And they lend to this bigger compounded effect we'll talk about of cognitive dissonance. Because you see this stuff in the news and you just wanna scream. You just wanna go, are we gonna do anything? We both like, I'm sure it's not confirmed, so don't hold this against me. But we've very, very, very, very, very, very likely bombed.
an elementary school and I ran on day one and killed 168 girls.
Wait, is anything gonna happen? Is anything gonna happen with the Fsteam files? Like is anything gonna happen with this stuff? So yeah, that lends to it all for me. And then like, oh, let's go have dinner with our friends. But I mean, you know what I mean? It's just like, how can I go enjoy dinner with my friends when we are.
skirting with World War III, AI is coming to take our jobs and everything else. It's just, I don't know. We're gonna give ourselves permission to do that. So just hang in there if you're walking on a ledge right now. I suppose you can't say that anymore. ⁓ We're gonna get through the bad stuff to get to some ways to solve this, but those are the contradictions I think that lend to this as well does.
Desiree ep10 (29:08)
I will
say from my not so privileged background ⁓ as a black queer woman, I guess in a way kind of welcome, ⁓ welcome to like the, yeah, this shit's insane. like, yeah, it is. It kind of reminds me of, you remember the SNL skits went after the first Trump election 2016, where it was like Dave Chappelle and
Chris Bevolo (29:38)
⁓ so good.
Desiree ep10 (29:39)
And that, to
me that sums it up where like, these are the things that like, you know, black people, especially in America, like we just, we're like, yeah, yeah, of course, which I get it. Yeah. Um, and so it's, I guess that's the part that kind of in there.
Chris Bevolo (29:52)
Well, of course you won Kentucky. That's where all the races are. That's the line I remember.
Desiree ep10 (30:04)
there's this term that gets thrown around. It's like, oh, you're resilient. It's like, black people are so resilient, yada, yada, yada. It's like, there is resilience, but it's also just kind of like, this is our existence. And like, wouldn't exist. Like, we would unalive ourselves if like, we had to like, just sit and like, think and live, but we have to keep moving on. And I think that's the part that is actually kind of helpful.
Chris Bevolo (30:10)
Mm-hmm.
Desiree ep10 (30:32)
during these moments especially is that I have that already kind of baked into my like bones of yeah and then like yes that's a thing that's something we're gonna have to fight and we will but that it's not gonna stop us from having joy. Just like you saw what was it last summer where it was boots on the ground where it was all well your algorithm may not have shown you this but it's
Chris Bevolo (30:58)
If.
Desiree ep10 (30:58)
I was
inundated with videos of like the world is like falling apart and like black people are learning a new line dance. Cause like, what are we supposed to do? ⁓ cause like, so there's always going to be essentially this sense of we're gonna, we're gonna find some joy. We're gonna find a little bit of humor. It will a lot of bit of humor. That's another like coping mess mechanism of us as well. ⁓ but this is actually something interesting, with Irish folks. ⁓
that's kind of a way that they handle things as well as like the humor, the dark humor around it. ⁓ So yeah, yeah, welcome.
Chris Bevolo (31:42)
It's fair, it's totally fair. ⁓ But let's use our friend history, because a little bit of what you're talking about is like lived experience and history showing us that, this isn't new. And it's not new. ⁓ I think for many of us,
I don't know, we're gonna look at some years and we're gonna see whether this is actually the worst year. I mean, it's not a clear cut case, right? So these are the years I found it. Maybe you've got other ones. It's hard to pinpoint a year sometimes, right? So like the first one that came up often was 1862, obviously the Civil War, the whole period of the Civil War, and I'm reading something about the lead up to the Civil War right now.
is obviously a horrific period, but if we have to pick a year, a lot of folks focused on 1862. It was the Battle of Antietam. 4,600 people killed, 23,000 wounded in a day. So that's pretty awful when you consider those are all Americans. And if we're talking about, again, we're just gonna stick with the US history because if we had to go broader, there'd be...
A lot of other things that would certainly match this, no doubt, right? So we're gonna stick with that. That's a pretty bad year. I don't know if you have any comments on that one. Do you wanna comment as we go through? I've got five of them to compare to this year.
Desiree ep10 (33:09)
you
You can go
ahead and go through all of them, like I'm gonna, guarantee that I'm like, I don't know that that's like, like, it's worse, but go through all of them.
Chris Bevolo (33:18)
Call to room. Okay.
Okay, okay. Second one is 1919. This is also a tough one because 1918 was when the Spanish flu started. But in 1919, you had the Spanish flu. You had race and labor riots on rest. It was called the Red Summer. So that was a pretty awful year. ⁓ 1939 is pretty bad. I'm putting this right up there. This has got to be the second tier, if not the first. Hitler invades Poland, starts World War II.
Of course, the United States doesn't join it then, but from a global perspective, and we're at the last year of the Great Depression. So it's not the worst year of the Great Depression. The Great Depression lasted for quite a long time, 10 years, but that's a pretty bad year, right? Relatively speaking, knowing what's coming after World War II. 1968, we talked about this two episodes ago, I think. War in Vietnam, assassination of MLK Jr., assassination of RFK.
Desiree ep10 (34:09)
Hmm.
