It's been a while since I've posted a clip, but here's a quick update from my trip to Portugal. I had a great time there and got to meet some great people, but there was one moment in particular that left me with a new appreciation for God.
00:00:48.020And then headed off to New York, did some media engagements there, including, I think it was my third appearance on Greg Gutfeld's show.
00:00:57.580Then came back to Montreal for a bit of time and then headed back to California, where I was invited to speak at the Commonwealth Club, which is a really beautiful venue.
00:01:14.140And actually, I was expecting to see a real, you know, dystopia in San Francisco, which I actually, I had thought that the last time that I was in the area, I think it was in 2018.
00:01:27.180I was speaking at the Association for Psychological Science, APS, in 2018, I think.
00:01:34.600And at that time, maybe the hotel was in a slightly more seedy part.
00:04:30.120Because, you know, it speaks to one of the points that I discuss in this book, in The Sad Truth About Happiness, that, you know, you have to be open to the world.
00:04:40.080You have to, you know, life is truly a playground, not just in the most obvious sense of, you know, have a playful mindset.
00:04:48.820But there are so many incredible opportunities to meet all sorts of incredible people and connect with people that you otherwise might think that you don't have things in common with.
00:05:01.000Have fun, be open, be curious, be engaged.
00:05:07.500And not that I wish to bring this up again.
00:05:09.440And don't be like the many, many people who listened to my very innocent quip on Joe Rogan, where I was making fun of various accents, including the Portuguese accent, the Hebrew accent, and then the French Canadian accent.
00:05:25.440And it led to hundreds of hate mails, death threats, insults, racist insults, Arabic insults, anti-Semitic insults, calls to have me fired because I was joking about the French Canadian accent being unattractive.
00:05:44.220That's not a prescription to live a happy life.
00:05:48.220It's not a way to conduct yourself with honor and dignity.
00:05:54.180Imagine if, you know, I had been weak enough to completely capitulate to all that pressure.
00:06:02.460Think of the gentleman who recently in Toronto, I think, a principal who, because he had the diversity inclusion equity mob come after him, ended up committing suicide.
00:06:46.960And so, you know, it's made the news everywhere here, which itself is a sad story.
00:06:52.740Especially when someone makes a joke about an accent and it can so inflame people's passions in such a negative way.
00:07:00.640That's not really how you want to live life.
00:07:02.460Now, in my case, I'm fortunate enough that I have a strong personhood that while it was bewildering to see this and it was frustrating and it angered me,
00:07:12.720I wasn't going to jump off a building.
00:07:16.060I wasn't going to commit suicide because, you know, a bunch of humorless fascists were going to come after me.
00:07:22.300But again, it shows you that that's not the prescription to live a good life.
00:07:27.320People might like Thai food or they hate Thai food.
00:07:30.320And if they say it, that doesn't make them anti-Thai.
00:07:33.100People might love Italian, how it sounds, or they may hate it.
00:08:13.220And yet, to see the level of hatred that I received, those were real people who really wanted me out of Quebec,
00:08:22.500kicked back to the Middle East, who really wanted me fired, a 30-year professor.
00:08:29.200Is that a good, healthy way to live life?
00:08:31.540When we were walking around today, my wife was saying, oh, you know, I hope that you don't get one of these crazy folks coming up to you now on the street.
00:08:40.940Is this what should be happening in the 21st century?
00:08:44.100A guy makes a joke in Texas about an accent that's 4,000 miles away.
00:08:49.640And now, the wife is asking, oh, is it going to be safe for us to walk out?
00:08:54.780That's not a prescription for a healthy, secure, anti-fragile society.
00:09:01.320So, anyways, a lot of stuff has happened the past month.
00:09:03.480Hopefully, much of it is now blown away past us, which speaks, again, to something that I discuss in the book, which is be anti-fragile.
00:09:14.300Believe me, it wasn't tough to see, you know, the Minister of Justice of Quebec, I think it was the Minister of Education or Science, all weighing in against me.
00:09:24.500As if, you know, I was, you know, I had caught, I had been caught, you know, selling national secrets to an enemy state.
00:09:33.860I made a joke with Joe Rogan on the local accent, which Quebecers themselves will make about their accents, with the French will make about Quebecers, which all kinds of people make fun of all sorts of accents.
00:09:48.240People make fun of the way the Lebanese speak French, where, at least the very old-school Lebanese, they roll their R, je regarde, right?
00:09:58.940The R is rolled, it's heavy, it's like a Middle Eastern R.
00:10:32.540What a, if anything, it is disappointing to see that in a so-called inclusive society,
00:10:41.580people can very, very quickly show their hatred of immigrants, their hatred of people from the Middle East, their hatred of Jews.
00:10:49.580And this is for someone who's been living here since 1975.
00:10:53.160So apparently I haven't yet gotten the street creds of having lived long enough to be able to make fun as a Quebecer of the Quebecer accent.
00:11:04.320That's not the way we want to live life.
00:11:05.780I was disappointed that not, that there weren't more folks who, you know, high-profile folks who, you know, weighed in on the matter.
00:11:16.700Because again, it's, the issue is trivial.
00:11:19.920The local accent joke is, but it's, it captures something.
00:11:24.060Imagine if I had been in an emotionally fragile state.
00:11:29.040Imagine if I was going through a rough period of my life where receiving such a gigantic blowback, a tsunami of blowback, of hate, insults, threats, ministers, politicians, television shows, newspapers, all weighing in about me making a joke, about an accent.
00:11:49.640Imagine if that would have pushed me over the edge.