Fireside Chat with Dennis Prager: Ep. 35 | Fireside Chat

Hi everybody and welcome to my home. This is my home. This is The Real Deal. I'm Dennis Prager. It is a joy to be back. I missed a week, which is not bad considering that I had surgery. And you know what's funny? The doctors and others call it a routine surgery. And I explained to my doctor that that is actually not a fully accurate term. Routine surgery is accurate for the doctor. It is not accurate for the patient. But be that as it may, I'm really doing well, obviously. And I want to talk to you about it, actually, because a very, very major theory of life that I have, and that I have been advocating really my whole life, came to play as one of the examples of this theory just in the last couple of weeks. This theory is that how you behave is much more important than how you feel. Actions are more important, first of all, they're more important, obviously, morally, right? How you treat other people is infinitely more important than how you feel about them. I mean, that should be so obvious. But in the age of anti-wisdom that we live in, and exemplified by our universities, sadly, and even our high schools, largely, the obvious needs to be said. So I have a very simple theory. It begins with my happiness theory. I wrote a book on happiness, and I do a show, my radio show, which you really enjoy. It's three hours every day. It's all over the internet. It's on local radio stations called, oddly enough, The Dennis Prager Show. And one of the 15 hours a week, three hours each day, five days a week, is called The Happiness Hour. Since 1999, I have been broadcasting about happiness. No matter what happens in the news, I will be addressing the topic of happiness. It's a very important topic, because, as I always say, the happy make the world better, and the unhappy make it worse. It's true in family life, it's true in world life, in society's life, and so on. Anyway, my big theory is, act happy, even if you don't feel it. For two reasons. One, you owe it to others. There's a moral obligation. Happiness is a moral obligation, not an emotional state. It is an emotional state, but it is also a moral obligation. I owe it to the people who are in my life, to have a happy disposition. People don't like to be around morose people, and I don't blame them. I don't like it, you don't like it, so why would they like it if you were like that? I'm not talking about moments of terrible tragedy, and so on. I'm talking about daily life. So again, my theory is, act happy, because you owe it to others. But there's a second reason, and that's with regard to the person, him or herself. If you act happy, you will feel happier. Actions affect feelings more than feelings should be allowed to affect actions. Act X, you'll feel X. Act Y, you'll feel Y. Act Z, you'll feel Z, and all through the alphabet. So that's true for happiness, and I will give you other examples, but it's the most obvious is in happiness. Act happy, you'll feel happy. But let me give you another example of where behavior is so amazing and has such an impact. But allow me. Okay, so here we go. So I had my surgery two weeks and two days ago. The doctors thought I was nuts when I went on radio a week later. I mean, the first week would have been pretty difficult. The first day's essentially impossible. But I went on radio a week later, exactly one week after the surgery. As I said, the doctors thought it was quite premature. But I told my radio audience, I said, look, I have two choices, because there was some pain attached to this. So I said, look, I could be in pain at home, or I could be in pain while doing my radio show. I'd rather be in pain while doing the radio show than just be in pain at home, because among other reasons, I feel an obligation to my audience, but that's one of them. But the other is, I know that if I'm concentrating on the radio show, I will feel less pain. That's exactly what happened. For three hours a day, I was in less pain, because my mind was totally focused on the radio show. The moment the show ended, I remember, hey, oh yes, I'm in pain, I forgot. It was a great example of behaviorism. This is my theory of life, that actions are more important than feelings. Actions overwhelm feelings. So I acted in accord with my theory. I broadcast my radio show despite the pain, knowing that doing that would make me feel better. By the way, I'll just tell you an interesting thing. When I've gone through difficult times, and every human being goes through difficult times, when I went through difficult times in my life, I still broadcast my happiness hour, and I give you my word, I was happier because of the happiness hour. It affected me, just as I hope it affects my audience. That's how powerful behavior is. And I'll give you another example. So I gave you the example of pain, I gave you the example of happiness, I'll give you another example. People often ask me, because I'm very serious about religion and God, well, you know, I just can't believe, and I understand that completely. And my theory is, listen, if I can convince you on what a better life you'll have, if you do believe in God, with all the doubts, every believer has doubts, you know what, mark that down. I want to talk about that one day, about how doubting is part of faith. It's not a problem. But I can convince you, I can convince you of any proof that there is a God. There's no proof that there is a God. They're just extremely powerful arguments. But I think I can convince most open-minded people that God is a necessity. Because if there's no God, there's no