Chris Bevolo (34:25)
and election of Richard Nixon. That's a milestone year that most people point to as maybe one of the worst. And then we have our old friend 2020. That's like six years ago. Six years ago, but you have the COVID pandemic, which in many ways was worse than the Spanish flu pandemic. You had the shutdown of our economy and not just the shutdown, but
Desiree ep10 (34:36)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Bevolo (34:53)
steps were taken during that year, right or wrong, that we're still dealing with today in terms of inflation, work from the office, work from home, all kinds of stuff like that. And then of course you have the George Floyd murder in Minneapolis and the racial reckoning that followed. So those are the five that came up the most. Des, do you have another year you wanna throw in there or do you just wanna look at those five and see if any of those, oh, by the way, I forgot in 2020, we had a presidential election.
And that did not go smoothly. Thanks to our guy, Donald, ⁓ who, you know, disputed the outcome, still disputes the outcome today, was still talking about it. And of course that led to January 6th, so that's 2021. So we can't officially count that in 2020. That's what I got, Des.
Desiree ep10 (35:43)
Yeah. So essentially
is your stance that this year, this current year is worse than all of those?
Chris Bevolo (35:53)
So I think this year is worse than all of those if you have to pick a year. Yes, I would say somebody could argue 1939 and I would hear it. Someone would argue 1968 and I would hear it in 2020. I would hear all three of those. But the stuff that we've talked about, right? We've got an authoritarian president who's killing citizens, who's...
created his own Gestapo, like that word or not, it feels true, who's threatened national elections. You've got the Epstein files, which I don't think we can actually grapple with as a society. We just don't seem to be able to really acknowledge that's happening. We have the threat of AI, which is becoming real. We have economy that's really in trouble. Healthcare is in the shitter. A war in Iran, a war in Venezuela, and threats to our own European.
Desiree ep10 (36:49)
Okay.
Chris Bevolo (36:49)
⁓
And the twist here does, and then I'll shut up and let you go, is that it's March. It's March. The other ones are like the whole year. It's not even the end of the first quarter.
Desiree ep10 (36:55)
much. Yeah.
and
Chris Bevolo (37:06)
No, that's what I'm saying. This has the potential to be worse than all of those. Yes. What do you think?
Desiree ep10 (37:11)
I
think perhaps from your perspective as a white hetero male living today, I could see where you would think you would feel that. But again, putting my diversity quota hat on and I'm looking at 1862 and I'm thinking, well, I would have been a slave and all of my fellow slaves or family would have been shipped off to go fight a war to defend us remaining slaves. All right.
Chris Bevolo (37:34)
Yes.
Desiree ep10 (37:40)
Let's get to 1919. ⁓ The race and labor riots, for me, I'm thinking about the lives lost. Like I'm assuming this is more of that time period of where the train, the railroads are being built. ⁓ Where there was like just insanity amount of people who were just kind of killed and you had to like do all these things by hand. Like I don't know that I would have wanted to do any of that. ⁓ And then I...
I'm looking at 1939. I'm trying to remember when the, actually the prohibition that was in the, was that earlier the 19, was that 1920s?
Chris Bevolo (38:17)
Earlier.
I think I can't remember when it started, but it was done in the early 30s.
Desiree ep10 (38:26)
Okay, but
imagine a world where like, shit is so wild, people are so drunk that like your families are being left destitute because you just can't get yourself out of the bottle, that they had to pass legislation to say like, no more, no more moss. Like I don't know that we're at that level per se, like I don't even understand.
Chris Bevolo (38:47)
Do you think it's different now? I think it's the same. It's just we've acclimated to alcohol and people are okay with families being decimated.
Desiree ep10 (38:57)
The way that like people were families whole families were abused and left to like fend for themselves and start
Chris Bevolo (39:06)
That's happening, that happens today. Like I know more people that have families that have been devastated by alcohol than I do of cancer.
Desiree ep10 (39:14)
I
do have cancer, but did it get to a level where they have we gone to a level again, we had to make legislation. In fact, we're like pulling back legislation like, Oh, I sure, you know, take psychedelics and what have you. So I'm just, I'm just putting that perspective. Um, World War II, whole swaths of people being killed for what, if you aren't Aryan remotely, you're dead. Like forget about it.
Chris Bevolo (39:31)
Okay, that's fine. That's fine. That's fine. We can keep going.
Desiree ep10 (39:43)
Granted, I'm thinking also just the Civil War, that was the last time that war actually happened on our soil. Outside of 9-11, where of the Twin Towers and the Pentagon were hit by planes, we haven't had that kind of level of what we're seeing in Iran and what we've been seeing in the Middle East, which we shouldn't actually be calling it the Middle East, because that's like colonialism stuff that, I just learned that too. And I was like, oh my God, of course, because it's,
Chris Bevolo (40:10)
huh.
Desiree ep10 (40:12)
compared to like where England sits, the Middle East is where it sits on the other side of, know, where Asian countries are, but whatever. I'm just, okay. I'm looking, 1968 was like super weird and to me that feels like as chaotic as today. But again, our leaders aren't being assassinated like every other day.
Chris Bevolo (40:24)
We gotta pick our battles, Des. We gotta pick our battles.
