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The original podcast recorded in Leeds Office on the 08/Feb/2024.
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The original podcast recorded in Leeds Office on the 08/Feb/2024.
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The speaker and his friend have been discussing the concept of the social contract for 15 months. They have talked about various examples of behavior that should be expected in public, such as not playing loud music on a train or taking up more than one seat. They have also received input from others, including extreme suggestions like making people eat their dog's mess if they don't clean it up. The conversation has led to debates about whether people's behavior has worsened over time. They mention a book called The Social Contract by Descartes, which discusses topics like taxes and government expectations. The speaker and his friend are unsure where the conversation should go, as it can become serious quickly. They mention the importance of finding a balance between serious discussions and lighthearted examples. They bring up the topic of peeing in the shower and how it relates to different people's tolerances and perceptions. The speaker also shares a funny story about a friend who Cool. So, 4th of November, right, 2022, yeah, 4th of November, 2022, yeah, a WhatsApp message to the group. Gents, I would welcome your help. I'm starting to collate my thoughts around the topic or book, The Social Contract, aka, don't be a dickhead. And I'm looking for examples that I could include in it. It's about the basic expectations we should all have of one another about how we conduct ourselves in public. So, don't pay your loud music on a train. That's the journey from Halifax to Leeds. Don't take up more than two seats on a train if you've only actually paid a ticket for one. Don't leave all your coffee cups on the table. And the conversation, obviously, you and I have been having and the series of messages that followed went from some very, very minor, some quite lewd, to some pretty significant philosophical things that people started to put under this banner of The Social Contract. So, it's now 8th of February, 2024, so it's only taken us the best part of 15 months to actually make some time to actually have this conversation and try and work out whether or not you and I, Mr. Vivas, could actually make a podcast at all, never mind a podcast on the subject of The Social Contract. And here we are in dirty Leeds, which, by the way, and I should have said this earlier, is the single hardest city in the world to drive around, because I must have had nearly three accidents trying to find the office that we're in this morning. I think that's got something to say about your driving. It probably has, but I came onto a junction that I thought was a roundabout in my favour, and clearly wasn't, and I should have stopped. And the person coming the other way clearly expected me to stop and nearly crashed all the way into me. So, yeah, it was an interesting start to the one. Anyway, The Social Contract. What is it, Paul? What's The Social Contract? Yeah, well, I guess this is the question that we've been asking ourselves for 15 months. I'm not sure we've got to the answer, have we? I mean, I guess I've spent those 15 months probably thinking about it quite a lot and scribbling lots of things down, but whether that's got to anywhere of any note to share with the outside world, I'm not sure, but I think what we've realised is that there's probably lots of examples out there, aren't there? You know, adding to the ones that you talked about straight away, I've pinged you pictures and messages as I've seen them either in the news or in real life. So, you know, bins overflowing in sports centres, people just adding to it and putting rubbish on the floor around it when there's a bin a couple of hundred yards away, you know, all those sorts of things. That woman on the news, do you remember that one ages ago where she kind of went into a restaurant and ripped some hair out and put it in a sandwich and then went back to the bar and was like, look, there's a lot of hair in here and she got a free meal and then they obviously watched the CCTV and realised and then stuck it on Twitter or X, should I say. Well, we've not just, it's not just been you and I, have we? We've been canvassing views from the group. So, I've got a couple here from friends of ours. So, one would be that anyone that didn't pick their dog's mess up off the floor, they should be made to eat it, which is probably a bit more extreme than I was originally thinking. So, definitely, another one was stealing a colleague's purse. Is that in the social contract? I think that was more of a reference to one of the members of our group. But what was, what was interesting is just how much it engaged people to respond to it. And I found this when we had some friends around for, I don't know, kids were playing and we were sat having a bit of food. And I brought up this topic about, I think people's expectations and behaviours have changed and people don't behave the way that they should anymore in public. And I got a lot of people in the table going, no, I agree. It's definitely worse. People have got less respect and less kindness and less consideration for others. And it's quite funny because one of the couples, one of them completely disagreed and said, no, it's all exactly the same. We were always the same as kids. And actually, it led to quite an interesting argument around the table between the two of them as to, well, you know, what do you know? Because you don't see the world outside because you only live in the same postcode. And interestingly, led to a series of messages that went on for three or four days about this idea of the social contract. It's completely in my head now and I can't get it out of my head. Maybe there's something about it. But the thing is, we're not the first people to use that phrase, are we? Because what's the French guy that first wrote about this? Descartes? Jean Descartes? Yeah. So I did pick up the book that was written around that, but I can't remember it exactly. But I think that ultimately was much more serious, wasn't it? It was talking about things like taxes and, you know, how you go to work and what you do to kind of earn a living and then how you put that back into the system, etc. And people's expectations of government and effectively the contract we all buy into by having a government that we contribute to because it's only funded by taxes. There's an expectation that that