Episode 128

The best way to speak to and deal with a**holes! | Jeremy Sherman

How do you deal with buttheads without becoming a butthead yourself?

My guest Jeremy Sherman has been studying multiple disciplines in human sciences in several of the top US homes of academia. As a self-proclaimed psychoproctologist, he helps us explore the asshole mindset and how to counter the tactics they often employ in arguments and why not countering assholery could be the end of us all. This and much more in a fun but adult conversation.

(You will notice in this episode the US/UK divide. In the UK we call people arseholes as a derogative and in the US it's assholes. They mean exactly the same thing, so please consider them interchangeable for this episode and this is my unique rendition of the Gershwin classic 'you say asshole and I say arsehole, let's call the whole thing off!')

In this episode:

  • Why Yoda was wrong in Star Wars
  • What is psycho proctology?
  • What allows us to say someone is an asshole?
  • Do assholes know they are being assholes?
  • Irony as a tool of persuasion?
  • How to tackle trolls

and more besides.

You can find out more about my guest at JeremySherman.com and his book is called What's up with Assholes. Jeremy's book recommendations are Style: lessons in clarity and grace by Joseph Williams (definitely not in everyone's budget, sorry) and Building Great Sentences By Brooks Landon available in audio as part of Audible's Great Courses series.

Please do check out our show sponsors Brand Face and for a limited time you can take their Brand Score Quiz to find out if your brand is being seen the way you want it to. Go to BrandFaceScore.com and find out today for free.

This episode contains strong language in this episode that may not be suitable for everyone.

Did you enjoy the show? Did you learn anything new or useful? If you did, then the best way to show your appreciation is by sharing the show to your online network. Tag me and I'll give you a shout out on an upcoming episode. Leave a review and I'll read it out on the show.

Of course, if you REALLY liked it, you're welcome to support the show financially too using the link below.

Support the show (https://speakinginfluence.supercast.tech/)

Mentioned in this episode:

Podfluence Weekly

Join us for the official Podfluence Weekly newsletter https://present-influence.ck.page or Subscribe on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/build-relation/newsletter-follow?entityUrn=6882642444815519744

Transcript
Johnny:

Welcome to the show.

Johnny:

My name's Johnny Ball, this is Speaking Influence the show that

Johnny:

dive into the world of influence and persuasion to help you build your

Johnny:

professional influence and to become a powerfully persuasive communicator.

Johnny:

This week, we are really going deep and we're going to be talking a lot

Johnny:

about dealing with difficult people.

Johnny:

And I will say, up front, that if you are sensitive to grown up language or

Johnny:

some maybe adult language, then this show may not be the right one for you

Johnny:

in which case you might miss out on some great information, but I don't want to

Johnny:

be the cause of great offense to anybody.

Johnny:

So if that is something that you don't like, then please check

Johnny:

out other episodes of the show and maybe gave this one a miss.

Johnny:

However, if that isn't something that bothers you, then you will get

Johnny:

a lot of value out of this show.

Johnny:

My conversation today is with Jeremy Sherman.

Johnny:

Jeremy is a colorful guy with a colorful vocabulary.

Johnny:

And certainly some infectious humor and a deep level of scholarship

Johnny:

with loads of content across the sciences and humanities.

Johnny:

With a master's in public policy from UC Berkeley and a doctorate in decision

Johnny:

theory with committee members from Harvard, Berkley, and university college

Johnny:

London, he might well be one of my most academically prestigious guests yet.

Johnny:

Jeremy is a self-proclaimed pioneer psycho proctologist with 25 years of

Johnny:

working to explain total jerks and how to stop them without becoming one yourself.

Johnny:

It's a super interesting guy who was also once elected elder in

Johnny:

the world's largest hippie commune.

Johnny:

With numerous articles for psychology today, alternate and Salon, I

Johnny:

know you're going to enjoy this conversation with Jeremy Sherman.

Johnny:

On Speaking Influence, we really tried to bring you the

Johnny:

broadest range of conversations about influence and persuasion.

Johnny:

Understanding that it is one of the key skills.

Johnny:

In fact, in this show.

Johnny:

Jeremy talks about How the skills of influence and persuasion are really

Johnny:

what can make or break society.

Johnny:

And

Johnny:

hopefully lead us away from causing our own extinction.

Johnny:

Guests on the show generally range from successful authors and

Johnny:

entrepreneurs, secret service members and psychologists, marketing and

Johnny:

branding experts, the occasional professional comedian, world champions

Johnny:

in public speaking and storytelling, former cult members, neuroscientists,

Johnny:

voice coaches, professional stylists, political speech writers, and public

Johnny:

speaking experts and more besides.

Johnny:

Each episode takes our guests knowledge and experience, turning it into actionable

Johnny:

information that you can use to build a deeper understanding of how the world

Johnny:

of influence and persuasion works to become a better wielder of the weapons

Johnny:

of ethical influence and persuasion

Johnny:

in life and predominantly in business.

Johnny:

I hope you will enjoy this conversation as much as I did.

Johnny:

I look forward to hearing any feedback you may have around it.

Johnny:

For now enjoy the episode.

Don:

Welcome to Speaking Influence.

Don:

The show that helps you to master the psychology and application

Don:

of ethical influence and persuasion, in life and business.

Don:

With persuasive presentations and podcasting coach, Johnny Ball.

Nancy:

If you're a coach, speaker or course creator and would like to have

Nancy:

a simple online ecosystem for your business where you can create funnels,

Nancy:

build an integrated website, sell and host courses and live programs, build

Nancy:

your list with lead magnets, manage your sales, create communities and so much

Nancy:

more, in a way that is affordable and fully supported, you'll love New Zenler.

Nancy:

You can try everything out for free.

Nancy:

And if you love it you can register for monthly or discounted annual billing.

Nancy:

It's more cost effective than most other similar platforms . Don't

Nancy:

pay for a multitude of services you have to then link up manually.

Nancy:

Get an online solution that does everything you need in one place.

Nancy:

Find the link in the show notes and try New Zenler as the all in one

Nancy:

solution for your business today.

Johnny:

Welcome to Speaking Influence.

Johnny:

And today I'm very excited to get into a topic that I haven't really covered

Johnny:

that much in the show before, dealing with difficult people, or if we want to

Johnny:

be frank about dealing with arseholes.

Johnny:

How do we manage to do that?

Johnny:

How do we do it with influence and persuasion?

Johnny:

And my guest here is he's an expert he's going to help us to do that.

Johnny:

So please welcome to the show Jeremy Sherman.

Jeremy Sherman:

Hello, it's a delight to be here.

Jeremy Sherman:

And I should clarify right from the start, I'm a specialist on assholes.

Jeremy Sherman:

I don't think one can be an expert assholes.

Jeremy Sherman:

I think it's a dangerous thing to claim to be an expert on assholes.

Johnny:

We've all heard of this.

Johnny:

I guess you have a different title for yourself,

Jeremy Sherman:

And I call myself a psycho proctologist and it's a

Jeremy Sherman:

light name for a touchy subject.

Jeremy Sherman:

Again, the problem with calling oneself, an expert on assholes, you claiming that

Jeremy Sherman:

you are the one who knows how to diagnose the assholes, really dangerous business.

Jeremy Sherman:

Some of the worst assholes in history have claimed to be experts on assholes.

Jeremy Sherman:

So no, I chose a light name for a touchy subject, which is basically the diagnosis,

Jeremy Sherman:

treatment and prevention of assholery.

Johnny:

Well, I think that's going to be a great topic for all of us

Johnny:

and certainly we don't want to be the arseholes, so I think we can all

Johnny:

learn something from the chat today.

Johnny:

And before we get too far into that, I want to ask you for you personally,

Johnny:

who would be somebody who you've looked up to respected and admired in terms

Johnny:

of that influence and persuasion, and perhaps what they've done with it as well?

Jeremy Sherman:

Well, behind me actually have a column of photographs

Jeremy Sherman:

of some of the interesting minds for me around persuasion.

Jeremy Sherman:

Some of them are fairly obscure, but the guy at the top is Terrence Deacon.

Jeremy Sherman:

He was a Harvard neuroscientist, biological anthropologist.