Yes.
Desiree ep10 (40:40)
Like it was in like, that was in the sixties. Cause I'll, I'll back up to JFK. ⁓ like that's insane. We don't know that we've been seeing other leaders in other countries assassinate, but we haven't seen any of our leaders assassinate it. And this doesn't even list all the civil rights.
Chris Bevolo (40:57)
Oh, you mean like, I mean, we had assassinations in Minnesota of legislators. You had. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, that's your point. I get it. get it. Yes.
Desiree ep10 (41:04)
Were they on the same level? Were they on the same level? People are murdered all the time, but the
assassinations hit differently, I imagine.
Chris Bevolo (41:17)
totally, totally. Those three were like the death of hope between JFK MLK and RFK. That was like the end of hope. I think that's a fair statement.
Desiree ep10 (41:26)
And to me, and I think about like,
where would we be as a society had those assassinations not occur? We wouldn't be here today. I mean, one would hope. But so those are the kinds of things I think about 2020 was a wild year, but there's also like a lot of stuff happened, but we, and like a lot of people died from COVID much like in the Spanish flu, you know, and like the, Dow went down, but like shot back up and it's like way higher than it even was back then.
So it's all kind of relative. Was it chaotic? Yes. But what I think is different now is the conditions that we're under. We weren't inundated with this information every single second of every single day the way that we are today. Because back then, at those stage points,
You you got your news, you know, especially earlier on that was through a newspaper, took a couple of days to even get to you. And then you were, and then in the sixties, you're all sitting down to the nightly news. And again, you're all collectively kind of taking this in together. But like you and I right now, because there's so many different insane algorithms, like you might be seeing like some stuff that we're both seeing like an insane amount of stuff, but you're even seeing a whole nother like.
level of different stuff than I'm over here. And I'm like, if we were to compare notes, it'd be like, Oh Jesus. So I think that's the difference is that they don't, they didn't have these little devices in their hands or TV sets and with 24 hour news all day long, where you're just getting all day long with it. I think that's the difference. And that feels worse because of like, from an emotional standpoint, we're having to carry so much all the time. Whereas there it's like,
Chris Bevolo (42:52)
Yes.
Desiree ep10 (43:12)
surviving, trying to pay these bills and then like, okay, yeah, these other things are happening. But with us, it's like, it's more, I guess, emotional. And that takes like a whole nother toll that like we're 30 years from now, we're gonna be watching some documentary being like, Jesus Christ. So I think that's, if it hurts more than it might've in that way, then just because it's hot, and we can't even get away from it. You have to go like,
hole up in a shack on the woods with no electricity, no cell service in order to just get a break. So that's my take.
Chris Bevolo (43:52)
Well, you've got a little scenario and I don't wanna take it from you because it's so well done. ⁓ Your 30 seconds of opening Instagram, would you share that because that is, is brutally reflective of what we're talking about. And it's a thousand percent true. Because everybody opened their Instagram or your TikTok right now and see if you can replicate this. Go, please share it.
Desiree ep10 (44:16)
So basically
within just every single time you open up your Instagram, TikTok or what have you, you might see a drone footage of a decimated city like an Iran, then an ad for a holiday cell, then an image of a parent holding the remains of their deceased child, then a reel of your niece at a pumpkin patch or something cute like that. And this is all at the same timeline and it's every single time you log on. Like you...
Maybe you can unfollow some stuff, but the way the algorithm, it just sends it to you. So yeah, how are you supposed to process all of four of those things? And that was just like, like I said, 30 seconds. And that adds up, especially since we're spending like, I don't know, some people are spending like eight hours a day on their phone, but that's not me or anything. ⁓ But yeah, like how are we supposed to, like our organs.
How did they even survive that? The anxiety, the levels of like our heart, like, ugh. So yeah.
Chris Bevolo (45:17)
What you just described is a thousand percent real and also a Black Mirror episode. I mean, I don't know if it's really a Black Mirror episode, but you can just imagine a Black Mirror episode where somebody's just flipping through or somehow it's probably not even on the phone. It's like a hologram in front of their face, right? And it's like, say, a little pennies and 60,000 die in nuclear explosion and.
⁓ there's your cat like playing with a mouse and then, look at that. We're all going to die from the new G43 flu, whatever. And we're just, it's all fine. It's just all the real, it's just the real. And it makes it, to your point earlier, right? That was the thing I was going to say about the other years where you could look at the Civil War and that was devastating. It's hard to probably
equate anything to the Civil War. Okay, because that like, the whole country is involved in that and so many people died. But a lot of the other ones to your point are sequential, they're one time things, this shit is layered. And it keeps they keep adding to it and some of it is intentional, right? ⁓ And I think that that's like, I tried to pull together and you've already hit on one of this, but why does this feel so bad now? You just gave your point of view and I think
the three points I have are very much overlapping. So first of all, I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that the list of shit that we're dealing with starts and ends with Donald Trump. I really don't. Now that doesn't mean that some of the stuff we're dealing with, like Trump didn't deal with COVID wasn't Trump's fault, but he sure handled it shittily. I think that's fair. Remember the line where he said like, look, the problem is we're testing people.