ultimate meaning in life. This is all just a coincidence. You and I are just stellar matter. That's all we are. Ask the scientists, they'll say, oh, human being is just matter. And when we die, the matter, you know, goes back into nature, and that's the end. It's over. Oblivion for eternity. So this life is a fluke. But I don't think it's a fluke. I think there is, I think there is a God, and there is ultimate meaning. And also for morality, which I've talked about a great deal, many of my PragerU videos are with regard to, some of my PragerU videos are with regard to this, about God as the basis of the Ten Commandments, and so on. And, you know, morality is just opinion if there isn't ultimately a God who says X is wrong, and Y is wrong, and Z is wrong. Okay. But still people say, yeah, but I can't believe, or I don't, you know, I can't, or, you know, I don't want to go to church, I don't want to go to synagogue, whatever it might be. So here is my theory, and I think you should take up my challenge. If acting happy makes you happier, if acting like you don't have pain actually reduces your pain, then maybe acting religious will make you feel religious. Just be a behaviorist. Give it a year's try. Okay? And see what happens. Study the Bible, go to a Bible group. I know it sounds so old-fashioned to so many of you because this stuff has been rendered silly. That's why I'm writing my magnum opus of my life, the biggest work of my life, five volumes of commentary on the first five books of the Bible. The first one is out, it's called The Rational Bible, and I think it'll change your life. Read the reviews on Amazon on The Rational Bible. I hate sounding like I'm selling you a book, but nobody writes a Bible commentary to get rich. But I'd like you to read the reviews on Amazon on The Rational Bible and see what atheists write, and people of all faiths. There is a powerful argument here for the greatness of that book. Anyway, start studying that with my book or with any other book and with a group of people. Go look for a church, go look for a synagogue. If you're a Jew, make the Sabbath part of your life. And then tell me after a year, yeah, I don't feel any different. Okay, I respect that. By the way, act loving, you'll feel loving. It's a big factor in marriage. It's easy to feel, oh, am I in love in the beginning? But after years, decades, it's not always that obvious and that deep, that sense of feeling. So act loving, say loving things, be demonstrably loving physically, and I bet you, you will feel more loving. Whatever it is you want to feel, act it, and then you will feel it. That's my opening thought today based on exactly what I just lived because of the surgery issue. And that's it. Again, think of what you would like to feel and then act on it. It's very powerful stuff. It's totally life-changing. Oh, by the way, act kind and you'll be kind. Not every act of kindness is somebody aching to do. Ask people, even yourself, if you've never given charity, give to a charity. Tell me how you feel after you made the donation. There's no question, you will feel good. Act good, you'll feel good. Okie doke, here we go with your questions from all over. All right, here we go. Okay, Tessa 22, Lakewood, California. My boyfriend and I want to get married, however, family members disapprove because they think I am too young. I disagree. I think I am blessed to have found the perfect person for me at such a young age. Any suggestions on what I should do? Look, I hate intervening in family squabbles. I really do. And obviously, I don't know anything except what you're writing. So I'm just reacting to what you wrote. I don't know, obviously, you and I don't know the boy, but I am a major advocate of finding a terrific person when you're young and not throwing them away. I have spoken to so many women on my radio show. I do a male-female hour every single week. And I have spoken over the course of decades to thousands of women. And many of them say they feel foolish that all they did was preoccupy themselves with career and then figure, oh, you know, when I'm ready, I'll find somebody. Yeah, then they're ready and they don't find somebody. If you found a terrific guy at 22, you're exactly right. You're blessed. Here's a real big secret. Terrific guys don't grow on trees. There are no terrific guy trees out there. And the terrific guy trees that exist are amazingly more findable when you're a young woman. That's reality. It's therefore the opposite of what's taught at college. College is a make-believe land. In real life, this makes sense. All right? What benefit is there in throwing away a terrific guy? Now, maybe your family thinks he's a jerk. Okay, then that's the issue, not age. But you didn't write that. You didn't write, my family thinks he's a jerk. You wrote, my family thinks I'm too young. The big difference. If they think the guy is good, you're not too young. How can you be too young for a great guy? What, at 28, then you'll be ready? Why will you be any readier at 28? And he'll be gone. Then what are you going to do? Because again, great guys don't grow on trees. You know what? Women starting at, I would even say 35, you know what they lament? All the great guys, they seem to be married. Yes, there's a reason for that. There's a reason for that. Because great guys get married sooner than jerks do. And because marriage makes guys great. These are all generalizations. There are exceptions to every generalization. That's the way life works. Good luck. Trevor 19, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. People are inherently