Fireside Chat with Dennis Prager: Ep. 38 | Fireside Chat

hi everybody welcome to my home and this is my home as I tell you every week this is my study and this is my fireside chat I'm Dennis Prager it's an honor to be with you this is completely unscripted completely spontaneous and it's just a way for you to know me a little better and to have a sense of what I stand for on the assumption which it may be a big one that you're interested but if you're not interested I don't know why you'd be watching so I think it's a fair statement that you might be interested and I get to know you a little better because I get your questions so what I do is each week I begin with a some thoughts on some subject and then I take your questions so I'd like to offer you a theory of mine that will be very helpful to you in life whatever your age whether you're 10 or 90 this is a it's a very helpful insight I have a three mirrors theory of life the first mirror is the mirror of the body or the face that's the physical mirror everybody knows that if you want to know what you look like you look in the mirror right very simple but I want to give you two other mirrors that exist in life that are not nearly as obvious one is how do you know what's in your mind what's the mirror of your mind we know the mirror of your body and face the physical mirror so how do you know what's in your mind how do you get to look at it how can I have it I look at it you can look at your at your face and body looking forward how could you look at your mind and the answer is by writing writing is what tells you what's in your mind it's a very tricky thing though or not tricky as much as risky because what you might find out if you write is it's not too clear I came to realize this very early because I was I always wrote starting in high school I loved writing and I wrote and I remember when I would look at a first or second draft of what I wrote and it wasn't clear and I realized I know why it's not clear what I wrote because it's not clear what I thought but I wouldn't have known that I wasn't clear in my thinking if I didn't write it down that's the beauty of writing that's also what I realized it in another way when I was in college and I read some textbooks written by some college professors in what we call what is the academia that's right that's the language and I realized this was a very important insight for me I came to the following conclusion sometime in college if I read something that any writer whether it's a professor or not if somebody wrote something and I read it twice and after the second time I still didn't understand it I never assumed that the reason I didn't understand it is that I'm not bright enough not because I thought I was very bright but because I realized nananana it's because the writer is either not bright enough or more probably or more probable because the writer is not clear and that's exactly what happened so let me just tell you if you're in college I assure you you have ample intelligence to read something that's clear and understand it so if you are reading something and it doesn't make heads or tails you can't make heads or tails of it in the very first or second read then there's something wrong with the writer what they do though a lot of professors not all by any means but a lot of professors what they do is they write in very complex English or French or German whatever the language they write of in very complex prose and they hide the fact that they don't know what they're talking about that way it's a great gimmick I mean I could read to you and I have I've read my radio show examples of things from textbooks and they're long and they have they almost always have the word matrix in them for some reason this is a very popular word in academia how was the last time other than referring to the movie that you've used the word Matrix when they start using words that you never use that's a beginning tip-off to I'm trying to hide something from the reader to sound very bright but anyway back to my original thought if you write something now I'm not talking about a well actually I am I'm talking I guess I am talking even if you write a nonfiction you know a history of the Luxemburg in the nineteenth century you know in a paper for a history class but whatever it might be especially if your to your thoughts though that's what I was getting at if you write what you think about a subject this is what I think about let's say gun control this is what I think about war this is what I think about capital punishment and it's it's not clear that's because you're not clear and by the way that's not a sin not to be clear it's a sin to think you're clear when you're not but it's not a sin not to be clear that is why it is imperative that somebody honest read your works and what we have in the last twenty five years in America is teachers are increasingly not honest and talking about now elementary and high school because they don't want to hurt the feelings of the student so they they won't say as teacher said to me thank God I thank them they would circle a sentence in red they were not afraid of triggering trauma in me they would circle it in red and they would say doesn't make sense my parents would do that if we talked for example at the dinner table they had no compunctions about when I was 10 forget when I was 18 when I was 10 Dennis excuse me doesn't make any sense and I would think and I yeah it doesn't make any sense it sounded good but it didn't make any sense you need a critic of your writing