Desiree ep10 (46:57)
Yeah.
Chris Bevolo (47:08)
That's our numbers are so high. If we didn't test people, there wouldn't be as many people with COVID. Like, this isn't the president of the United States saying this shit, right? So there's a through line with Trump and part of Trump is not just his chaos and his transactional nature and his lust for power and money, but the strategy, and I think we've talked about this before, that Steve Bannon popularized of flooding the zone with shit. So that's intentional.
They're trying to bury us in the shit and it's working. So that's one. The second is what I would call the rage economy, which you talked about the algorithms. The algorithms make more money the angrier we are because they know that fear and anger are the best way to hook people. then they can Scott Galloway again, like Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Scott, he makes a really good point about this. Like they suck you in with something that's just rage baiting. And then they sell you like on the new
Desiree ep10 (47:38)
Okay. Okay.
Chris Bevolo (48:05)
Lexus holiday sales event, right? ⁓ That is intentional. That is intentional. They're driving us to be more scared and more angry because that pulls us back in. So that is number two. And then three is technology, what I call the technological dystopia. You've already kind of talked about social media, but it's also cable news. We've talked about that in the past 24 hours a day. They're always on there, right? CNN might as well just be called breaking news.
because every single minute of the day is breaking news for CNN, right? ⁓ Our phones are addictive devices. They are addictive. They might as well be crack or gambling or video games. They're addictive. And then of course, our friend AI. I'm sure AI will solve all of this. AI is not gonna make this any worse, so I think maybe that's the solution, right? So you got all those three things that,
Desiree ep10 (48:39)
Okay. Mm.
Chris Bevolo (49:03)
are lending to what we're feeling in this next level of cognitive dissonance.
Does that all line up with kind of where you're thinking to?
Desiree ep10 (49:12)
It
does. But then I think back like, and it's a part of the three, but I think back of like, what has made all of this possible? And that it's essentially these things that originally started out as good as ways for us to connect, the ways for us to keep in touch. And that's that social media. And that when you learn what humans are gonna do and human psychology kind of takes over,
and that it goes down this negative spiral. Like essentially, Trump has been, Trump has been a fixture my entire life, which is insane. Like would I have ever thought that he'd become president? Like no, cause he was just like this dude, but like he's been a fixture, but he's been able to find himself, put himself within the media conversation, like at every stage.
Chris Bevolo (49:59)
Good.
Desiree ep10 (50:03)
but now it's gotten to this insane
level with social media devices or what have you. But I would add in, you kind of hint, you talked about this, but essentially these folks that own these companies that are honestly like they have the most to gain from Trump doing all of this stuff because no one's looking at what they're doing, the Peter Thiels, you know, the whole.
Chris Bevolo (50:12)
All right.
Desiree ep10 (50:28)
conversation between like, is Claude gonna give access to the government in order to like bomb people? Like, ⁓ luckily they, you know, stuck to their values and morals and like pulled out of
that. like OpenAI was like, don't mind if I do. And then now he's getting back like, ⁓ but it's like, when are we gonna step up to these guys that are basically like pumping him up to be able to do these things? Like all of them to me have.
Chris Bevolo (50:45)
You
Desiree ep10 (50:56)
the most amount of blood on their hands, because they have the power to stop it, but they won't, because greedy MFers. That's my take.
Chris Bevolo (50:56)
Yeah.
Yeah, no, that's good. That's good. it is a technological dystopia, you could throw in the tech overlords as part of that. That's 100 % right. Okay, so really quickly, because I don't want to dwell on this, but this cognitive dissonance we feel, it has real implications, right? So there's a lot of research that shows it's not just a mental thing. It's emotional, it's physical, chronic stress and anxiety, feelings of guilt, shame and inadequacy.
decision paralysis, we're gonna talk about a little bit of how people kind of deal with this in a bad way. It can strain your relationships, doom scrolling, addictions, all of these we're talking about, So when people face this, according to Leon, our friend who really kind of came up with this concept back in the 50s, there's three ways primarily that they deal with it.
And the first one is the one that probably rings the most true, which is avoidance. So you have these things just like beating you about the brain. And you're just can't anymore. I just can't. The example that I came up with ⁓ was, you know, why someone who knows climate change is real might avoid watching documentaries about it. So I don't remember if I shared this, but...
This exact same thing happened to me when my wife wanted to watch the Alabama Solution, which is about the horrific conditions and essentially, you know, current day slavery of the prison system in Alabama. And I knew, I'm like, I don't want to watch it. It's just going to make me mad. I know what it's going to say. And I would have avoided it had she not pushed me to say, hey, you know, it's important that we watch it. So we watched it and it...
made me angry, but I learned things and there was some hope in it. So that's a real thing. That's a real thing.