bad. How can we trust them to own guns? Well, there are many answers to that. And it's a great question. You might as well ask if people are inherently bad, why allow them knives? Why allow them cars? You just run over people. I mean, why is the question any different with regard to any other inanimate object that can hurt people? If people are inherently bad, why allow them axes? Because, first of all, I don't think people are inherently bad. My argument has always been people are not inherently good. I think we're in the middle. But I think goodness, like gold, needs to be mined. Badness comes out naturally, goodness needs to be mined. There are a lot of good people on the face of the earth, because they have good values, and they live by them. These are exactly the people I want to be armed. Because, since bad people have arms, the only real good counter to bad people having arms is good people having arms. That has been true for all of human history. Okay, I hope that answers your question. Danny 26 in Amsterdam. Oh, you know what? What do I know in Dutch? Exprecht Hollands. Not bad. That means I speak Dutch. Hey, I got a story for you. You is in PragerForce. Danny's in PragerForce. That's great. I got a great story for you, Danny. You'll love this, especially being Dutch. So, when I was 18 years old, we had, in those days, World's Fairs. They were great things. Countries from all over the world and corporations would have their beautiful, they'd make beautiful, elaborate, I want to say booth, but it's much more than a booth. I don't know what the word, pavilion, whatever, would be. So, Parker Pen Company was a very big pen company. They made a pavilion, or booth. Given that they were a pen company, it was to get a pen pal anywhere in the world. That's what it was. Sign up, fill out your interest, your age, we'll give you a pen pal somewhere else. I thought, I'd love that. I've always been interested in the world. So, I'm 18 years old. Am I right? Was I 18? Yeah. I was in my late teens. Anyway, I signed up there. I wanted a pen pal. So, I wrote my interest, and so on. I didn't care where the pen pal was. I got back the name of a person. Oh, by the way, this is the key point. You wouldn't get someone of the opposite sex, because they said, we're not here to make romance. We just want people to find a boyfriend or girlfriend. We're just here to have people communicate with somebody in another country, as pen pals. Pen pals was where it went before computers and word processors. People would actually write letters. Does everybody know what a letter is? I kind of assume that is not most people. So, anyway, I love the idea. I signed up, and I get a name of a guy, presumably, of course, in Holland. The name was Steineke. I'm not going to give the last name, because the person I trust is still well and living in Holland. So, Steineke, and then a Dutch last name. So, I'm writing to Steineke for about a year, and I'm assuming that Steineke is, as they said to me at the Parker Pen Pavilion, a guy. So, I went to Holland a year later to visit my pen pal Steineke. Steineke comes to the airport in Amsterdam. It's a she. It's almost impossible to convey how bizarre a feeling it is when you've assumed someone is... I'm not talking transgender here. I'm talking about just a mistake. It never arose in the letters that it was a she. I love literature. I love movies. You just write about it. I went to a concert yesterday. So, this is what I think about life. It wasn't like she ever wrote, oh, I have a boyfriend or anything like that, or my mother went and I got a new dress. Nothing ever insinuated that it was a she. So, it was the shock of my life, and I never told her. I didn't have the courage to say, whoa, this is not what I expected, and I don't know if it's a common name in Holland Steineke, and I certainly never heard that name before, so how would I know that it wasn't a male? The Parker Pen Pavilion screwed up. No, no, no. I take it back. She deliberately wrote male because she wanted a male pen pal, but she never told me, but she never told me because she assumed I would know. If it's Mary, she doesn't have to say I'm a female. Anyway, that's what happened. It's a great story. I lived with her parents in Amersfoort. I remember the street, Griegstraat, in Amersfoort. The family treated me so well, they not only did my laundry, which for a kid living on the road, that is such an unbelievable luxury. They even ironed my underwear. I will never forget that as long as I live, ironed underwear. I felt bad putting it on. Anyway, great memories from that. I've been to Holland a lot of times, but that was a great memory. All right, got any tips for a young man that is about to be introduced to his girlfriend's father? Yeah, don't curse. You know what? How about this? Show up nicely dressed. Don't show up in a t-shirt. Now, I know that this is dated advice, but just because it's dated doesn't make it wrong. I think the greatest book ever written is 3,000 years old. That's really dated. The notion that only new is right is idiocy, just idiocy. People before me had some wisdom. So, I may have some wisdom that some in your generation don't have. You can't, in other words, what is the price paid for looking nice when you show up to meet the father? Is it the father you said? Was that the father or just the family? What is it? Girlfriend's, one second, I can't go backwards here. Girlfriend's father, yeah. It means you take the meeting seriously. That's what showing up nicely dressed. You don't have to wear a suit and tie. That's overkill. Whatever nicely dressed