Jeremy Sherman:

When I met him 25 years ago.

Jeremy Sherman:

He was willing to join my PhD committee, even though I wasn't

Jeremy Sherman:

at Harvard and we have worked together since for 25 years.

Jeremy Sherman:

He's, he's the most important influences way.

Jeremy Sherman:

And one of the interesting things about him is he is not

Jeremy Sherman:

a very persuasive speaker.

Jeremy Sherman:

He is flat, he is calmer than I am by a lot.

Jeremy Sherman:

I grew up in Northern California during the heyday of the passion era.

Jeremy Sherman:

You know, the, the hippies and the counterculture and feelings are truth.

Jeremy Sherman:

I'm I have.

Jeremy Sherman:

I'm a very colorful talker and he's a neuroscientist and a nerd.

Jeremy Sherman:

It took us a while to be able to understand and speak with

Jeremy Sherman:

each other in ways that work.

Jeremy Sherman:

But one of the things I found delightful about him from the start

Jeremy Sherman:

was there's a calm readiness to have a real conversation with anyone

Jeremy Sherman:

who's curious about the things that he's curious about and I've

Jeremy Sherman:

actually ended up accumulating.

Jeremy Sherman:

Developing more of that skill.

Jeremy Sherman:

I've become a mellower persuader by a little anyway, in my 25

Jeremy Sherman:

years, working with this guy.

Johnny:

Yeah.

Johnny:

So you really understand quite well how to influence and persuade people.

Johnny:

I mean, this has been an area that you teach around and and so I've

Johnny:

been looking forward to having this conversation with you particularly, but

Johnny:

where did that interest begin for you?

Jeremy Sherman:

I think it must have begun began with my father

Jeremy Sherman:

who was a businessman, but that wasn't really his primary gift.

Jeremy Sherman:

He was a successful businessman, but he was an orator at home.

Jeremy Sherman:

And and in the world he would extemporize, he would give public speeches that

Jeremy Sherman:

would blow people's minds without notes.

Jeremy Sherman:

He just had that gift.

Jeremy Sherman:

And part of that was that he had gotten quite addicted to Shakespeare.

Jeremy Sherman:

And he brought that kind of color to his speaking everywhere.

Jeremy Sherman:

And and I was kind of tongue tied around him and my two older brothers

Jeremy Sherman:

who were much more articulate than me.

Jeremy Sherman:

So I would say.

Jeremy Sherman:

I had an anxiousness growing up that made it, so I had a yearning

Jeremy Sherman:

to get better at articulation.

Jeremy Sherman:

Then I ended up working as an activist for many years in

Jeremy Sherman:

environmental issues primarily and started studying social marketing.

Jeremy Sherman:

And since then, I've just discovered that I have an obsession with words

Jeremy Sherman:

and succinctness trying to say pithy things as as, as tightly as possible.

Jeremy Sherman:

I guess that's kind of redundant, but colorful.

Jeremy Sherman:

I want brain Velcro.

Jeremy Sherman:

I want ideas to stick.

Jeremy Sherman:

And so I, I generate an awful lot of of aphorism and and I look, I'm just

Jeremy Sherman:

constantly interested in how to play with words and make them more effective.

Johnny:

Oh, but glad you are because we get to benefit from

Johnny:

your intense interest in, and your experience over all these years.

Johnny:

Now, I remember when we spoke before you mentioned that you did that

Johnny:

orange origin, Donald Trump, that oranges origins of life research.

Jeremy Sherman:

Yes.

Jeremy Sherman:

And actually that has, that has great bearing on everything I work on.

Jeremy Sherman:

So I call myself a cradle to grave researcher from the origins

Jeremy Sherman:

of life, to our grave situation.

Jeremy Sherman:

I had gotten together with Deacon, this guy this professor

Jeremy Sherman:

who's now here at Berkeley.

Jeremy Sherman:

So we go on dog walks over.

Jeremy Sherman:

A couple of days and do more research.

Jeremy Sherman:

I've gotten in touch with him after reading his book on the evolution of

Jeremy Sherman:

language, which made me cry again, not because he's a passionate writer,

Jeremy Sherman:

but because it was way over my head.

Jeremy Sherman:

I cried because I didn't seem to.

Jeremy Sherman:

I, it was new to me.

Jeremy Sherman:

So he had just finished that.

Jeremy Sherman:

And as I was working with him on my PhD, he had turned his

Jeremy Sherman:

attention to a huge question

Jeremy Sherman:

that's overlooked in the sciences, which is what our beings and how

Jeremy Sherman:

did they emerge from chemistry?

Jeremy Sherman:

We have an assumption that they evolved out of chemistry.

Jeremy Sherman:

Well, the only things that evolve are beings and their effort, their tryings.

Jeremy Sherman:

So he was basically asking the question how did organisms and

Jeremy Sherman:

trying emerged from chemistry, which.

Jeremy Sherman:

Made up of individuals and they aren't trying chemistry.

Jeremy Sherman:

Isn't trying to do anything.

Jeremy Sherman:

We've been working on that for 25 years.

Jeremy Sherman:

I wrote a book on it called neither ghost nor machine the emergent nature of selves.

Jeremy Sherman:

And you'll see that in the title, I'm throwing out two popular assumptions.

Jeremy Sherman:

One is that there's something like a ghost that enters into

Jeremy Sherman:

matter that makes it come alive.

Jeremy Sherman:

It could be a vital force or spirit or whatever like that.

Jeremy Sherman:

And the other is that we're mirror machines.

Jeremy Sherman:

And so.

Jeremy Sherman:

This, that worked grounds.

Jeremy Sherman:

Everything else I do.

Jeremy Sherman:

So I cradle the grave from the origins of life, to her grave situation.

Jeremy Sherman:

I've written a thousand articles for blog articles for psychology today on everyday

Jeremy Sherman:

decision-making I just wrote this book on psycho proctology.

Jeremy Sherman:

All of it is grounded in our assumptions about actually what

Jeremy Sherman:

selves and trying are from the start.

Jeremy Sherman:

And also how radically selfhood changes under the influence of language

Jeremy Sherman:

powers of persuasion, including self persuasion that we humans deal with.

Jeremy Sherman:

It's just, there's no contest comparing us to other organisms.

Jeremy Sherman:

We are adapting under the drunken influences of language.

Jeremy Sherman:

Language is a very confusing newfangled thing we've developed

Jeremy Sherman:

in the last to 200,000 years.

Johnny:

I wonder whether there does any of that tie in tying them with

Johnny:

things that the origins and nature and understanding of consciousness?

Jeremy Sherman:

Oh, yes, completely.

Jeremy Sherman:

So, we're part of that whole conversation about consciousness, but

Jeremy Sherman:

we also think that the consciousness debate is missing the fundamental,

Jeremy Sherman:

which is that organisms are trying.

Jeremy Sherman:

That's w people assume that Darwin explained the struggle for existence.

Jeremy Sherman:

He did not.

Jeremy Sherman:

He admitted he didn't.

Jeremy Sherman:

He said, I'm assuming that organisms are struggling for their existence.

Jeremy Sherman:

And I'm explaining how that struggle would fit different circumstances.

Jeremy Sherman:

That is how you'd get different speciation and different adaptations over time.

Jeremy Sherman:

But adaptations have they don't.

Jeremy Sherman:

Chemistry, doesn't adapt only beings and trying to only selves and trying

Jeremy Sherman:

to, and what's interesting about it is we're all kind of self obsessed.

Jeremy Sherman:

We're all we, humans are all trying to figure out what to try to do.

Jeremy Sherman:

And yet we rarely stop to ask what is trying and how did it start?

Jeremy Sherman:

You know your desk, isn't trying your computer, isn't trying, and yet you

Jeremy Sherman:

are, what's the difference there?

Jeremy Sherman:

So if you start in consciousness studies, they talk about the hard problem, which

Jeremy Sherman:

is if animals are just computers, then why would you end up with feelings like the

Jeremy Sherman:

feeling of redness, what they call qualia?

Jeremy Sherman:

Well, I call that the made harder problem.

Jeremy Sherman:

If you if you start with the assumption that all organisms are just computers.

Jeremy Sherman:

Yeah.