funding is then repaid in the way that that money is collectively then spent and serviced to the general population. And it's interesting given where we are politically at the moment now, a lot of people are not necessarily feeling that that contract is being kind of honoured. Yeah. Well, yeah. And I guess that's where we've got to over these last kind of 15 months is where does this conversation go? Because you can become very serious quite quickly and start kind of bleating on around what's going on in the outside world in terms of the government and politics. And I guess that kind of polarises people in some ways, doesn't it? And then I naturally want to drag it back to a silly story or a kind of daft example. But maybe there's a place for both of that, really, to be honest. Maybe there's something that we can find a balance where there is a semi-serious kind of ethical behavioural values based conversation. But then also the kind of daft humorous side that says, well, actually these principles do run right the way through to something as silly as, do you know what I mean? I don't know. Do you pee in the shower? Yeah. You know, if it's not yours. Or maybe I'll maybe kind of really early doors kind of show you the level of the conversations that happens at our Christmas and New Year conversations as a family, because that question actually came up. So we were asked quite clearly around the table at Christmas about 15, 18 of us, do you, is it acceptable to pee in your own shower? And there was a difference of views across that table as to whether that was acceptable or not. Personally, from my perspective, I felt it wasn't acceptable to pee in your own shower, bath, but it's okay to do that at the gym or somewhere else. Interesting. So, so, so again, that principle of those values and I've drawn it right down to a daft example, but you know, but you're saying it's okay to do that in a shared space rather than a space where only you occupy. That's interesting. So you're sharing the wealth when it comes to, by the way, you should just say, we're definitely not for one moment pretending that we are political animals who are deeply into an understanding of the political sphere of government and everything else. I mean, you are pretty much at the level that we're operating at. But, but I think, I think, I think I like, I spend a lot of my life thinking about analogies for various different things because it helps me to understand situations better. And as daft as it does sound, you know, something like B and P in the shower actually does cut across something quite serious, like in a political debate, because it's about people's different tolerances, isn't it? That's all. No, I can make a justification for why that's okay. Yeah. But actually then somebody could say, well, no, I can't. Yeah. And that, and that, I think is the point, isn't it? So again, yeah, I'm not trying to drag it to the lowest. But interestingly, the majority of my family said it was okay to be in their own show, which I thought was pretty, yeah, it's probably a reflection on the family. Pretty shocking. One for grandma to be proud of. The, what is interesting though, is what's the difference between just everybody agrees something is okay or not okay. And then what is down to perception or your particular kind of vantage point or experience or something. So I think certain things, you know, we would all agree, hopefully universally, they're just not okay. And they're hopefully the other extreme, there are things that absolutely are really okay. And everybody should, should always try their best to do them. So being kind is at one end and, and obviously, serious physical harm to somebody might be at the other end. But, but just coming back to some of our group, obviously, there was some, you know, different kind of examples shared, but one of them was slightly left field, which was from a friend of ours who we went on holiday with when we were obviously young teenagers, who talks about the fact that he was traveling on a plane and became rather unwell. And, and in a moment where he was very vulnerable, felt that his friends maybe should have cared and supported him through such a challenging experience. And I have a slightly different recall of that moment as he sat on the plane, hit his pants, feeling very scared about flying and simultaneously trying to be supportive, but also finding it literally the funniest thing that we've ever experienced in our life. So did we break the social contract with our friend in that moment? Well, I mean, listen, you know, my answer to this, absolutely no, because it was one of the funny things. And, and, and yeah, I mean, to say that we were all kind of doing sit ups laughing was, was, it was an understatement. But yeah, I mean, for the first time traveling away without your parents, one of your mates to pretty much stripped down to his boxers shorts on a full chartered plane. Yeah. And it clearly was a combination of heat, hangover, and probably this fear of flying that just all came together in that moment. So I guess should we, should we have kind of rallied around him, you know, stifled our laughter, give him, give him, give him a bit of security. I think there is a balance there, isn't there? I guess in the moment, I maybe would have wanted somebody to help me if that was me. But then afterwards, looking back, you've got to, you've got to say you'd be disappointed if your mates didn't take the task on. Yeah. I mean, there were, there were some other obviously really shocking and probably quite individual to us examples that were shared, you know, putting somebody's big toenail in somebody else. Well, so I think we all agree that is not okay. So, so I can give you first hand experience of that because it was my pint that he put, that went in and given that it was kind of infected as well, I think it's just not okay. But then, but then do you know what? I guess this is where banter becomes an interesting subject, isn't it? Yeah. I think we all agree that's wrong, but we all agree also in the moment that was probably very funny between a group of friends. I don't think anyone would have found it funny if you'd gone up to a random person and done something like that. So maybe that's the other point about the contract. What is the contract that you actually engage with as friends? Yeah. And becomes acceptable as the kind of the norms of how a group operates. And we've, we're very fortunate. We've got a fantastic group of friends who've known all our lives and grown up together and been through a lot together. Versus what's okay just generally