Desiree ep10 (53:01)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Another version of that was around all of the food documentaries, like remember food, Inc and supersize me and like all of this, like there was a couple of them that I'm like, can't because like, I really need those McDonald's fries. And yeah, you, there's so many of those things where it's like, I'm just, I'm not because I know, and I know I should be doing this or da da da da da, but like, I don't want to be made to feel guilty in that regard. ⁓
But then the flip side of that though is that, the avoidance is real, but like, know, some of us have to live these atrocities like each and every single day. So it's not anything that we can necessarily avoid, but that's like the, and that's, that's kind of the rub of this. the, again, the two things can be true where I'm like, I'm avoiding these food documentaries, but meanwhile, like I'm living some of these other things. But to Diana, ⁓ guest on the podcast last week was talking about, it's like, at some point you still have to like,
self-preserve in order to keep going. And so in some ways avoidance can be therapy, but there's also the flip side of that of people just like not doing anything or not caring or feeling like they so what are your others?
Chris Bevolo (54:05)
Yeah.
Yeah, we'll talk about that in a little bit and how to moderate that. So the second one is delegitimizing. So again, these are the three things that are put out by ⁓ Leon, whatever his last name was that I already forgot who invented cognitive dissonance or discovered it or whatever we call it. So delegitimizing, people undermine the source of the dissonant information and may discredit scientists, dismiss journalists or label whistleblowers as biased. This is a particularly corrosive form of dissonance.
because it doesn't just protect the individual and actively degrades the information ecosystem for everyone. Hello. I mean, is it okay for me to call out Magon this one? Because these people will not, and they're not, either way, they're not the only ones, but they seem to be the most egregious right now. I think any human is subject to this, right? When you have something that you believe in and somebody presents something that you just,
that's in contrast or conflict with that, you delegitimize it in whatever way you can, right? Somebody can show you the data that proves that you're wrong and you're gonna double down because that's how we are. But the degree to which MAGA has to do this, right? So we're gonna elect Donald Trump because he's not gonna start any new wars and now he started two wars and they're still defending him, right?
They must ⁓ be suffering a level of cognitive dissonance that is, you know, unreal because they are faced with these contradictions, the hypocrisies ⁓ that are next level and they still have to fight ⁓ because now their political view is who they are. And so these things are kind of
Desiree ep10 (56:12)
That's definitely fair. We saw more of the rise of this during COVID of like the do your own research of everything. I'm like, okay, yeah, I'm doing my own research, but I'm also watching loved ones die. But ⁓ sure. Yeah, like I'm not gonna trust anything. But yeah, it's very much real.
Chris Bevolo (56:12)
gnawing at who they are as a human, and that's really a tough place to be. That's fair.
The third one is limiting impact. And I have definitely seen this from people I know. People minimize the significance of the contradiction. One person can't make a difference. Or it's not as bad as it looks. Or there's other worse things. And ⁓ it's kind of just like a poo-pooing of it. ⁓ Of just saying, like, ⁓ you know, it's almost like the way I think about it is, you know, there are people that you want to be next to in the exit row when your plane crashes.
They're the people that are like clear-eyed and they see the danger and they react to it and they follow the instructions, they help people get out. The person you don't want to be next to is the person who's just like, it'll be fine. It'll be fine. Just, you know what? It's going to be fine. We'll have a safe landing. And no, that's not fire. That's not fire that's all around us. That's just, you know, it's going to be fine. And they just get frozen kind of. ⁓
And that's a very dangerous place for people to be too, because they're not really dealing with the cognitive dissonance. They're just trying to manage and get past it, but it's not going away. ⁓ And the fire in the burning cabin of the crash plane is not going to get better. And if you're not careful, you're going to get singed. So that's the third one.
Desiree ep10 (57:53)
It's almost like you're
gaslighting us. Like when you were talking about that, it feels like, that sounds like gaslighting. Like, that's not real. Or you're being too sensitive. And it's like, but are you not seeing this? don't let like the level of people just kind of like not really actually thinking about things in that way. Like don't sleep on that. More people than we would hope. Don't.
put two and two together in that way. They're just like, I'm just living my life. That thing is happening over there to those people. But like, it's not that bad. Well, because it's not happening to you. So yeah, sure.
Chris Bevolo (58:29)
Right.
So I'm gonna close here with the cherry on top from our friend who is, I should come up with his name, of course his name does. getting, now I don't even remember his first name. That's not bad. Leon Festinger. Leon Festinger. Okay, so the cherry on top of this is that all of this can be cumulative.
Desiree ep10 (58:49)
Leon.
Chris Bevolo (59:00)
And he calls it the magnitude effect. So when you have multiple examples of this, and we've already given ⁓ what all those would be, when you stack them together, Leon says the magnitude of dissonance becomes almost unbearable, which is precisely why so many people shut down, tune out, or retreat in a comfortable narratives. And I saw this amazing TikTok ⁓ of this guy who said, if you talk about what's going on,
in the world to somebody, you sound insane. You sound insane. Hey, what are we doing in Iran? We just bombed a school and what are the goals? are we, you know, like, and also the, like, if you try to talk to somebody about all this stuff, you sound insane because there's so much of it. And it's just like, how in the world are we going to deal with all of this stuff? Right. And so that magnitude effect is,
Desiree ep10 (59:46)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Bevolo (59:58)
is something else. That to me is what really gets to me. And I listened to this podcast, it was a phenomenal podcast. And of course, I forgot the name of that too. It's late in the day everybody. So I'm gonna give my old brain an excuse here. But while I ramble, I'm going to come up with the name of it, the Project Censored Show. And I'm reading a book from Project Censored, which is phenomenal. It's about the state of media in 2025, which I'm gonna talk more about in a different episode.