Jeremy Sherman:

You're going to have a heck of a time explaining conscious.

Jeremy Sherman:

Beacon describes it as trying to explain hair working from porcupine quills.

Jeremy Sherman:

Yeah.

Jeremy Sherman:

Their hair, but they're highly specialized and highly evolved.

Jeremy Sherman:

Don't start up there.

Jeremy Sherman:

Start with The first being that is trying to keep itself going,

Jeremy Sherman:

that emerges from chemistry.

Jeremy Sherman:

That's why the origins of life is really important to these philosophical

Jeremy Sherman:

questions free will you know, people don't even know what a will is.

Jeremy Sherman:

They don't even talk about that.

Jeremy Sherman:

The determinants say, there's no will in the free will people assume

Jeremy Sherman:

there's will and argue that it's free.

Jeremy Sherman:

You're missing the point.

Jeremy Sherman:

What is will, what does it mean to, to try to do anything?

Johnny:

If I find out whether that was kinda kind of mind blowing, I love

Johnny:

thinking about them, love pondering the philosophies and everything behind it.

Johnny:

But undoubtedly, we don't have answers to those things for a reason.

Johnny:

Yeah.

Johnny:

Maybe it's maybe at some point we will thanks to the work of people.

Johnny:

People like yourself.

Johnny:

Now I know there's a lot of rabbit holes.

Johnny:

We could go down with all of that and we're not going to,

Johnny:

but we are going to talk about, we are going to talk about the.

Johnny:

Navigating and recognition of assholes and our life.

Johnny:

Cause I think it was a Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher king emperor, who

Johnny:

said that every day we will wake up and we will have to deal with

Johnny:

essentially all kinds of arseholes and we should be prepared for that.

Johnny:

So your work, some of your work at least is helping us to be able

Johnny:

to navigate our life a bit better.

Johnny:

Can you tell us a little more about that?

Jeremy Sherman:

Yes.

Jeremy Sherman:

This work, the psycho proctology work started with

Jeremy Sherman:

me, posing a question to myself.

Jeremy Sherman:

What is a Butthead since it can't just be whoever I happen to butt heads with.

Jeremy Sherman:

That's how I got interested in pursuing an objective definition of asshole.

Jeremy Sherman:

I thought is a broader category than the psychological diagnostic terms.

Jeremy Sherman:

Like a narcissist, psychopath, sociopath, dark triad personality.

Jeremy Sherman:

I saw it as more encompassing, but I also saw that it was ill-defined

Jeremy Sherman:

and not touched by psychologists.

Jeremy Sherman:

They don't touch, they won't go there.

Jeremy Sherman:

I know this from personal experience, I write blog articles and when I mentioned.

Jeremy Sherman:

The idea of psycho proctology, they get a little worried because

Jeremy Sherman:

it begins to sound like I'm going to just join the fray of people

Jeremy Sherman:

who's defined a Butthead as anybody they butt heads with.

Jeremy Sherman:

So I'm saying now I have to, I have to get beyond that.

Jeremy Sherman:

It does relate to the origins of life work in a very straightforward manner.

Jeremy Sherman:

All organisms, the job one for organisms is not reproducing.

Jeremy Sherman:

We're degenerating all the time.

Jeremy Sherman:

Everything's falling apart in the world.

Jeremy Sherman:

And we're these fragile bags of bones and stuff you watch how quickly a corpse

Jeremy Sherman:

decays, that's what we're up against.

Jeremy Sherman:

We have to regenerate ourselves faster than we would otherwise to generate.

Jeremy Sherman:

What does that entail?

Jeremy Sherman:

It means protecting against the generation.

Jeremy Sherman:

And regenerating what degenerates?

Jeremy Sherman:

Well, regenerating what generates it takes energy, but energy is

Jeremy Sherman:

exactly what degenerates us.

Jeremy Sherman:

So I'm, I'm going to get the assholes almost there.

Jeremy Sherman:

So that means that we have to be selectively interacting

Jeremy Sherman:

with our environments.

Jeremy Sherman:

All organisms.

Jeremy Sherman:

They have to take in food, but not poison.

Jeremy Sherman:

You don't have to drink water, but not bleach.

Jeremy Sherman:

Okay.

Jeremy Sherman:

So what happens when you bring that to the realm of language?

Jeremy Sherman:

You get confirmation bias that is you'll take in the concepts that

Jeremy Sherman:

regenerate you and you'll keep out the concepts that degenerate you.

Jeremy Sherman:

So confirmation bias is a problem that all decent people, all mature

Jeremy Sherman:

people know they have to manage.

Jeremy Sherman:

Assholes treat confirmation bias as the solution to all their problems.

Jeremy Sherman:

And it's extremely convenient and extremely attractive.

Jeremy Sherman:

I also would say that only.

Jeremy Sherman:

There are plenty of parasites and predators in the biological world.

Jeremy Sherman:

Asshole is a human thing and it comes from having language and it comes in part

Jeremy Sherman:

from language makes us an exceptionally uncommonly, anxious being beings.

Jeremy Sherman:

We w I mean, if you pair what a dog could worry about before falling

Jeremy Sherman:

asleep to what a human could worry about, there's just no contest.

Jeremy Sherman:

Humans have, you know, all the real and imaginary threats and missed opportunities

Jeremy Sherman:

that they can imagine in the future, all the regrets of their past, all of that.

Jeremy Sherman:

We are an anxious creature.

Jeremy Sherman:

And we are also really good at rationalizing denial

Jeremy Sherman:

of what makes us anxious.

Jeremy Sherman:

So that pairing makes being an asshole, very tempting.

Jeremy Sherman:

And while we want to discourage it by saying, no, it's not a good life for them.

Jeremy Sherman:

We have to recognize that playing God by treating confirmation

Jeremy Sherman:

bias as the solution to all your problems, that is a very tempting

Jeremy Sherman:

option for humans.

Jeremy Sherman:

You get to shed your conscience, you're right, no matter what you do, you're

Jeremy Sherman:

you get what any organism would want, which would be perfect freedom, but it's

Jeremy Sherman:

unencumberedness, and perfect safety.

Jeremy Sherman:

I think of assholes as basically claiming to have a wildcard trump

Jeremy Sherman:

card, they can do anything they want and whatever they do is unassialable.

Jeremy Sherman:

That would be a temptation for humans.

Johnny:

And is any of this relatable task in terms of something

Johnny:

like black and white thinking?

Johnny:

Is that the kind of thing that you would expect there or is that

Jeremy Sherman:

Yeah, though.

Jeremy Sherman:

The interesting thing though, is so yes, it's black and white thinking in this

Jeremy Sherman:

one sense, which is that I'm right about everything and anybody who challenges

Jeremy Sherman:

me is wrong, but you will find that assholes will play very subtle thinker,

Jeremy Sherman:

a nuanced thinker when they want to disparage any challenge to them, as

Jeremy Sherman:

we have a sense that they only think might makes right now, they don't, when

Jeremy Sherman:

they're losing, they think might make us wrong and they're Christ on the cross.

Jeremy Sherman:

You know, they're black and white about they play critical thinker.

Jeremy Sherman:

To check up against anyone else, you know?

Jeremy Sherman:

Well, I don't know about that.

Jeremy Sherman:

They're in the, you know, they're doubtful.

Jeremy Sherman:

They want to play the skeptic, you know, you could be right.

Jeremy Sherman:

But I doubt it.

Jeremy Sherman:

But they won't do that about themselves.

Jeremy Sherman:

So it's actually a kind of double dealing yeah.

Jeremy Sherman:

W you could be wrong.

Jeremy Sherman:

And that makes me write about everything.

Jeremy Sherman:

That's kind of part of it.

Johnny:

Are you saying that this is a conscious strategy that

Johnny:

they choose to do they know what they're doing when they do this?

Jeremy Sherman:

No, actually that's the heart of my work on this.

Jeremy Sherman:

That is, I don't think narcissists are actually consciously

Jeremy Sherman:

preening for the most part.

Jeremy Sherman:

I ended up replacing the word asshole.

Jeremy Sherman:

I don't like the word asshole it's for one reason it's very imprecise.

Jeremy Sherman:

I don't even like the word narcissism.