about how you conduct yourself in society, right? In public, you know, the way that you treat people that might be serving you in a restaurant or in a coffee shop, or the way you might treat the restaurant or the coffee shop, or the way you might park your car over two spaces versus, you know, everybody's got a space and we all try and be respectful of the space. So there's a whole range of things that kind of probably infer what the contract is. Yeah. We're clearly a group that it's okay to put dirty nails in fights. Well, if we stay at that point for a minute, because I actually remember an interesting example similar to that in my younger days, where somebody, you know, football team, Sunday afternoon, you go back to the pub, you've got sandwiches put on or whatever. And some of the team used to, I think the right word to say is pick on, you might want to use the word bully, I don't know, it depends how you want to work it. One of the older chaps in the team. And what they did was they put, I don't know, I think they put various things, bogeys, ear fluff, belly fluff, whatever into this guy's sandwich, and then put them on a plate and said, Oh, yeah, mate, we've saved you these sandwiches. So your toenail example, you know, where it happened to us is visible, you see it and you go, oh, that's disgusting. But at least I've got the opportunity to put that to one side. Yeah. But somebody doing it where you don't know that that's happened, and everyone else is in on the joke, but not you. Yeah, I think there's an interesting line for me is that so I think our banter as a group has often been quite visible. Yeah. So therefore, you can see it, you're not actually going to come to some harm. Yeah. So there's a joke, but we never quite go further down that line. You stop it before it actually happens. In that case, in this case, they've put in someone's sandwich and then he's crapped on. I guess that's the point, isn't it? In those scenarios, everyone else is in on it laughing their heads off. Yeah. And I guess we'll cross over the silliness to the seriousness. There was obviously another case, I think it was in Leeds, actually, where there was a guy in a mechanic workshop and they put some antifreeze in a guy's coke bottle and he drank it and he was like, game over. So there is that weirdness, isn't there, of, and I know that's maybe not where you were going with what you said, but there is that weirdness of, you know, banter, to me, has to not result in any real kind of impact or harm, because then all of a sudden... It's got to stay funny to the point to which ultimately everybody's in on the joke. That phrase stuck with me, I once said this, you know, it's only a joke if everybody laughs, and so the point being that, you know, if there are people that are not finding that funny, you've probably somewhere in the moment crossed the line, because everyone should be able to laugh at themselves and have fun in those moments, but at the point at which you've crossed that line, it's no longer funny, that's the bit. So it's being aware of where the line is for some of these examples, isn't it? I mean, you know, there are examples of foreign objects being found in Mountain Dew, and there are examples of, you know, when somebody's offered you a drink and then you've given them something more than the drink back, but there are some more serious ones, because some of the serious ones that kind of got thrown out was, you know, like I say, this point, I think it comes back to respect, so should Elon Musk, for example, have notified the staff that were losing their jobs first, before he put it out into the whole world on Twitter, you know, is there some basic respect there, for, or ex, as it's now, you know, should there be some fundamental respect there, that, you know, people have worked hard, done a job, you might not necessarily want them to keep doing that job, but they've done a job, and they probably deserve at least some respect and recognition and being treated properly in that moment, rather than just, you know, kind of arbitrarily dismissing their efforts and them as people from an organisation, so some of this crosses over into work, and some of this, obviously, like you say, crosses over into politics. And that's then where you get to your point, don't you, around behaviours and values, don't you, you know, how do you treat people, and like I said, to me, I think if you've got a contract with your group of friends, that banter is okay, there is that line that you've almost kind of drawn yourself, and it might be a bit bendy at times, like some people might be able to tolerate a bit more grief than others, but I think you're right, I think if you're dealing with a customer, or you're dealing with somebody who's providing a service for you, or somebody in your team, I think you've got to employ a baseline, haven't you, of, yeah, some sort of set of values and expectations that people do, which is your, you know, if you're going into a restaurant, or a cafe, or whatever, you don't just leave crap everywhere, just because you go, oh, it's someone else's job, it's not my problem, you know what I mean, I mean, there's an element of, actually, yeah, their job might be to clear up and stuff, so it's fine to wipe a table down, or whatever, but you need to kind of not leave it in an absolute car crash. It's funny, isn't it, because the other thing that's quite interesting is what triggers people to behave in a particular way, so sometimes people behave in a way because they think it's justified because of the way somebody behaved towards them, so, oh, well, you were a bit off with me, or a bit rude with me, so screw you, I'm going to, you know, equally be off, or rude with you, and so it's interesting how one person's kind of demeanour can impact another, so as I was waiting for you to work out that you were completely the wrong, I mean, unbelievable, you live in this city, and you went to completely the wrong building, just because one building had three letters, and the other building had four letters, and we won't use the letters, but the point is, only one of the letters was the same, and you were at least five minutes and a good half an hour late meeting me, not that, you know, I'm holding it against you, but as I was waiting in the cold for a well-known coffee shop to open, and Peter Safran's side working, the door was locked, and there's a guy turns up to deliver the milk, and so I said, do you know what time it opens, oh, it's seven o'clock, mate, okay, two minutes to seven, lady comes, unlocks the door, lets the guy in with the