Desiree ep10 (1:00:15)
Mm.
Chris Bevolo (1:00:26)
But I listened to this podcast and they're connecting all these dots and I'm
just like, I can't do it. I can't take it. And that was right before I got off the plane and encountered rude behavior and showed up crabby for this podcast.
Desiree ep10 (1:00:39)
What a day.
The risk is like, I find myself, I'm like, I don't want to sound alarmist, but it's... And so to me, those folks that are saying like, ⁓ like it's not that bad or like, like I, like what can I do or like what's next? It's like, okay.
Chris Bevolo (1:00:42)
Mm-hmm.
Desiree ep10 (1:01:00)
you realize that that is essentially a luxury for you. That there are those of us that are out here just trying to survive. And that essentially you're subscribing to, you know, that great American brand pillar of the rugged individualist, pull yourself up by your own bootstrap, you know, figure it out. You don't need anybody. And that it worked for a while, but what if it stops working?
Chris Bevolo (1:01:07)
Yes.
Desiree ep10 (1:01:25)
And I feel like this is the closest we've gotten. We're getting to where like, you know what? This, this may not actually like pan out because as we're thinking about like, what makes me feel like I got a 10 hat on is that idea. I'm like, okay, if you're looking at this, the potential is that these technocrats, these robots that they're building, these algorithms, they're going to take us over because as you're looking at the job loss and all that, like, well, what, what function do, will humans have in the future?
Chris Bevolo (1:01:37)
What?
Desiree ep10 (1:01:54)
And then in a way, that's where your identity, and because if you are not one of these tech overlords, then you are nothing. You are an easily led automaton. And that we will essentially, potentially become like the as a whole, as a human race, the marginalized groups. And then what? Who's going to be there for you when you never showed up for the other folks? We're not going to save you. There is no safety net. That's the real rub of this. And that's what really feels
freaking scary now is that like, it's not just we're dealing with this human strife and eventually somebody will, you know, step up and values and all that. These robots ain't got values. These tech leaders feel like they don't have values. They do not care other than, cause I think about this too. like, okay, if I don't have a job, I don't have an income. How am I going to buy your stuff and put money in your pocket? So why would you make all of these choices that ultimately can hurt you?
But I think the biggest piece of that is that America is still a very young country. We haven't been through the things that these other continents have. And my partner and I were talking about essentially, she was like, look up Iranian women in the 1970s. I was like, what, what do you mean? You look it up, pictures of women in swimsuits at the beach, living their best lives. And then you cut to.
Chris Bevolo (1:03:20)
Mm-hmm.
Desiree ep10 (1:03:23)
the 80s, that's when you start to see the hijabs and the whole, and like, that's what the country is today and what we know as Muslim countries. But the reality of the fact that, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, they haven't always been this, this isn't just their culture, ⁓ this is from a regime coming in and taking over. And then you think about the Handmaid's Tale and that that was a written.
during that time period, basically as an allegory for what could happen to the US and hello, we're here. What? But again, I feel like I have a damn tin hat on when you say it out loud. So, help, we have to stop this. We can't just sit back and idly watch this like do do do do do because it's happening is what it feels like. So I don't know.
Chris Bevolo (1:03:59)
funny.
Yeah. Yeah, it's happening. Okay. That was pretty, that was hard to get through, but very helpful, at least for me to talk through it and, and, you know, get some historical context. But what do we, what do we do about this? So let's go through, I've got five things that's, ⁓ and you can just weigh in on each one. ⁓ this was some research I did from my friend, ⁓ Claude, who helped pull together.
research. If you can't beat him, join him, Des. I'm just going to use Claude until he replaces me and then I don't have a job anymore. All right. So the first step, there was more than five, but these are the five I thought were most important. ⁓ We're doing it right now, which is acknowledging the dissonance. And by the way, all these things are backed up like this one ⁓ Claude and his infinite wisdom found some research from psychologists.
Tiarii Prewitt of the Cleveland Clinic that says, and I love this part, ⁓ what you feel that discomfort, it is a signal. It's not a malfunction. It means you're paying attention. It means your values are strong and there's this conflict and you're getting a signal about this conflict. Just acknowledging that you're dealing with it is honest, it's authentic and as always the
50 % of solving a problem is admitting that you have one. So start with that. I think we've done a good job of that today. Do you think?
Desiree ep10 (1:05:50)
I do because like these
thoughts just sit in our heads all day long, but being able to be like, okay, do you see this? Like, yes, you see that. Are you thinking this? Yes. Like it helps. It's the same thing as like just how crying actually makes you feel better because you released it to at least named it and released it. And like, that's the first step to recovery from whatever this is.
Chris Bevolo (1:06:16)
So the second one is I kept the title because I love this pure AI title, practice structured information consumption, which is another way of saying like, tune the F out. ⁓ So we talked a little bit ago about how if you care, if you have values and you care about this world, you want to make it a better place, you can't tune completely out. You can't walk away from it all. You can't, ⁓ you know, just kind of
Desiree ep10 (1:06:23)
What?