Jeremy Sherman:

I think it's imprecise.

Jeremy Sherman:

I ended up coming up with the word trump bot.

Jeremy Sherman:

These are people who robotically play fake or trumped up trump card.

Jeremy Sherman:

So the word trump is a double entendre.

Jeremy Sherman:

It means beats everything.

Jeremy Sherman:

That's the that's the trump card.

Jeremy Sherman:

It also means fake.

Jeremy Sherman:

So if you've got, so these are people who robotically play it.

Jeremy Sherman:

I also out of the work on the origins of language and how persuasion works,

Jeremy Sherman:

I think we rarely think about what we're going to say, think about the

Jeremy Sherman:

meaning of what we say and then say it, I think more often than not, we'll

Jeremy Sherman:

grab from popular culture or vernacular something that might work in a situation.

Jeremy Sherman:

And if it works, we'll keep on saying it it becomes a habit that is it's

Jeremy Sherman:

intellectual effort to say what you mean and mean, what you say is optional

Jeremy Sherman:

for humans, but often you just find something that they're saying locally,

Jeremy Sherman:

an example might be deal with it.

Jeremy Sherman:

Okay.

Jeremy Sherman:

Someone's dealing with you by challenging you and you say deal with it.

Jeremy Sherman:

You're not thinking about the FA I mean, you're not thinking about what that means.

Jeremy Sherman:

You're not thinking about the words.

Jeremy Sherman:

You're just, if it persuades people.

Jeremy Sherman:

To get over it, basically take it or leave it.

Jeremy Sherman:

You'll keep on saying it it's a, it's a useful habit.

Jeremy Sherman:

To take that all the way out.

Jeremy Sherman:

You take a popular, positive word and negative word in your culture.

Jeremy Sherman:

So if you happen to be in the new age culture, it might be mindful,

Jeremy Sherman:

which you don't know what it means, but it sounds hella good.

Jeremy Sherman:

And then you take the opposite of it, or you could take Patriot

Jeremy Sherman:

and traitor or Christian, and non-Christian you can often do it with

Jeremy Sherman:

a popular cultural icon like Christ.

Jeremy Sherman:

So I'm with Christ.

Jeremy Sherman:

If you challenge me, you're challenging Christ.

Jeremy Sherman:

Because I've already signed up with him or if you're challenging me,

Jeremy Sherman:

you're challenging mindfulness, I've got this hero term.

Jeremy Sherman:

I don't have to think at all about what those terms.

Jeremy Sherman:

I can simply label anybody who's against me as a traitor in any and

Jeremy Sherman:

myself as a patriot without paying any attention to what the words mean.

Jeremy Sherman:

It's a kind of braying it's like, I call it bullshit dozing, bullshit,

Jeremy Sherman:

being defined as not caring.

Jeremy Sherman:

What's true.

Jeremy Sherman:

And you're just bulldozing by bullshitting.

Jeremy Sherman:

And you're also dozing in the process.

Jeremy Sherman:

I noticed yesterday, the words are fun this way, but anyway, no, I would not

Jeremy Sherman:

say it's generally a conscious process.

Jeremy Sherman:

And in a way, the challenge for dealing with them is to make it conscious

Jeremy Sherman:

that is they'll keep on doing it as long as they can get away with it.

Jeremy Sherman:

So a lot of my work is on how to humbly humble people who will do anything to

Jeremy Sherman:

avoid humility, which also means how do you make it costly to these guys.

Jeremy Sherman:

if it doesn't cost them anything, they're not going to stop doing it.

Johnny:

Now, you mentioned that if I'm understanding correctly, you mentioned

Johnny:

that you, that some of this was about survival, like almost being able to

Johnny:

get through life and protection, like self protection, making sure that you

Johnny:

survive and that you flourish what's actually being protected or what is the

Johnny:

perception of what's being protected with those kinds of behaviors that

Johnny:

would seem perhaps Machiavellian and somewhat underhanded to others.

Jeremy Sherman:

Right.

Jeremy Sherman:

Well, so, So I think think a lot about what we call terror management theory.

Jeremy Sherman:

That is the disturbing condition of being human.

Jeremy Sherman:

That is, we are beings that can foresee our own deaths.

Jeremy Sherman:

I think a fundamental question that's in the back of our minds, it rarely comes up

Jeremy Sherman:

directly is how do I throw all into life?

Jeremy Sherman:

Knowing I'll be thrown out?

Jeremy Sherman:

How do I invest knowing I have to divest it?

Jeremy Sherman:

So I think there's something fundamental about us that wants protection.

Jeremy Sherman:

I mean, when you think about what this means, nothing means more

Jeremy Sherman:

to me directly than me and mine.

Jeremy Sherman:

That is, I am self-obsessed.

Jeremy Sherman:

I think all organisms are to the extent they can be selfish.

Jeremy Sherman:

They are busy trying to survive.

Jeremy Sherman:

The struggle for existence is a personal thing for every organism.

Jeremy Sherman:

And here we are doing it with this inconceivable concept that we know is

Jeremy Sherman:

true, that we're going to disappear.

Jeremy Sherman:

So we don't have to get very specific about what we're trying to protect,

Jeremy Sherman:

but we are trying to protect ourselves.

Jeremy Sherman:

We'd like to find a way to transcend.

Jeremy Sherman:

There's a Zen saying life is like getting on a boat.

Jeremy Sherman:

That's about to sink.

Jeremy Sherman:

If the boat's about the sink, we'd like to shed the boat and

Jeremy Sherman:

become a disembodied spirit.

Jeremy Sherman:

I think that's, what's going on with a lot of religious thought, but also ideology.

Jeremy Sherman:

And you can even do it with atheism that is called finding an immortality project.

Jeremy Sherman:

Something about you that lasts forever.

Jeremy Sherman:

It's something that you stand for.

Jeremy Sherman:

So, but I think at heart it's.

Jeremy Sherman:

That we're these vulnerable creatures in an uncertain world.

Jeremy Sherman:

I have great empathy and sympathy for us all, including the assholes.

Jeremy Sherman:

I don't sorry.

Jeremy Sherman:

I have great empathy and compassion for assholes.

Jeremy Sherman:

That is I could put myself in their shoes and I know they're my shoes too.

Jeremy Sherman:

I wear those things.

Jeremy Sherman:

But I don't have sympathy and journey for them.

Jeremy Sherman:

I don't, I think we have to actually make it cost them or else they'll stop.

Jeremy Sherman:

Yeah.

Jeremy Sherman:

Or else they'll take down society.

Johnny:

Which seems to happen again and again now, I mean, interestingly,

Johnny:

I'm currently reading I don't know if you've heard of Will's Storr,

Johnny:

but he is an interesting author and has a book called The Status Game.

Johnny:

And that is primarily about.

Johnny:

The people's battle for status and that life is all about status.

Johnny:

And I think that it's very relevant perhaps to what we're talking about

Johnny:

here, because we all strive status.

Johnny:

So, and we will start for standing and our perception of ourselves.

Johnny:

There's certainly a perception in the eyes of other people.

Johnny:

However much we might like to think is not important, always is,

Johnny:

and probably always will be is.

Johnny:

In our nature.

Johnny:

I don't know if we're ever going to evolve past that but I think you see

Johnny:

that as being an important part of this, especially in these sorts of games.

Johnny:

Cause I think a lot of what happens here is status games.

Jeremy Sherman:

Yes, very much so.

Jeremy Sherman:

And so status has become very interesting to me lately.

Jeremy Sherman:

I was status obsessed especially in those early years when I really

Jeremy Sherman:

didn't know what I was good for.

Jeremy Sherman:

I just knew I had to be good for something.

Jeremy Sherman:

And I was scrambling around looking for a place where I could get status.

Jeremy Sherman:

It drove a lot of my early decisions, I would say straight through till till about

Jeremy Sherman:

25 years ago, when I found this niche where I seem to have appetite, aptitude,

Jeremy Sherman:

and opportunity, but opportunity is also been an interesting element in my life

Jeremy Sherman:

overall.

Jeremy Sherman:

I inherited money in an early age and my obsession was status early on.