milk, closes the door behind and locks it, it's fair enough, it's not supposed to open until seven, they're probably still setting up, and it gets to seven o'clock, 7.01, lady comes, unlocks the door, can see three people stood outside, I'm one of three people stood outside, instead of them just pulling the door open, say morning, and you know, starting the day with a delicious open the door, turns around and walks back, as if to go, I just do not want to be here, I'm not interested in any of you lot turning up and ruining my day, because it's seven o'clock in the morning, now, it made me chuckle, it actually made me laugh out loud, which made the guy who was also stood outside with me, start to chuckle to himself, so I found it funny, but you could see how, if I'd also been in a bad mood that morning, I might have gone in and went, well, it's a bit rude, and therefore, well, I'm not going to say please or thank you when I'm ordering my drink, and the fact we spent 20 minutes, and I might have left all my coffee cups in a mess on the table, rather than, you know, I'll always try and put them either in the bin or take them back to the counter, so it's interesting to think, how does one person's behaviour trigger another's, so we talked about in a funny context, but just also in a like a day-to-day context, yeah, and then all of us start to justify to ourselves, oh, it's okay to be, you know, not nice to somebody, because, well, they've clearly got an attitude, and we've assumed that they've got that attitude, and that gets you, so, by the way, yeah, I did make a complete mistake in terms of trying to get the building right, what was quite funny is I did walk around the building a couple of times, and I also went to said establishment, so, but yeah, it was completely, same chain of the, on the opposite side of Leeds, but never mind, I got there in the end, and you wouldn't have had your milk story, would you, but I agree with you, and I think, I think it probably takes us into a deeper thought process, doesn't it, which is, well, what's going through that lady's life, for her to come to the door and go, I cannot be asked, say, morning, or holding the door open for customers, and I think that's the thing, isn't it, so, I agree with you, there is, there is, there is that chain reaction of behaviour that potentially people can then say, well, actually, I'm annoyed because of this, so, then I've got in the car, and this has annoyed me, and so, actually, I'm now going to have a bit of road rage because I'm annoyed about something, or whatever, so, that's the connection, but I do think we've spoken before around what is going through somebody's life, for them to possibly just have no interest whatsoever in making eye contact with customers, and going, morning, in you come, or is it just that they're rude, and they just go, do you know what, I've got no interest whatsoever in engaging with these, their life's perfectly fine, but they're just rude, and there's a balance. So, obviously, you and I have talked about this before, but last year, just to bring that to life, last year, obviously, wasn't a great year, personally, and on the day that I got the phone call that my dad, unfortunately, wasn't going to make, make it out of intensive care, obviously, I had to drive, get back in the car, and drive back up to Manchester, which is four hours from where I currently live, and as I get in the car, I've got a reasonably nice car, I'm obviously thinking, I've just had this horrible call from the hospital, I've only been there two days ago, having spent a few weeks there, and I need to get back as quickly as possible, because he might not be there, you know, in a few hours time, so as I'm driving up the road, I'm trying to be careful in the way that I drive, but I'm also in a rush, because I want to be, I want to be getting there, so I'm, you know, in the outside lane of the motorway, going reasonably quickly, but coming up against that age-old problem that everybody recognises, which is people sitting in the outside lane, when they're not overtaking anybody in the middle lane, or the inside lane, so they're sitting there, and we don't know what's going on in their lives either, but they're sitting there, dawdling along, and obviously somebody who's got a pretty significant emergency, yeah, is, he's trying to get past them, now what's interesting is how they react, and there was broadly in that four-hour journey, two reactions, one was, all right, better move out the way, now they might have still thought, yeah, yeah, but they did move out the way, but the second reaction is the one that's more interesting, which is those that moved out the way, got frustrated, and then decided to come racing up behind me, and effectively try and do to me what they felt I'd been doing to them, yeah, and obviously in the moment, that person in the car has no idea, they're just thinking, well that's a really rude person, why are they doing that, that's not okay, I'm going to do it back to them, but obviously they don't have any context of, you know, what's going on for me in that vehicle, and actually as I was driving up, that's where one of our friends called me for a bit of their journey, because I think they knew what was going on, but as I was driving up that motorway, you're looking at everybody in their cars, and there's couples in the cars, there's single people in the cars, there's families in the cars, there's people with stuff all over their cars, like they're packed up and they're moving house, or going to uni, or whatever it might be, and it just makes you realise you actually have no idea at all what's really going on in people's lives, and yet most of us probably, on average, default to making a judgement or an assumption as to what it is, and maybe that's part of what, at the more serious end of this, part of the social contract might be, well how often do we give people the benefit of the doubt, or maybe just stop and pause and think, you know what, I don't know what's going on in that person's life, but it's not going to be something that I'm going to let affect me or the way that I behave, so that was, that's quite a deep example obviously, but it was, it was quite stark, you have a lot of time to think when you're doing a journey like that, and that was one that definitely kind of made me think a lot about what is our natural default, how do we think about things, what do we normally go to, and I think it's totally fair that question, and maybe there isn't an answer for it is there, but I think everything that we cover, whether it's a serious end, you know, and