Chris Bevolo (1:06:45)
Gaslight yourself and be like whistle past the graveyard. So you can't do that, but you also can't bury yourself in it. You can't Do scroll all day long. You can't do what I did, which was you know, the plane landed and we Took a hot second to like get to the gate. So here I am just like scrolling so you've got to prioritize and The research that was quoted here a Norwegian psychologist whose name is per Espen's
Stoked? Stokeness? I'm gonna assume that's a person. ⁓ So talking about client communication, because climate communication, that's a, climate change is a perfect example of like, you can't just ignore it, but if you really study it, you're gonna like go cry on a corner. The idea here is making the problem feel proximate, so close to you, social, so share it with others, and actually what can you do about it?
Desiree ep10 (1:07:19)
Fake name.
Chris Bevolo (1:07:43)
The other thing I'm going to just suggest here, I am not a paid sponsor of this. We are not a paid sponsor of the brick. The brick has been a lifesaver for me. The brick is a little piece of technology that allows you to literally brick your phone in whatever way you want. ⁓ I brick my phone from seven in the morning to six p.m. with a no doom scrolling brick, which means I can't access social media. I can't access ⁓ any of the news channels. I really can't access pretty much any kind of information.
on my phone. I still get emails that I subscribe to. ⁓ So if something big happens, I'm going to see it there. And even if I want to read those, those are an email. So it's limited, right? All the other things suck you in. Once you're sucked in, you get that addiction node going and you can't break out of it. So I would recommend the brick for that. Do you have, are you practicing, practicing structured information consumption?
Desiree ep10 (1:08:24)
Yeah.
Yeah, for me it's-
I
am. don't like some years ago, I stopped watching the news. The only news I really get is the first up by NPR just to kind of like, Hey, what happened? All right. So that I can know what other people are talking about, but like nothing else. The other piece was like podcasts. love podcasts. File love them, but you can't listen to it anymore. Like I need to, I'm like, I'm going back to music. Like I'm just going to have a nice relaxing night by the fire. I listened to some music.
and just enjoy and be grateful for rights I still have. ⁓ And yeah, so that's how I'm practicing.
Chris Bevolo (1:09:18)
I just have to throw this in here because I went back to the pivot. I should have known better. And it was Karen Scott talking about the Iran war. And I swear to God, Scott Goway must have said at least four times how much he believed in the, he called it the asymmetrical upside. He kept saying that. And I'm like, dude, what are you even? Cause he thinks it's a great idea. He thinks it's a great idea. And he's so impressed that we took out the Ayatollah.
in a strike and people don't realize how amazing that is. And there's a once in a lifetime opportunity here for us to create a society, Iran, that goes back to what you were talking about in the 70s, where it's a progressive democratic nation that's full of oil and is our friend. And he honestly believes that's the possibility here. Well, we're already, I don't even know when that was recorded. They've already named the guy son. He's more of a hardliner. ⁓
I just was screaming at my phone. So I need to take your advice and stop with those podcasts. right, number three, adopt the smallest viable action. I love this. ⁓ People get overwhelmed. There's kind of like this idea, if you can't fix it, then why bother? What can I do? I'm just one person. You hear that from people that don't vote sometimes, right? Like, what's my vote? It's not gonna matter. ⁓ But actually,
Desiree ep10 (1:10:20)
Yeah.
Chris Bevolo (1:10:46)
Pick small things, right? So examples here are call your representative, give a donation, talk to a friend, change a purchasing habit. It sounds like we've done all of these in our podcast, which this is the 10th episode, by the way, so kudos to us. And we even talked last week about join a ⁓ protest if you want to, or if that's not your gig, volunteer to bring food to a family or donate money or all those things. ⁓ The point is that you're doing something
Because if everybody does something, it's gonna make a difference. If you think you have to do all of the thing or solve the thing, you're gonna get frozen.
Desiree ep10 (1:11:24)
Yeah, for me, it's been the mutual aid. It's like, you know what? I'm going to take care of the people in my life and you know, whatever they're struggling with, like how can I help them with that? ⁓ and I'm sure your, your wife talks about this as well, but like, you know, as a therapist, know, they're, they're doing leaps and bounds. Like, you know, I don't need to go to protests cause like I'm doing all of this work every single day, which has this ripple effect. ⁓ so it's like these, all of these things do have a ripple.
effect. so yeah, pick your lane and just do that one little simple thing, whether it's a protest, mutually taking care of your people or calling your representative.
Chris Bevolo (1:12:05)
Yep, yep. Okay, the last two make me feel so happy because they feel like permission. So number four is compartmentalize strategically, not destructively. So the point here is it's fine to say, I'm going to be fully present at this high school basketball game right now. And while the world is on fire, that's important. But for this two hours, I am going to focus on what's in front of me. And I'm not going to let that in.
That's not denial, right? We're not suggesting you deny all the things again. You can't be on that side of the spectrum. And you don't want to compartmentalize in a way that is ⁓ not your choice. So the idea is that you're deciding I'm going to focus on this now and that's okay. And that's completely, completely acceptable. Not only acceptable, it's what you have to do to keep going. Because if you don't do that,
⁓ the cognitive dissonance is gonna eat away at you in the way he was talking about before.