Jeremy Sherman:

Mostly to, to rid myself of guilt for having basically

Jeremy Sherman:

earned received a lifetime salary before I earned it around 57.

Jeremy Sherman:

I'm now 65.

Jeremy Sherman:

It suddenly dawned on me that if I don't need status to put food on the

Jeremy Sherman:

table, I don't actually need status.

Jeremy Sherman:

And Yes, status is very important to gaining credibility, but I've also come

Jeremy Sherman:

around to feeling like my credibility is limited in this dinner of a world that

Jeremy Sherman:

is, everybody is looking for credibility audience like likes and all of that.

Jeremy Sherman:

And so in my naive youth, I used to think that I could be part of the thing

Jeremy Sherman:

that ch that pivoted the world to a transformation, which has kind of a

Jeremy Sherman:

social version of tribe of transcendence.

Jeremy Sherman:

You know, like we were going to wake up that kind of thing.

Jeremy Sherman:

I don't believe in that stuff anymore.

Jeremy Sherman:

I think we're stuck with human nature and every attempt ideological woke

Jeremy Sherman:

movement, including MAGA which I think is the most virulent woke movement

Jeremy Sherman:

in the United States right now.

Jeremy Sherman:

Those never work.

Jeremy Sherman:

We are grounded in our humanness.

Jeremy Sherman:

So at that point I suddenly realized that I had, I've got

Jeremy Sherman:

a sharp tongue for a long time.

Jeremy Sherman:

I've cultivated one.

Jeremy Sherman:

I grew up around sharp tongues and was defeated by sharp tongues.

Jeremy Sherman:

A lot.

Jeremy Sherman:

My older brothers rode me hard and I was easy to ride back then.

Jeremy Sherman:

So I have cultivated a sharp tongue, so sharp that I no longer partner.

Jeremy Sherman:

I no longer have a, I don't do romantic partnership anymore.

Jeremy Sherman:

I claim I say that I'm glad that my lack of appetite finally caught

Jeremy Sherman:

up with my lack of aptitude.

Jeremy Sherman:

I'm not good at biting my tongue at close range, but I could give my tongue more

Jeremy Sherman:

freedom if I didn't need the status, I could say what I really thought.

Jeremy Sherman:

So I don't, so I am relatively unaffiliated at this point.

Jeremy Sherman:

And like it.

Jeremy Sherman:

I'm a gentleman scholar, I don't have to worry about being slammed

Jeremy Sherman:

or censured or any of that stuff.

Jeremy Sherman:

I just get to take as much care as I can and thinking things through

Jeremy Sherman:

and making things as pithy as I can.

Jeremy Sherman:

I realize that is not most people's circumstances.

Johnny:

I just got, gotta think of maybe for some people that's going

Johnny:

to be the definition of an asshole.

Jeremy Sherman:

No, that's right.

Jeremy Sherman:

That's right.

Jeremy Sherman:

So you've got the, they talk about ass rich people having fuck you money.

Jeremy Sherman:

And then you can say, I have fuck you mouth.

Jeremy Sherman:

Yes.

Jeremy Sherman:

So that becomes a really big question.

Jeremy Sherman:

I'm not just liberating myself.

Jeremy Sherman:

I am under tight constraints.

Jeremy Sherman:

I, one of my last girlfriend said your feral shit.

Jeremy Sherman:

She said I was feral.

Jeremy Sherman:

And she meant it kind of as a compliment, but kind of as a worry.

Jeremy Sherman:

And I said to her, I'm not feral.

Jeremy Sherman:

I'm domesticated to other things.

Jeremy Sherman:

I'm domesticated to an intellectual path that intrigues me.

Jeremy Sherman:

Now, I got to say, could I be an asshole?

Jeremy Sherman:

Yes.

Jeremy Sherman:

Yes.

Jeremy Sherman:

I don't think you can.

Jeremy Sherman:

If you don't want to be an asshole, you have to expect some anxiety.

Jeremy Sherman:

Anybody who worries that they might be an asshole is unlikely to be one it's

Jeremy Sherman:

because assholes don't worry about it.

Jeremy Sherman:

They'll deny that they're assholes or they'll claim pride that they're assholes.

Jeremy Sherman:

Yeah, damn right.

Jeremy Sherman:

I'm an asshole either one, but that's the last thing they're going

Jeremy Sherman:

to do is be concerned about it.

Jeremy Sherman:

So, no.

Jeremy Sherman:

And this is actually part of what goes on for me is I think the opposite of

Jeremy Sherman:

asshole is I an ironic falliblist.

Jeremy Sherman:

Let me unpack that for a second.

Jeremy Sherman:

Cause I really is poorly defined.

Jeremy Sherman:

It's vaguely defined

Johnny:

Thanks to Alanis Morisette..

Jeremy Sherman:

that's right.

Jeremy Sherman:

And I, and many others, most people think it means saying

Jeremy Sherman:

the opposite of what you mean.

Jeremy Sherman:

That's not what I really means at least to me, but let me start with falliblist.

Jeremy Sherman:

So falliblist is a term coined by Charles Saunders Pierce.

Jeremy Sherman:

He's a philosopher and it basically boils down to this, no matter how

Jeremy Sherman:

confident I am in a bet, I remain still more confident that it is a bet.

Jeremy Sherman:

And nothing has given me more peace of mind in my life

Jeremy Sherman:

then recognizing that, that I am trying that I am guessing, and I have to guess

Jeremy Sherman:

it's like riding, driving a winding road that's that's being built as we drive it.

Jeremy Sherman:

I got to watch out on opposite sides of things for opposite kinds of errors.

Jeremy Sherman:

My idea of equanimity is being equally concerned that I am too

Jeremy Sherman:

assertive or not assertive enough.

Jeremy Sherman:

To verbal or not verbal enough.

Jeremy Sherman:

I mean, every one of those kinds of binaries, the kind of thing you could

Jeremy Sherman:

get at with the serenity prayer, you know, and my, to serene or to courageous,

Jeremy Sherman:

because I don't want to, I don't want to accept what I could improve

Jeremy Sherman:

or try to change what I can improve.

Jeremy Sherman:

So there's two sides of the winding road.

Jeremy Sherman:

I'm on both sides.

Jeremy Sherman:

I'm trying to avoid both sides of it.

Jeremy Sherman:

I don't want to go to extremes except when I need to make a sharp turn..

Jeremy Sherman:

So there are times when I'm very assertive or times when I'm very

Jeremy Sherman:

not assertive because that's what the situation calls for.

Jeremy Sherman:

So this is the antidote to a kind of fundamentalist hypocrisy, where you

Jeremy Sherman:

say, well, you should always be, you know, should always go always turn

Jeremy Sherman:

left or turn right on the winding road.

Jeremy Sherman:

That's absurd.

Jeremy Sherman:

Nobody lives by it.

Jeremy Sherman:

Nobody should live by that kind of moralizing.

Jeremy Sherman:

It's kind of a moral absolutism.

Jeremy Sherman:

You know, kindness is always the answer always be absolutely

Jeremy Sherman:

kind of, I don't think that's.

Jeremy Sherman:

I want to kindness is the question.

Jeremy Sherman:

It's not the answer.

Jeremy Sherman:

Love is the question, not the answer.

Jeremy Sherman:

So there's, that's falliblism..

Jeremy Sherman:

What irony is is that an ironic situation is when good thing, when a

Jeremy Sherman:

good guess turns out bad or a bad guess turns out good it's that is and there

Jeremy Sherman:

are ironic, silly situations built into physics that is winds change.

Jeremy Sherman:

And if you're trying to navigate those winds, you.

Jeremy Sherman:

mis-time your changing of the sails and drowned.

Jeremy Sherman:

It's that dangerous?

Jeremy Sherman:

It's that serious.

Jeremy Sherman:

And at the same time, it's also slapstick.

Johnny:

Yeah.

Jeremy Sherman:

So, irony is actually a way of, and I think

Jeremy Sherman:

it's the most effective tool I've ever found for persuasion.

Jeremy Sherman:

It's incredible what I get away with saying as long as I can put on the table

Jeremy Sherman:

for everyone to see my ambivalence, my uncertainty, the fact that I'm

Jeremy Sherman:

guessing that I know I'm guessing they know that it's just my opinion.