an emotional end like you've just described, or whether it is a silly end, there's often something that drives people's behaviour and reactions, aren't they? Yeah. Well not often, there is. Yeah. So it's about whether those things are impulsive, whether those things are because that's just the DNA of the person, or whether there's stuff going on, and it's that stuff going on that then, like you say, how can we unpick that? We probably never can, you might not know why did somebody decide to come behind you and race you or whatever, but then, like you say, what's going through their journey? Again, their life could have been perfectly fine, they could have just been a bit of a nut job that just decides actually, do you know what, I want to be aggressive and I want to kind of... They could have been making the same journey. They could have been making the same journey. There's no way of knowing, and so, but for my mind, you know, I think there's an interesting bit here, maybe we don't go into this that much, there's obviously a big thing at the moment, isn't there, about wanting to kind of label certain behaviours and describe them as something, whatever that might be, whether that's on a particular spectrum or whatever, but actually sometimes does it just boil down to somebody just being rude, or just having some behaviour that are not acceptable, so when you hear things like, although such a person can't work in an open plan office because of X, Y, Z, or because they're reacting quite angrily to different situations, you go, what, hang on a second, that might be an issue or might be a condition, but there is still a line that says... You have to be accountable. Yeah, you have to be accountable for your behaviour, so if you have got stuff going on, you know, you probably take it out on your husband, your wife, your friend, your partner, your whatever, but you still have to be accountable for that behaviour, so if you do something that upsets somebody, or worse, somebody decides to come right up your backside in the car and causes a crash, you know, you can't go, ah yeah, but actually what was going on was, I had this issue happening, and a silly example with the car is, you know, as you know, my son, bless him, was born in my car, and you know, on that journey... We won't tell that story. No, no, no, we'll save that one for the podcast episode 63 or something, but if we get that far, but you know, I remember driving to the hospital knowing that he was arriving and thinking, I've got to get there fast, but yet there was something in me that kind of like slowed for the speed camera on the way in, and I don't, and to this day, when I think about it, I think what the hell, I'm sure it was a pretty, I'm sure I would have been able to have got off if that had a flash at that time, but I'm belting down every other bit of the road, breaking the speed limit. I mean, it's very, very early in the morning. Yeah, yeah, yeah, completely early, no camera, you know, I was breaking the speed limit on the bit, and then, but when it got to the speed camera, I slowed to 30. Yeah. I'm like, what? So realistically, I could have just absolutely carried on, and then if I'd have got flashed many times going, with your lovely wife in the background, I've got enough evidence here that suggests it's fine, and I think what Ferguson and loads of famous people in the past have got done for saying all the paparazzi were following me and all that kind of stuff, and have been able to get off, but, but, and yeah, maybe in your situation, could you have, if you'd have been snapped speeding, could you have then put something in that said, here's the hospital records, go away, I don't know, and I guess that's back to the moral debate. I do think that's the point, right, it, this point of accountability, I think, is really at the core of a lot of this, you know, fundamentally, you only can be accountable for yourself, you can't control the behaviour of other people, but if you control your own, then by association, people probably start to moderate and control theirs, and I wonder whether, and again, we're definitely not qualified to get into the social sciences, but I definitely wonder whether what we've seen increasingly, and we see this, I think, in the workplace and now, is people increasingly feeling like they don't have to be accountable, the reason that things have happened to them or the way that they are, right, is because they're a victim of something else that's happened, rather than saying, and some terrible things happen, by the way, some really awful things, not things that you and I can't probably even imagine, but nonetheless, what can you control? And the only thing you can control, I think, is how you conduct yourself. Fundamentally, that's it. You can't control your workplace, you can't control the traffic, you can't control your family situation, school situation, you can't control, but you can control, in the vast majority of cases, I think, you can control how you conduct yourself, and that, for me, then, is at the base of the pyramid, if you like, that underpins how people show up, whether they're showing up for work, whether they're showing up with their mates on holidays or trips or wherever they are, or indeed, how they're showing up in political office and making decisions, hopefully, recognising the responsibility that they've been given, but potentially actually justifying a behaviour that's more in their own self-interest, rather than something that's part of the social contract, which is, my job in this whole jigsaw is to do this bit, because if I do this bit, we all benefit, well, actually, if I do this bit, I benefit, maybe it's breaking that contract with everybody else. I think that's fair, and I think that's where it's tricky, and I'm always really conscious about, maybe, we won't get into privilege, necessarily, but I'm always conscious about my upbringing and background was pretty safe, pretty straightforward, and so you kind of touched on that point, nobody really knows what other people have been through, as well, so I know we've talked about what's happening for them in that moment, but actually, what have people been through that's possibly meant that they've observed those types of behaviours, or have seen those behaviours happen, or, like you say, worse, something horrific's happened to them, and therefore they're kind of scarred as a result, I think that's tricky, but I still think, yeah, even then, there is still a level of behaviour that should be acceptable, even if you've been through some pretty difficult times, but