to realize what's happening otherwise you'll write you'll read it and since it's totally what you think you'll think oh this is great but in fact doesn't make sense so the mirror of the mind is writing and the clearer you write the more obvious it is that you think clearly my third of my final mirrors what is the mirror of your character so I could see my my physical body and in a physical mirror I could see my mind in writing how do I see my character want I guess think about it for a moment well what is a great mirror of your character all right here's the answer the people you attract into your life bad people do not attract good people into their lives it's just the way it works that's why we always speak about who people hang out with it's a big deal who you hang out with a because they influence you and B because it may say something about you if you repeatedly are with people that are just not decent not good not kind then there's something about you that is attracting them something you'd have to look into and I tell you it's it's I I have tried to live by what I am talking to you about I have I have obviously tried to use writing as a mirror and I the thing I work hardest on and I write a lot and the thing I work hardest on in in every column and in every book is clarity and I have a very simple theory I do all the work so that the reader does no work that's how I look at my the writing that takes a long time and then I how do I know how how would I or anybody know do I have a drive a good character am I good person now everybody's flawed I'm not I didn't say are you perfect I said are you good well not everybody's good obviously if everybody were good there'd be nobody in jail I mean people do bad things as you know so I was very very moved early in life and even more so later in life that the people I seem to attract were pretty kind and that that meant a lot to me I I the richest part of my life is the people in my life and I think that a lot of people would would say the same thing it's it's not only true about character who you attract into your life it's it's true about a whole host of things for example most most people like happy people in their lives if you tend to find that you have unhappy people in your life it's also worth trying to figure out why why am i attracted all these unhappy people though these are very tough by the way it's tough to look at your writing honestly and it's tough to look and make an assessment of the type of people you draw into your life these could be very painful exercises but so what could be a painful exercise to look in the mirror in the physical mirror and then what do you do you try to look better trying to lose weight or you try to take care of yourself try to stay clean I mean their whole host of things fix your teeth right it's up to you so those are my three mirrors theory of life and it's worth we're thinking about the tough thank you for indulging me I can't do this while I speak from a podium I can't do this when I do my radio show but I can do it in my house all right up to your questions Rachel twenty-seven Davis California with the suicides of Anthony Bourdain and Kate Spade bringing mental health back to public awareness what is your perspective of what needs to be done to deal with the rising rates of depression and general mental health look I don't have any any unique answer that others may not have and I'm not sure anybody has a nobody has a complete answer there but they're not the same questions mental health and suicide they're they're related obviously happy people don't commit suicide so they're obviously related but the vast majority of the press people don't commit suicide clearly and it's it's it's a the suicide question is is its own issue and then the depression issue is its own issue so let me deal with this the second which were you asked about by the way I am an advocate of telling people who are thinking of suicide that with with one exception which I'll deal with in a moment with a couple of exceptions that I'll deal with in a moment I am so mad ending up dealing with suicide for a moment I would appeal to those thinking of suicide to understand how they're hurting people they love it's it's it's it's clearly not a victimless crime and I think people need to think about that some people delude themselves into thinking their family will be better off if they kill themselves and their friends will be better off but that's that's not the case it's it's it's very painful someone you love commit suicide it's a real kick in the teeth even though you may not want to do that I I do recognize some exceptions my my my stepsons father committed suicide I wrote about this in fact it's one of my columns from last year or two years ago why my stepsons father killed himself he killed himself for a legitimate reason and I very rarely say that and the legitimate reason was he was denied painkillers for excruciating pain he had endured as a result of falling off a ladder and smashing his ribs and his abdomen and you know we're rightly very concerned with people who are addicted to opioids and a lot of people died from that but we're not getting the opioids that are legitimately needed by a lot of people who are totally innocent victims of pain they're there they're not even like on the radar when we talk about opioid addiction and this man just couldn't take it anymore and no doctor would give it to him they didn't know you know was he for real of course he was for real I knew the guy totally well he loved life and