Jeremy Sherman:

Do I know that it's just my opinion?

Jeremy Sherman:

I have to show that I know it's just my opinion.

Johnny:

Yeah, but you have to have a, you have to have a certain level

Johnny:

of candor to put that out there.

Johnny:

I mean, I think many of us find it hard to gauge at what point candor

Johnny:

maybe stops being a virtue and starts being more of a liability.

Jeremy Sherman:

Right.

Jeremy Sherman:

No, I think, I think that's a, it's a subtle art and I also think it

Jeremy Sherman:

depends a lot on the culture you're in or maybe trapped in that is

Jeremy Sherman:

there's a lot of cultures where what I would describe as an infallibility

Jeremy Sherman:

it's an infallibility battle.

Jeremy Sherman:

Either I'm right about everything and you're wrong about everything

Jeremy Sherman:

or you're right about everything and I'm wrong about everything.

Jeremy Sherman:

And you can, there are cultures, there are cults that try to foment

Jeremy Sherman:

this infallibility Deathmatch feel.

Jeremy Sherman:

I think the Trump cult is doing that right now, but but you can also slip into it.

Jeremy Sherman:

If I said what you think the white album came out in 1970, you don't know anything.

Jeremy Sherman:

That all, even a subtle thing like that, you know, the kind of thing

Jeremy Sherman:

that a blurt can start to make it feel like an infallibility battle

Jeremy Sherman:

where you can not show any evidence of your fallibility or else you'll be,

Jeremy Sherman:

you'll lose everything all at once.

Jeremy Sherman:

There are marriages like this, too.

Jeremy Sherman:

So

Johnny:

Yeah.

Johnny:

I think we see that V I thinks about a lot, especially playing out

Johnny:

all the time in the social media.

Johnny:

Purity tests and the likes and and this need for fallibility.

Johnny:

And if you are infallible, so if you are fallible then you're

Johnny:

likely to get canceled for that.

Jeremy Sherman:

Exactly.

Jeremy Sherman:

That's right.

Jeremy Sherman:

That's right.

Jeremy Sherman:

And that also relates to something fundamental about human nature.

Jeremy Sherman:

If I accuse someone of violating some moral principle, The first thing

Jeremy Sherman:

that will vaporize and vaporized instant instantly is any recollection

Jeremy Sherman:

of me doing the equivalent.

Jeremy Sherman:

If I accuse you of lying, I will not be able to access

Jeremy Sherman:

any evidence that I ever lied.

Jeremy Sherman:

That will be the natural impulse.

Jeremy Sherman:

And as a result, I will end up with a holy war state of mind.

Jeremy Sherman:

It's a very tempting place to go.

Jeremy Sherman:

Holy war is an oxymoron, nothing dirtier than war, nothing cleaner than holiness.

Jeremy Sherman:

I can accuse someone of something.

Jeremy Sherman:

That proves my purity, which makes it my duty to police the world.

Jeremy Sherman:

At which further gives me a sense of my purity.

Jeremy Sherman:

And so that would be a temptation left, right?

Jeremy Sherman:

Again, it doesn't matter.

Jeremy Sherman:

I mean, I do believe in canceling people.

Jeremy Sherman:

I mean, I do, I think we've been doing it all along.

Jeremy Sherman:

I think the cancel culture is a right-wing term for what the left wing does.

Jeremy Sherman:

Nonsense nonsense.

Jeremy Sherman:

We all, we're all tempted to do it.

Jeremy Sherman:

When people are counseling at a more virulent rate, I would

Jeremy Sherman:

say by a universal standard.

Jeremy Sherman:

That's my sense of it these days.

Johnny:

Yeah, I think that they've always been boycotts, right?

Johnny:

I mean, there have always been boycotts, But

Jeremy Sherman:

Yeah, and we

Johnny:

of the, perhaps some of the reasons for them now are really not

Johnny:

quite as w where there's actually an opportunity for discussion or education

Johnny:

there is that just a a wall put up?

Johnny:

Is that what we've done?

Johnny:

You're canceled.

Jeremy Sherman:

That's right.

Jeremy Sherman:

So, yeah, so there's there's always been freedom of dissociation.

Jeremy Sherman:

In part, because live and let live, works best with people

Jeremy Sherman:

you don't have to live with.

Jeremy Sherman:

So it's taking space from someone is often good and they might call it canceled.

Jeremy Sherman:

You know, if I get dumped by a girlfriend, I could call a cancel

Jeremy Sherman:

and pretend it's an injustice.

Jeremy Sherman:

In fact, a whole lot of pop songs.

Jeremy Sherman:

That's what they're about.

Jeremy Sherman:

It's like, we entered a fair game that.

Jeremy Sherman:

You know, all's fair in love and war I lost.

Jeremy Sherman:

That means you're immoral, is what a whole lot of the songs I like.

Johnny:

There's a whole subculture based around that these days, I think as well.

Jeremy Sherman:

No that's right.

Jeremy Sherman:

And that, and you're right.

Jeremy Sherman:

I think the social media has really liberated us to to exercise

Jeremy Sherman:

these feelings and common, popular enticing forms of persuasion.

Jeremy Sherman:

But they don't enhance conversation.

Jeremy Sherman:

They don't, they don't improve learning.

Jeremy Sherman:

They're the alternative for learning.

Johnny:

So what I've come to, I think we, we've probably all come up

Johnny:

against these people who seem like immovable objects, you know, I'm right.

Johnny:

You're wrong.

Johnny:

That that's just the way it is.

Johnny:

And so when the shoe, when the shoes on the other foot they'll be take a

Johnny:

different strategy and he's like, how do we deal with those kinds of people?

Johnny:

I know you've already maybe touched on some of this, but I

Johnny:

just want to get, lay it out.

Jeremy Sherman:

Yeah it's very I have two suggestions.

Jeremy Sherman:

They're simple.

Jeremy Sherman:

They're fundamental.

Jeremy Sherman:

One is you do not take any of the bait.

Jeremy Sherman:

Remember, I'm saying that these guys are robotic.

Jeremy Sherman:

They're actually not th they don't actually care about what

Jeremy Sherman:

they claim to care about so much it trumps everything else.

Jeremy Sherman:

They don't actually care about it.

Jeremy Sherman:

So you do not take the bait.

Jeremy Sherman:

Instead, you focus on the.

Jeremy Sherman:

Modus operandi Mo you say, see what he's doing.

Jeremy Sherman:

He will say, or do anything to feel victorious moment to moment

Jeremy Sherman:

it's as best in front of an audience or with an audience.

Jeremy Sherman:

Somehow I practice this, for example, with with trolls a lot.

Jeremy Sherman:

I actually have to cultivate those relationships in

Jeremy Sherman:

order to get this practice.

Jeremy Sherman:

You're relentless about it.

Jeremy Sherman:

And the thing about it is they are one trick ponies.

Jeremy Sherman:

They're robotic.

Jeremy Sherman:

They have lost their capacity.

Jeremy Sherman:

It's atrophied their capacity for learning or thinking or

Jeremy Sherman:

wondering or curiosity they have.

Jeremy Sherman:

They have they have sheltered themselves within this hermetic.

Jeremy Sherman:

Hermaneutic that is, it's a belief system, which is impermeable.

Jeremy Sherman:

That's what that is.

Jeremy Sherman:

And whatever they say in response to that diagnosis will prove

Jeremy Sherman:

we'll confirm the diagnosis.

Jeremy Sherman:

So, yeah, you just you just keep on that, but the other part of the solution is the

Jeremy Sherman:

the other suggestion I have to make has to do with this thing about fallibilism.

Jeremy Sherman:

So they will often moralize out you.

Jeremy Sherman:

So an asshole is likely to both scold you for failing their moral

Jeremy Sherman:

standards and laugh at you for caring about moral standards.

Jeremy Sherman:

That's another version of the hypocrisy you'll get from them, but

Jeremy Sherman:

when they're scolding you, the last thing you want to do is feel the

Jeremy Sherman:

need, feel compelled to demonstrate your conscientiousness to them.

Jeremy Sherman:

They love that.

Jeremy Sherman:

So if they shame you for sharing.