again, it's maybe easy to say when you haven't been through those difficult times, isn't it, and I think that opens up another... It'd be good to get somebody, actually, to talk about that, and talk about how they've maybe faced into some of those kinds of things, you know, because you can't ever pretend you've watered somebody else's shoes on stuff like that, but I think what is interesting, then, is, so where does that... where do people observe that? Are they observing that with parents? Are they observing that with peers and friends or work colleagues? Are they observing that with public figures? Yeah, who've behaved in a particular way. We've had a very recent notorious Prime Minister who absolutely believes that he's untouchable, and can kind of behave outside of the rules of everybody else, and feels like he can justify that when it's really obvious to absolutely everybody else that's not justifiable. How much of that gives a license to people that says, you know what, if he can do it, and he's the Prime Minister, or was, then why can't I? Yeah, and I think there's been a massive shift since the pandemic, so whether that's pandemic, whether that's Boris, or whether it's a combination of the two, you know, I think people's mentalities does appear to have changed. I think there's definitely a search for entitlement, you know, people are kind of like, well, what are you giving? What am I getting from this? What are you going to do? Or I'm not doing X, Y, Z, and, you know, there's loads of examples, aren't they, of, you know, organisations post-pandemic where people have gone, oh, I'm not coming into the office or whatever, because I've now moved somewhere else, you know. I met some guy recently at a conference, not connected to where I work, and he was like, I live in Portugal now, you know, and you're like, what, really? Brilliant, and so you think, well, fair play to that particular person, but there is something, isn't there, that people have maybe started to just go, I'm going to do what works for me, and I think you're right, I think that has come from the political party, I think that has come from a lot of people. And that's not a new thing, is it? I mean, you could trace some of that behaviour all the way back to the 80s, couldn't you? Yeah, yeah. And I think that plays out then potentially in groups of mates, in, you know, parent-child, in school situations, and I think that's something that we've got to be pretty wary of, is because, you know, the group mentality of, well, actually, I should kind of do stuff to help the group, whatever that group is, whatever you align to, that possibly is at risk, especially as well now, with kind of media and all that kind of stuff, people can sort of back out of something pretty quickly, can't they? And I know we have a bit of banter as the group of, oh yeah, I should be all right, or I might be all right, those kind of responses, which means you're not coming, are you? Yeah. Right, so, but I do think that trickles through, doesn't it? Because we maybe were brought up in an era where you kind of observed your parents going out to work, if that makes sense, and I think that was like, well, I can see the stress and the strain here, you've left the house early, you're back late, you've dropped your stuff, you're tired, you've eaten, and then you kind of pretty much, you know, game over, and I know that work's changed in that setting, but I guess what influences are kids getting now, you know, and we talked about an example before of the kind of school blooming run and the school drop-off. Oh yeah, yeah, go on, this is... Yeah, no, and just that kind of, you know, your kids go to school, primary school, and in that primary school setting, they're taught about the green cross code, or whatever it's called, right? Probably not that anymore, is it? You know, this is how you cross the road, this is what you need to do, you know, there's usually a pedestrian crossing near the school, they bring them out, they stand them at the crossing, they tell them to look left and right, and listen, and all that kind of stuff, and then cross, and then what do we do when we take the kids to school? We don't cross at the pedestrian crossing, we just jump across the road because we go, there's a gap, come on, here we go, so we then suddenly teach them complete opposite as to what we're being taught at school. Now, you could argue that that's kind of, that's okay, because you teach them about risk, and actually the reality is nobody always goes to the crossing, most people will make a risk-based decision to cross the road. The one that, I'm sorry, because you and I have had this conversation before, and you've had a bit of a rant about this before, and I agree with it, by the way, but it was the people that pull up in their cars on the crossing, don't start now, yeah, go on, on the crossing, and the kids are getting out, and they're either running across the road in front of the cars, or they're getting out on the road of the car. Yeah, and this is where I don't want to kind of come across as some holier-than-thou, higher and mighty, but I don't know whether it's just stupidity, or whether it's just, I don't care, I don't give a monkey's, because you know, look, you turn up, you might be in a rush in the morning, which we can go into the details of whether that's acceptable or not, but you're in a rush, morning's pretty stressful, you're getting your kids out, you've got to get to work, you've got to do all those kind of things, so I understand that there's pressure in that moment, but for the sake of an extra kind of one minute to just dump the car somewhere, get out, and help your child, or just park on the crossing, yeah, but you know, you see it all the time, people, number one, just park wherever they want, which is just ridiculous, but then the thing that winds them up the most is some parents literally drive up to the crossing, stop outside of the school gates, and let their kid get out of the passenger door or whatever, to then literally, you know, get to school, I kind of get that-ish, right, I don't think it's right, but then there's some people who, oh my god, the kid gets out on the other side of the car, on the road, on the road side of the car, right, so, and so therefore then have to go into the middle of the road, so then walk either behind the back or the front of the car, to then get into the school gate, and you're like, on what planet is that sensible? But then it's back to that principle, because you're basically saying to your child, this is all right, this doesn't matter, just sack it off, and