there are other times where I understand a suicide but by and large it's a terrible thing as to the depression look-the there are two types of depression at least one is physiological there's something malfunctioning in the chemistry of your brain and that can only be handled or overwhelmingly be handled I think by a proper drug and proper medicine if you're you know if your stomach is broken you we give you medicine if your brain is are broken then or your psyche is broken similarly but I would argue this I think there's another factor in in Western Society and having acknowledged the physiological the thing that brings a lot of people to a sad semi depressed or fully depressed state is lack of meaning in life and I'm not the first to point this out Viktor Frankl in his seminal book man's search for meaning which was one of the 10 books that most influenced me that's on Dennis Prager economy could see though the list of the books and he he was a psychoanalyst an Austrian who would after the war to America and he his theory was among as many theories his theory was that the greatest need humans have is for meaning so Marx said that our greatest need is economics is in the realm of economics Freud said in the realm of sex and Frankel said in the realm of meaning but if you are take a Freud I think even Freud would acknowledge it is possible not to have sex and and be happy if you have meaning but if you had all the sex you could imagine you ever would want and have no meaning you will not be happy now frankly I'm for sex and meaning but nevertheless between the two there's really no comparison meaning and what we have we have a very great problem this is for the first time in human history Western Europe has created a godless society now whether you're an atheist a believer an agnostic I don't care I just care that you intellectually honest and recognize that this is a radical experiment in human history that people can find meaning without God so by the way sometimes they do a lot of times that meaning is pretty dangerous Christianity died in Europe so we got Nazism and communism that's pretty dangerous stuff but they both gave people meaning so there's good meaning and there's bad beating make all of these things are factors in the in the in the problem of depression and sadness in modern society also one other reason you know a lot of people are alone loneliness is a national epidemic in the United States and that too is related to of the death of religion most religious people have friends not all but most do they meet them at church they meet them at synagogue if nothing else they meet him at Bible class but we don't have substitutes for that in secular life you're gonna meet them at at Yoga maybe yes by the way I have no problem if you meet a good friend of yoga but my experience at my workout place in Southern California where I go three times a week I don't see any nobody's talking to anybody half of them have earphones on while they work out you can't even say hello I don't care I my cup runneth over with friends I'm not looking to make friends at the my workout gym but that was a place where people did meet and even now they don't because everybody's tuned into his little or her little world so there are there are a lot of factors of modern life loneliness religion Les Mis and so on okay I was a long answer to a short question how are we on time gentlemen good christena 20 Westwood California do you think that AI artificial intelligence is a danger to humanity why or why not careful they might take your answer into consideration that's very funny any robots listening I don't care about you I'm afraid the as I get most of my wisdom from a book that there's no longer widely read called the Bible where America's founders got their wisdom and so many other brilliant people there's a great story there about the Tower of Babel where it's in book of Genesis where these people they were enamored of their technological abilities and they built a tower that whose in the words of the Bible whose top reached into the heavens and they said let's make a name for ourselves so we're making a name for ourselves with artificial intelligence some of it some of which is very good and very helpful I acknowledge but some of it may not be eventually and I fear that it may substitute for people for real human contact I fear that it will also perhaps they like they could be programmed to be very destructive and that's that's very scary to think about I mean then you literally have monsters but I'm telling you the the substitute for humans with virtual reality and with artificial intelligence already I because I follow this stuff avidly there's a booming or burgeoning maybe it's not booming yet I hope it isn't of artificial intelligence sex dolls and and men are I mean it's in Japan it's somewhat booming in America it's developing and elsewhere where men won't even seek real female companionship bill they'll have their artificial intelligence female doll and that's that's not a healthy development that's one of many examples what would you say brandon 17 memphis tennessee why would you say to someone that says the political party switched i would say huh that's what i would say i don't know what they're talking about you'd have to eat you'd have to give me an example of where the party switched i I can't think of any offhand basically Republicans have been for smaller government than Democrats have been for bigger government they haven't switched there are Republicans also for bigger government I'll