Jeremy Sherman:

Or sell you tell you don't be negative or tell you you're

Jeremy Sherman:

being intolerant of intolerance.

Jeremy Sherman:

You're being intolerant or whatever you say of course I

Jeremy Sherman:

am like you like everyone else.

Jeremy Sherman:

The difference is I'm trying to figure out when to be intolerant when to shame.

Jeremy Sherman:

Whereas you're pretending that you live by this law that you never shame

Jeremy Sherman:

when you just shamed me for shaming.

Jeremy Sherman:

When you just told me know about my negativity, when you just told

Jeremy Sherman:

me I shouldn't be judgmental.

Jeremy Sherman:

Every one of those, you're not even paying attention to what you're saying.

Jeremy Sherman:

So you can basically flaunt your fallibilism.

Jeremy Sherman:

You are a human being on a winding road.

Jeremy Sherman:

You're trying to figure out when to do what you will make some errors.

Jeremy Sherman:

You're not making up excuses for them.

Jeremy Sherman:

You're adjusting and learning from them.

Jeremy Sherman:

Whereas these guys are pretending.

Jeremy Sherman:

I call them fundamentalists hypocrites.

Jeremy Sherman:

They've been, they alternate between fundamentalist hypocrites.

Jeremy Sherman:

There's a hard line and you should never cross it.

Jeremy Sherman:

And I'm the police.

Jeremy Sherman:

And I'll tell you when even though I cross it right and left all the time

Jeremy Sherman:

or cynical hypocrites, which is, there are no lines I can do whatever I want.

Jeremy Sherman:

So they're alternating between those as long as it keeps them upright.

Jeremy Sherman:

And so flaunting your fallibilism saying, you know, if they call you a

Jeremy Sherman:

name caller say of course I named called.

Jeremy Sherman:

Like you like everyone else.

Jeremy Sherman:

I don't want to just name, call.

Jeremy Sherman:

I want to name call where it helps them not where it not where it

Jeremy Sherman:

harms, whereas you just called me a name caller, you know?

Jeremy Sherman:

So catching them on that stuff and even provoking it.

Jeremy Sherman:

Here's an example of it.

Jeremy Sherman:

I think of what they're doing as a kind of exhibitionism that is a

Jeremy Sherman:

sidle up as if for conversation.

Jeremy Sherman:

And then when they've got your attention, this is especially true of trolls.

Jeremy Sherman:

They open their trench coat and show off their stiff little self-importance

Jeremy Sherman:

and the reason they do it with such confidence is that they know

Jeremy Sherman:

that no matter how you respond they will have a way to claim triumph.

Jeremy Sherman:

So, I will often provoke them.

Jeremy Sherman:

I'll often say you're masturbating in public and they will say, oh wow.

Jeremy Sherman:

You seem obsessed with masturbation.

Jeremy Sherman:

And I'll say, yeah, I like masturbation.

Jeremy Sherman:

I masturbate like a normal person, but I don't do it in public.

Jeremy Sherman:

Like you do.

Jeremy Sherman:

So sometimes I will actually bait them by using a moral term that they will grab on.

Jeremy Sherman:

And then use as a moral cudgel back at me and then show that I'm

Jeremy Sherman:

actually not vulnerable to the cudgel.

Jeremy Sherman:

I'm happy to shame them with something that I'm not ashamed of.

Johnny:

It's interesting.

Johnny:

Yeah.

Johnny:

It's interesting to think of the performative aspect of being a troll

Johnny:

or being in that, that kind of way that there is that performance element to it.

Johnny:

For sure.

Johnny:

When you, when you think about it, I wonder, I mean, that's certainly

Johnny:

on a one-to-one panel level.

Johnny:

I can say that.

Johnny:

What about when you're coming up?

Johnny:

Th those sorts of things more as not such a person, but an orthodoxy.

Johnny:

Do you have any thoughts about that?

Johnny:

Like that, the old way of thinking about all that is just that the group

Johnny:

thing called the commonly accepted orthodoxy, that there is maybe wrong.

Jeremy Sherman:

So, for example, an example might be if you're, if you were

Jeremy Sherman:

born or living in a culture, which is fully saturated with some ideology and

Jeremy Sherman:

you are no longer buying that ideology.

Jeremy Sherman:

And to apply this at a corporate level.

Jeremy Sherman:

If you think that it's going, a company is going in a wrong direction

Jeremy Sherman:

and you are not the president of the co you're, not the CEO.

Jeremy Sherman:

And or you think that you're, that it's falling under the spell of

Jeremy Sherman:

a tyrannical and foolish boss.

Jeremy Sherman:

These are really difficult situations and it does not surprise me that people end up

Jeremy Sherman:

towing the line and biting their tongue.

Jeremy Sherman:

That is, I do not think it's easy to buck the trends when you're in that.

Jeremy Sherman:

It's a kind of kamikaze or suicide mission to do so often.

Jeremy Sherman:

And I don't think there's necessarily a simple way to deal with it the way I want.

Jeremy Sherman:

What I just described is relatively simple.

Jeremy Sherman:

It's also.

Jeremy Sherman:

I CA I count the success when I'm dealing with a troll.

Jeremy Sherman:

My success is not them being humbled, not at all.

Jeremy Sherman:

They, my best hope with them is that they'll walk off scorning.

Jeremy Sherman:

As foolish after I have predicted that they will walk off scorning me as foolish.

Jeremy Sherman:

So I'll also say, I'll give you the last word and I can

Jeremy Sherman:

guess what it's going to be.

Jeremy Sherman:

So, but all of that is relatively easy compared to when you are swallowed up in

Jeremy Sherman:

a culture that believes otherwise I just read a wonderful biography of Of the straw

Jeremy Sherman:

the astronomers of importance Copernicus Tyco, Bri Kepler Galileo watching how

Jeremy Sherman:

all of those dynamics work when you're in a culture that's completely saturated

Jeremy Sherman:

with a different worldview and you're trying to tap them on the shoulder.

Jeremy Sherman:

The courage of your insignificance is something I would recommend meditating

Jeremy Sherman:

on, which is that you can actually make more of a difference if you

Jeremy Sherman:

can afford to sacrifice some status.

Jeremy Sherman:

But I don't think everyone can, if you've got children and you're trying

Jeremy Sherman:

to keep them food on the table and and all of that, it's very difficult.

Jeremy Sherman:

Exiting is also shouldn't be ruled out.

Jeremy Sherman:

So th the comments phrases never fight with a pig, you'll just

Jeremy Sherman:

get dirty and the pig likes it.

Jeremy Sherman:

Well, I think that's a great option when it's available, but

Jeremy Sherman:

I cannot say, never say never.

Jeremy Sherman:

There are times when you have to fight a pig, you will get

Jeremy Sherman:

dirty and the pig will like it.

Jeremy Sherman:

So I'm only interested in how to maximize our chances of dealing more

Jeremy Sherman:

effectively with that situation.

Jeremy Sherman:

And we can end up with whole countries lost in that whole

Jeremy Sherman:

nations, whole continents lost in it.

Jeremy Sherman:

And in fact, I think that if we don't come up with better solutions to how to

Jeremy Sherman:

humbly humble people who will do anything to avoid humility, we will go extinct.

Jeremy Sherman:

I think it is the most fundamental problem we deal with.

Jeremy Sherman:

It comes with language.

Jeremy Sherman:

I would even say that intelligent life anywhere in the unit.

Jeremy Sherman:

By which I mean, language, life, life that has language has

Jeremy Sherman:

dealt with problems like ours.

Jeremy Sherman:

I believe climate change has probably happened many times in the

Jeremy Sherman:

universe before and climate change denial would be part of it too.

Jeremy Sherman:

I bet that many intelligent lifeforms have gone down through the

Jeremy Sherman:

powers of bullshit dozing, denial.

Jeremy Sherman:

I think it's just the most likely cause of extinction for humankind.

Johnny:

So Yeah, th this is interesting because this is one of these and think,

Johnny:

well, you know, a popular strategy is just rather than engage with these kinds of

Johnny:

people would be to walk away, ignore it, try and live your best life, just move on.

Johnny:

But there are situations where you have to, and then you talk about

Johnny:

situations where it potentially becomes an existential threat to the species to

Johnny:

allow those kinds of things to go on.