so then they've got this real conflict as a seven, eight year old child, that goes wrong, and the school has said this, but you're not doing that, but you're not doing this, and then that kind of translates to absolutely everything, and you know, I don't know, but yeah, usually the cars that I dropped off are fairly expensive cars, maybe Tesla related, right, okay, and you know, I've probably got some, we're not just tagging this to a single brand, I've probably got some, no, I've probably got some clumsy, like, license plate, that's, you know, that makes you go, spark it, idiot, absolute idiot. Yeah, I do find this point interesting, I think there's something in this about, people feel like they can justify behaviour that maybe isn't, you know, what we're talking about, as acceptable in context of this conversation, on the basis that, well, as I said before, everybody else seems to be getting away with it, whatever it is, so screw it, why can't I, those are the, those are the new rules of the game, and I also think maybe some of that might come from a bit of, it could come from a place of, well, I seem to be working really hard here, and not benefiting, and I look over there, and those people don't seem to be working as hard as me, and they are benefiting, so here's a bit of envy and jealousy that then becomes the justification for the behaviour, is it the sense of entitlement, yeah, and it's really interesting, so I've got a very good friend who I do a lot of work with, I've worked with him for probably 15 years now, and he's finding it really challenging at the moment at work, because the younger generation of people that we work with, just do not have the same work ethic or mindset that he and I grew up with, so, you know, we had to do a meeting quite early in the morning one day last week, and normally if, you know, the boss or somebody wanted to meet early, because that was the only time of the day that they need to meet with a team to discuss something that was quite urgent, then you'd go, okay, fair enough, and you'll make the effort to make that time, and it was really clear that the team were not at all interested in the idea of meeting, you know, any earlier than the time that they were expecting to be in work, and indeed not really interested in being any later at all, yet the same group will constantly be moaning the fact that they should be getting paid more, they should be getting, you know, bigger bonuses from a very healthy level of pay already, by the way, and he's definitely found it quite a struggle to say, I just don't get it, I mean, that's the phrase I hear a lot, I just don't get it, I don't understand what's happened that means that people don't want to work and cooperate and be flexible with each other in the way that certainly he, and probably we, have been growing up, and it feels this word entitlement comes up a lot, you know, well, why should I, I don't need to, yeah, I should still get what I want, so I need my half of the deal, the pay and the reward and the bonus, but why do I need to give you your half of the deal, and again, I find that fascinating to go, where's that come from, is that just observing that doing that extra work, that extra mile doesn't ever get you the reward, either because they've seen other people in their peer group, or because their parents went through that, and then their parents said, you know what, I thought it was worth it, it's just not worth it, don't bother, but something's clearly driven that shift, and I'm not a believer that it's just a date on a calendar, I know we have these kind of definitions of Gen Z's and Millennials and Gen X and all that kind of stuff, to denote, you know, different generations of people, but to have such a marked shift through the generations, there's got to be something about the connection to the parents generation, or connection to what's happening in that country or that society at that time. Yeah, listen, I think we could probably speak about this for a long time, wouldn't we, and maybe not even get to the answer, but I think you're right, I think there's something around a change, maybe, in people wanting to, yeah, I don't know, I guess it's back to this blame others, isn't it, or hold others to sort of be able to rationalise why they don't want to do something, if you like, and I wonder if that's what started to happen, you know, maybe the media, you know, they love a scapegoat, don't they, they love somebody to be able to kind of, yeah, I don't know, hook on to, that says, right, well actually, who's going to take responsibility for this particular issue, or that particular death, or that particular accident, and they want to be able to drive that to somebody, and I just wonder whether that kind of rhetoric has almost kind of trickled through everywhere, and you take, say, somewhere like, you know, I don't know, when we were at school, you know, nobody really pushed the school, nobody really said, are you getting the best out of my child here, you know, are you doing everything for them, are you doing all the things that you could do to get this person the highest level of grades, we were, it was acceptable to be average, yeah, they were happy to be average at the school that we went to, whereas now, there's almost this feeling that says, well, what are you doing for my child, what are you doing for them, and if the school comes back and says, yeah, but hang on a second, we've only got a finite amount of resource, we've got these send kids over here that we need to spend more time on, we've got this over here that we need to do, you go, I don't give a monkey's about anyone else, I just want my child to be okay. You see that a lot, don't you? There's something, isn't there, about that group, individual thing again. Do you think that's, you know, I mean, you and I love our football, don't we, and our boys obviously love their football, and it's interesting when you're stood on the side of a football pitch watching a game, and you've got a range of parents, yeah, you've got parents that are just happy the kid's enjoying their game, and then you've got the parents where, frankly, they look like they're trying to relive their youth, and their own football career, whatever that might have been, through their children, and they get frustrated then if they think that that's not really happening for their child in the way that maybe they felt frustrated it didn't ever happen for them, and I wonder whether that's how it plays out in the school, and I'm frustrated because I thought, I now realise with age, you could and should have pushed me