The Joe Rogan Experience #1241 (with neuroscientist/author Sam Harris )

As I was listening to this podcast, I thought to myself, “Wow, these descriptions of our current social climate are highly articulate, accurate and on point.” But the more I nodded in agreement, the more I felt exhausted by the conversation. It then occurred to me that all this fantastic dialogue basically amounted to an overblown conversation about how people are behaving as badly as they ever have, just in new and increasingly nuanced ways.

I began wondering if much of this poor behavior is symptomatic of the need we all have for more time and space to exist as ourselves in this busy and cramped world of ours. If it helps to identify as a furry and file an HR complaint with your company because there aren’t litter boxes in the restrooms [!] then more power to you! If a man with a penis (because now this needs to be qualified) can feel better about his life by claiming he is a lesbian [!] and then have his claims legitimized by others [!!], way to go! If throwing somebody else under the bus for a minor social gaffe helps prevent your own character from ever being drawn into question, hell yeah—go for it!

The more things change, the more they stay the same. There is a certain kind of person right now who has more easily adapted to society’s current round of shuffled priorities: this person masks his or her own poor behaviors by going on the offensive and preemptively attacking everyone else for their own mistakes and shortcomings.