means to you, that's what you should do. Secondly, be real. Don't act. Be real. Doesn't hurt to say how highly you think about his daughter, but reassure him or assure him that you have plans in life. A father or a mother cares that their daughter will be, if she's thinking of being committed to a man in marriage, that the guy has good ambition. I don't mean he's overly ambitious, not narcissistic, but has ambition. I would like to earn a living. I would like to support. My dream, sir, is to support your daughter and a family that hopefully we will have. If that doesn't work, have your father call in to me, her father. Okay. Next. David, 14 years old in Miami, Florida. How can I explain why the Bible is good and reliable? Wait a minute. Except I skipped one. Sorry. I'll get to you, David. Greg, 61, Bridgeport, Ohio. See, we don't only take young people. Not that 61 is not young, but you get my drift. What do you think is the best way to help young adults to be receptive or at least open-minded enough to consider conservative beliefs? That's a very hard question. I know exactly how to convince the open-minded about the moral and intellectual superiority of conservative beliefs. That is all I do, in effect. That's what Prager University is there to do. But how do you convince someone to be open-minded? That's a real riddle. That's a tough one. If everybody were open-minded, the country would be in a much better condition. It's the indoctrination that begins in elementary school that is so frightening. They're not open-minded. If you're taught that conservative is the same as fascist, bigot, intolerant, homophobic, Islamophobic, xenophobic, and all the other phobics, then you're not open-minded. You've been brainwashed. It's very hard. I don't have a great answer for you. I know how to convince people who are open-minded, but how do you convince people to be open-minded? That's very tough. Back to you, David, 14, in Miami. How can I explain why the Bible is good and reliable to a girl who doesn't believe its infallibility because of its patriarchal views? First of all, I want to know what she means by patriarchal views. That's why I wrote my rational Bible. It would be worth your studying it. You know how many disproportionate heroes in the Bible are female? It's amazing. There are so many impressive women in the first five books of the Bible, the central five books for both Jews and Christians, the first five books, Genesis and Exodus and Leviticus and Numbers and Deuteronomy. There are so many female heroes that there are scholars who think that a woman or women wrote the Torah, the first five books. So it's not exactly in keeping with patriarchy. Anyway, I don't know of any law that says be patriarchal. And by the way, I don't even know what patriarchal means. Does patriarchal mean the belief that it would be a good thing if the man is regarded as the head of the household? I don't know a woman. Well, I take that back. I'm sure I do. But the most happily married women I know are married to men who want to be the head of the home. That doesn't mean the tyrant, the dictator, the ruler. But women like to look up to a man. That's a turn on for a woman. If you don't think it's turn on for a woman, your girlfriend doesn't think that. That's very sad. So I need to know, what does it mean? What does it mean, patriarchy? The essential teaching of these books, as I put again in my rational Bible, for example, it says, honor your father and mother. It doesn't say just honor your father, which many other cultures did. And then it has a law, a man shall fear his mother and father, puts the mother first before the father. She is the complete equal in the home, the mother. When it comes to human equality, it is clear. The woman is the last creation of God in Genesis. And everyone knows that creation goes upward. It develops. So in a certain sense, the highest creature God made is the female. Doesn't sound very patriarchal to me, does it? All righty, Ranier in Jakarta, Indonesia, 18 years old. What is your favorite drink when smoking a cigar? This is going to really disappoint you, Ranier, really will. Soda water with lime. Even as I say it, I have certain contempt for myself. You got to understand, I wish, I lament the fact that I don't enjoy alcohol. But I don't. I never did. I get a headache. As soon as I drink any alcohol, I get a headache. So I have no desire to drink it. But when I see people, you know, obviously not alcoholics, but people who can drink moderately and not be affected in that way. You know, my father, my father would have a scotch on the rocks with his cigar and he was in heaven. Guys invite me all the time, come to have a smoke with us. We have, you know, we got great bourbon, we got great scotch. I mean, you know, whatever the drink is. And I'm thinking, I want soda water with lime. It sounds pathetic. What am I going to do? Can't force myself to like it. So on that light note, how are we doing? Is it a good time? Yeah. Another question or we're good on time? All right, everybody. Listen, I really enjoy doing this. It gives me a chance to relate to you one-on-one. There's no script here, nothing at all. It's completely spontaneous. And I can deal with, you know, a lot of the real issues of life, not just politics and so on. Those are real issues, but they're not the only issues. So until next week, this is Dennis Prager. Please visit PragerU.com and see the wonderful and powerful videos that we put out that are five minutes each. PragerU.com and check out the Rational Bible. I promise it'll change your life. Until next week, bye-bye.