more, and then my life would have turned out better, but it hasn't, so now, it's not the same teacher, because they've all retired and left, but the next generation of teachers are getting that kind of coming back at them, because the parents, the kids are now the parents, and they're now, you know, applying that pressure in the context of their own children, so some of that kind of living your life back through your children might be... I think that's right, and I think the phrase that comes in my head from the football thing is that kind of joystick parent, aren't they? So, you know, for anybody who may be listening to this, that's under the age of about 30 probably goes, what the hell is a joystick? You get it in Antsummers? But ultimately, when we talk about joystick, we're talking about gaming with four little suckers that sit on the table, and this kind of silly little... I wonder if you're joysticking suckers as well? No, maybe not, maybe not, with some buttons at the top, but anyway, I don't know where that's gone, but anyway, that's fun. That one can be cut. But, you know, I guess that's it, that joystick mentality in sport is, right, go there, left, left, you know, shouting to the son or the daughter, go left, no, kick it up the field, no, pass it, why are you doing this, why are you doing it like that? And actually, if you think about it, that's kind of what's happening, isn't it, if they go into the school? I mean, I've seen some parents over the years, before the pandemic, because now, I guess, teachers have been able to hide inside the classroom, and they go, I can't come out because I don't want to get a cough or something, but before the pandemic, I used to stand in the playground waiting for my kids to come out, and I'd see that one or two parents who would go up to the teacher before at the end, and like, you could see the teacher's face go, Jesus, and they'd turn up, and they'd be like, right, I just want to say something, I remember hearing this one, it made me laugh, I just want to say something, I will just say, little Johnny, for now, you know, little Johnny, they only got eight out of ten on their spelling test, but they definitely knew those two that they didn't write, because we'd work with them during the week, and like, they were getting them right all the time, so even though you've got eight, I think it was probably ten, we had a speeding ticket, and I know that I was going fast, but I do know what the speed limit is, and I was like, oh my God, it's like, if I was a teacher, I would just be like, get out of my face now, so I think there is something, you don't have to spell leave, that is probably a bit of joysticking, isn't it, at the same time, which is like, I need this to happen for my child, and again, it's that balance, isn't it, because you also get to the point maybe when you get a bit older, like us, where you go, well, why am I sitting back, and not wanting the best? Well, and that's what happens, you perceive that actually, everyone's pushing their child forward, so maybe you need to push your child forward, and then all of a sudden, everybody's doing the thing that none of us think we should be doing, because social kind of norms are, well, I can't, you're all doing it, so I'll do it, and it's fascinating to just see. So there's a good parent one, you know, child queuing up for a slide, someone, some little oik, goes and pushes in front, you know, you teach your child to kind of, just what, keep their head down, let them push ahead, but then if people keep pushing in front of that, your child's not getting on that slide, are they, so then there comes a point, which is what you're saying, which is, when do you intervene, and I guess as a parent, your intervention is to say, hang on a second, there's an order here, pal, wait, you're trying to re-establish the rule, but then there comes a point, doesn't it, where actually, if those people are bigger than you, stronger than you, maybe a bit more aggressive than you, you might then just go, do you know what, we'll just leave, well, or the other way around, is you go, well, okay, I'm going to push back in front of you, yeah, this thing with the school, so another friend, mate, you haven't got that many friends, you've talked about four or five friends here, I don't know any of these people, and so I think if you're just making it up, that's fine, right, so we'll call my friend Big Johnny, right, and he is a sports coach at the school, and the number of stories he tells me of parents who, because their children don't get picked for the sports team, then find a reason to message in and complain, well, it's clearly a problem then, because the team should be bigger, or there should be two teams or three teams to accommodate Little Johnny, not related, into the sports team, so this is, I mean, it's everywhere, and you do see it, I think, in somewhat an extreme way at school, but then I think you can see it in the workplace, with people pushing their careers. Well, look, I'm conscious that we've been talking and withering on for actually nearly an hour, which is pretty good going, given that we've literally not scripted any of this at all, made it up on the spot, and we're still not sure, frankly, what we're calling this podcast. I'm tempted to call it Joystick, Joysticking, I think if you googled it, though, you might be in trouble, Joysticking, a route to a better life, or something like that, maybe, because we've got, like I said, we've got the social contracts, and for those that are interested in Google that, you'll see all kinds of much more academic material than we've shared in this 50-odd minutes, but I think we've ranged there, haven't we, from some very benign and somewhat juvenile examples of crossing the line, or maybe sailing close to the line, and some go way over, you're changing room sandwiches, things just rank, so then some pretty big political and philosophical questions, and then coming all the way back into, frankly, what's life like as a parent, which is quite a broad range of topics, I mean, I listen to various podcasts, one of the ones I listen to is The Rest Is Football, I don't know what to call this one, The Rest Is Kindness, The Rest Is, yeah, The Rest Is, Yeah, Maybe, or maybe we call it To Pee Or Not To Pee, and maybe if there's one thing, if anybody does listen to this, that takes from it, is whether they should think next time before they do go and pee in the shower. I like it, that is a good place to finish, very good, all right, I enjoyed that, mate, that was brilliant.
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