admit that but they were note and there were no Democrats for smaller government but I don't know where they switched so I can't with it this is a good example by the way and this is really helpful in general you are much clearer when you give an example of something of some generalization you make if you read anything I've written I give this is the way I write the generalization followed by example after example after example without examples I'm a big believer in generalization so generalizations help mess help us understand the world because it means that we see patterns and that's that's intelligence but you've got to give substance to your generalization if you say seatbelts save lives and you need to give some data the following percentage of people who died in car crashes did not wear seatbelts that would be that would be a perfect example of substantiating the generalization but in this case I don't know how the parties have have switched sides so I would need to I would need to have some examples and then I would be able to answer I guess go to a final question is that what we're up to yeah Nathan in England have you Oh Schiphol but who cares you don't care what so why should I care have you ever abstained from voting and do you think it is ever okay to abstain from voting I'm gonna sound I vote every election I mean I'm sure I may have missed something of the country or whatever but an aye vote in virtually every election however I don't I don't have the belief that we have to insist that everybody votes or that if if oh if only let's say 60% of the country any country votes it's a bad sign I don't know why it's a bad sign that means but how do we know that the other 40% just don't think it matters that much maybe they're just happy and you know they they they don't feel this great compulsion to vote I don't want to push somebody to vote unless they have they stand for something now I think there's so much at stake at elections right now in America that I can't imagine meeting someone who says that it doesn't matter I mean I can imagine meeting there but I can't imagine not responding to them it matters great deal but I don't see it as a flaw in a society if a chunk of the society doesn't vote that's why I would never make voting compulsory all you're doing is compelling people who may not have a clue as to what they're voting for to vote I rather have informed people and for informed people are only 50% of the society then fine I can handle that it's a cliche that you have to get everybody out to vote are we good there you want to do another one what do you think they're debating and I'm on a roll I'm always on a roll otherwise I get boring and then if I get boring nobody's gonna tune in one more what are your views this is from Brendan maybe it's Brendan I never heard of a Brendan Jujubee there is a Brendan oh I know Brendan 22 in Tennessee what are your views on America's high incarceration rate okay fugly contrary to a lot of what you read most people were in prison for violent crime or or for or or for white-collar crime but but not for drugs not for or at least not for it's simply owning a drug okay the Americas high incarceration rate is a sad is a sad fact because it means that a lot of Americans commit crime that's very sad but my biggest reaction to the high incarceration rate is not whoa we have a mixed up criminal justice system my reaction is we have a mixed up population means a lot of people are committing crimes you know why the crime rate has gone down since the 1980s because we put more people in prison that's the reason you can't go out and rob a store or mug a person or a rape or murder if you if you're in prison that's the sad fact of life now why do we have a lot of people in prison oh why are a lot of Americans committing crimes that's another subject but everything in my view everything ultimately comes down to values that's it how good values been passed on to the next generation which leads me to a final thought here's a question for you what is the single most important question society needs to answer answer how do you make good people because if we don't answer that we won't make good people and then we'll have a lot of murder and corruption and theft and all bad things however it's never asked today almost never I should say I shouldn't say never almost never people ask how they can make good students how do I get my kid to have good grades they say how do I get my kid socially active for the environment let's say and that's really nice but there's no correlation between being a good person and being a good activist they're not the same thing when a lot of people think they are the same thing but they're not you can March for every cause you like but you still may be a bad person in in daily life so that's the question we need to ask how do you make good people and I know that because I accepted the biblical view of humans from a very early age we're not basically good it's easy to cheat it's not easy to be fully honest right it's easier to be ungrateful than to be grateful you any example you want to give how do you raise a grateful person that's a good example of something a parent should be preoccupied with well those are some of today's thoughts from my home to yours thank you for watching I'll see you next week I'm definite what I'm did Ematic Linda Bowman candy Baba how did I stumble on I'm Dennis Prager I mean that is really hilarious it's not like a new name I've had the same name since birth I'm Dennis Prager thanks for watching you