Desiree ep10 (1:13:03)
And in a
way it kind of empowers you to keep going. You know, like I don't have kids or anything like that, but if I had like nieces and nephews going to see them in their game is like, this is why I'm doing this. You know, to see them thrive. Like I...
Just seeing them that their future is so bright ahead of them, I wanna make sure that I'm protecting that so that they get to experience like, know, joys and what have you. And all of us not perish, but I love that.
Chris Bevolo (1:13:36)
Okay, so the fifth one, you need to check me on this to make sure this is an AI being a suck up because AI can be a suck up. Again, AI pull these together, our friend Claude pull these together, ⁓ but I'm gonna take it, right? And number five is find joy as an act of resistance. I'm just gonna read this, I think it's great. This may be the most counterintuitive strategy, but it's also the most essential. In an error defined by compounding crises of which we've...
listed all of them, the experience of joy in relationships, nature, art, community, everyday moments is not a betrayal of the world's suffering. It's what makes sustained engagement possible. Burnout is the number one killer of activism and awareness. The people who remain engaged with the world's problems over decades, and that's a pretty important key, over decades, are almost universally people who have found ways to replenish themselves. Living your life fully is not a form of denial.
It's the foundation upon which meaningful action is built. Thank God. Unless you're going to tell me that's a bunch of shit.
Desiree ep10 (1:14:38)
No, because I mean, that's
exactly what we talked about last week with Diana is that it, we have to do these things. like go outside, go for a walk, go touch grass, go to that art museum. There's a book that I've been so appreciating. It's the art of noticing where it has all of these different things like on your daily walk, like you, even though it's the same route,
you have the opportunity to discover something different every single time. Like for example, they're like, okay, keep an eye out for the color yellow. On your walk, pay attention to what sounds you hear, know, different parts of your walk. And it's core, it's essentially telling you to be present, to have gratitude for like the beauty that does exist in the world that makes all of this worth it and why we do continue to fight because we don't want to lose that.
So absolutely. And like I was saying about like, you know, us as you know, black folks, like we're always gonna find the joy. We're always gonna find something because what else is there? Like we can't just sit in, you know, fight. Like we have to, we have to find that reason why we keep going.
Chris Bevolo (1:15:47)
Yeah, that's awesome. And you talked about it, but I would explicitly throw the word curiosity in what you just described, right? Curiosity is an amazing magical power. If you can find a way to explicitly apply curiosity,
it just you see the wonder in the world, you see the beauty in the world. It also allows you to handle a lot of the antagonistic things that you encounter differently. Like so instead of me squaring off against the guy on the when he tried to cut in front of me in the airplane aisle, which I did, and I stood up and like, Hey, do you mind if I go ahead and go here? See, we can go ahead. And he was like, Sure. And I'm like, Thank you, sir. But I was all like, you're a
bleep and bleep hole because he was pulling the thing. I could have just been like, hmm, I wonder what is going on in this guy's life that he feels the need to cut in front of everybody else, right? Like he looks like he's okay, he's smiling and he's happy, but maybe there's something I don't know about. Or maybe he's just walking around in a bubble. I don't know. But just that just is a little more soothing than me being like getting the elbows up, which yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.
Desiree ep10 (1:16:44)
Mm-hmm.
Curiosity.
Chris Bevolo (1:17:01)
Curiosity. All right. So I feel like we did cognitive dissonance a good service here. had a good conversation.
Desiree ep10 (1:17:09)
Default lighter.
Chris Bevolo (1:17:12)
I do feel lighter, feel therapeutic. And I'm going to somehow find out a way to capture one of those last two and put it on my phone. What I have on my phone now is you only get one spin, which I think is a great mantra to live life by. But I really think in this day and age, I may capture one of these other ones. I'm not going to use practice structured information consumption. That doesn't really motivate me.
Desiree ep10 (1:17:14)
Yeah.
Doesn't quite
roll off the tongue.
Chris Bevolo (1:17:43)
But some of that is just like, find the joy, find the curiosity. That's a good reminder. So, all right, should we wrap it?
Desiree ep10 (1:17:51)
Let's it. Let's wrap
Chris Bevolo (1:17:52)
you as always does always there appear always helping remember like not as bad as I think it is or maybe it is and welcome to the shit. It's one of the two but thank you for that. Thank you for that.
Desiree ep10 (1:18:05)
Welcome to the dollhouse, Chris.
I love that movie.
Chris Bevolo (1:18:11)
And thank you all so much for for joining us. We hope you help. We hope this helped you cope and help me cope. So ⁓ maybe as a little add on and helped you all cope too with this crazy ass world we're living in. Please like and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes and ⁓ Spotify, I guess. We have Spotify still. You have Spotify.
Desiree ep10 (1:18:31)
I
am off Spotify, officially.
Chris Bevolo (1:18:36)
So screw Spotify, just on iTunes. But that helps ensure more people can hear us. Give us a five stars, because that pushes us up. Visit www.bearing287.com or follow me on Substack to access other helpful content from our network. And I am Chris Bevelo on behalf of I'm Not Even Supposed to Be Here and Bearing 287. Thank you for listening. We'll see you next time.