Johnny:

And there's like, okay, well, that's a bit more significant.

Johnny:

Right.

Johnny:

And then, so it says, all right, maybe.

Johnny:

Maybe this is not something that we can, or even should be apathetic about.

Jeremy Sherman:

Yeah, no, I, so I worked I founded a national lobbying organization

Jeremy Sherman:

with 70 chapters on climate change.

Jeremy Sherman:

I actually think that psycho proctology is a more fundamental

Jeremy Sherman:

problem even than climate change or nuclear war, I would say.

Jeremy Sherman:

It's really important to be.

Jeremy Sherman:

So your podcast is on, I think the most important topic of all.

Jeremy Sherman:

That's what you would no, no, I'm just kidding.

Jeremy Sherman:

But but I think we need better skills here and actually I want.

Jeremy Sherman:

There's an interesting story.

Jeremy Sherman:

It's a little bit apocryphal perhaps, but that that the Renaissance

Jeremy Sherman:

was the rebirth of what they call what they called civic humanism.

Jeremy Sherman:

And it was Florence was under attack from Milan.

Jeremy Sherman:

These were city states, nations city state states at the time Milans

Jeremy Sherman:

leader got the plague and died.

Jeremy Sherman:

Florence side aside of relief and thought about why they were so vulnerable and

Jeremy Sherman:

they reinstated the Trivium, which is basically rhetoric, logic and grammar.

Jeremy Sherman:

Rhetoric is what your program is about.

Jeremy Sherman:

interesting that they didn't think that logic was all you needed.

Jeremy Sherman:

You actually needed the powers of persuasion.

Jeremy Sherman:

You needed to know how to spin an unspin.

Jeremy Sherman:

Now I have, I basically am selling the Novum Trivium, the newest, the

Jeremy Sherman:

new Trivium, which is how to spin and unspin and do both even handedly.

Jeremy Sherman:

That is, I am very interested in how to, in learning how.

Jeremy Sherman:

And cultivating the ability to unspin all of my own declarations.

Jeremy Sherman:

So for example, I write all these articles.

Jeremy Sherman:

I could write a counter-argument to everything I wrote instantly.

Jeremy Sherman:

I Harbor a dinghy of doubt and I could bring it out whenever I needed to.

Jeremy Sherman:

So that's me kicking the tires on my own stuff.

Jeremy Sherman:

And the opposite is to, of course, the ability to make your

Jeremy Sherman:

opponent's case persuasively.

Jeremy Sherman:

And so I think that we need a rebirth of basically the Trivium.

Jeremy Sherman:

We need to know how to spin an unspin.

Johnny:

I absolutely agree.

Johnny:

And That's a big part of what my mission in this show is about as well though.

Johnny:

I don't necessarily directly stay that because not everybody's going to get

Johnny:

that if I explain it that way, but that is all what's underneath it all.

Johnny:

That's, what's laying in a persuasion influence and persuasion has the

Johnny:

path to change the world and maybe even to save humanity as well.

Johnny:

My guests, previous guests, Dr.

Johnny:

Dan French is a professor of rhetoric.

Johnny:

He said we need like a rhetorical guardians of the galaxy.

Johnny:

I think Jeremy, I think you have to be in the gang for that one.

Jeremy Sherman:

That's one of my favorite movies.

Jeremy Sherman:

I love that movie in part, because you've got all that fellow

Jeremy Sherman:

blissed irony going on in it.

Jeremy Sherman:

But yeah.

Jeremy Sherman:

So, yeah, so I, I think that this is actually going back as far as

Jeremy Sherman:

Socrates, Socrates, he says, if you learn critical thinking, basically

Jeremy Sherman:

if you learn logic, Use you'll put it too, is defending your arguments

Jeremy Sherman:

by dismantling opponent's arguments.

Jeremy Sherman:

That's what he meant about the sophists.

Jeremy Sherman:

So we're still dealing with that issue and our rhetoric has only gotten better.

Jeremy Sherman:

Here's one of the challenges we deal with when we find a new rhetorical

Jeremy Sherman:

ploy, a new rhetorical tool, it proliferates around the world,

Jeremy Sherman:

but a sucker is born every minute.

Jeremy Sherman:

So there's a growing gap.

Jeremy Sherman:

He could almost call the Malthusian gap that rhetoric expands exponentially where

Jeremy Sherman:

critical thinking expands arithmetically.

Jeremy Sherman:

That is we're, every, you got an, you got a new every day, you know?

Johnny:

It's interest, interesting prospects.

Johnny:

And this is all the stuff I love and this conversation is fantastic

Johnny:

and I want it to continue, but time is unfortunately against us.

Johnny:

And and I feel like I'm going to have to invite you back on the show because

Johnny:

we didn't really even get as much into the irony stuff as I wanted to.

Johnny:

And I think there's a lot Of other things I would love to talk to

Johnny:

you about if you'd be willing to

Johnny:

come back again.

Johnny:

That it would be fantastic to continue the conversation.

Johnny:

I've learned a lot today.

Johnny:

I know that some of the, some of this stuff is contained in your book.

Johnny:

So please tell us a bit about your book.

Jeremy Sherman:

Yeah, so I have a new book called What's Up With Assholes, how to

Jeremy Sherman:

spot and stop them without becoming one.

Jeremy Sherman:

I think of it as advanced psycho proctology for beginners.

Jeremy Sherman:

I would argue though, of course, this is me talking.

Jeremy Sherman:

And what would I know about it that it's actually making some sophisticated

Jeremy Sherman:

and innovative arguments about dealing with difficult peoples that I haven't

Jeremy Sherman:

found in other literature, but it is designed to be well, it is proven to be

Jeremy Sherman:

completely understandable by people who don't have a background in psychology.

Jeremy Sherman:

Don't have any advanced training in this stuff.

Jeremy Sherman:

I've had blue collar, you know, obviously there's a huge market

Jeremy Sherman:

for this because everybody's thinks they're dealing with an asshole.

Jeremy Sherman:

So I've had people who have no background who, I mean a high school or GED

Jeremy Sherman:

education, read the thing and get it.

Jeremy Sherman:

And that's what I was designing it for.

Jeremy Sherman:

So it's advanced psycho proctology for beginners it's available.

Jeremy Sherman:

I had to, I had to change the title of it.

Jeremy Sherman:

It's the assholes is spelled with two asteriks so I could advertise it.

Jeremy Sherman:

Sorry, but it's available in every country that I know of that, that has

Jeremy Sherman:

Amazon it's it's published on Amazon.

Jeremy Sherman:

I.

Johnny:

will put some links into the show notes for

Jeremy Sherman:

Yeah.

Jeremy Sherman:

And just in general you can find way too much of me just by Googling my name.

Jeremy Sherman:

I may have those thousand articles I put out maybe 20 memes a day.

Jeremy Sherman:

I write a lot in bumper sticker form.

Jeremy Sherman:

I find it a very interesting persuasive, medium so Instagram

Jeremy Sherman:

and and Twitter and all of that.

Jeremy Sherman:

And then I've got three podcasts of my own, including one called negotiate

Jeremy Sherman:

with yourself and win, which is me debating myself in two channels.

Jeremy Sherman:

So arguing with myself.

Johnny:

Yeah, well, you create a lot of content.

Johnny:

I am I'm in awe and you give me, you gave me something to start to towards Jeremy.

Johnny:

I wonder, in terms of the intentions of influence and persuasion,

Johnny:

what would you describe as your influence and persuasion superpower

Jeremy Sherman:

Fallible wisdom, no matter how confident I am in a bet, I remain

Jeremy Sherman:

still more confident that it is a bet.

Jeremy Sherman:

And I show that is, I demonstrated, I do a lot of self-effacing humor.

Jeremy Sherman:

It has proven to be the lubricant that makes it so I can get away with

Jeremy Sherman:

saying a lot of sharp tongue stuff.

Jeremy Sherman:

Because they know that I am not

Jeremy Sherman:

holding myself as a fake authority.

Jeremy Sherman:

I'm not an expert on anything.

Jeremy Sherman:

I'm just another bozo on this bus.

Jeremy Sherman:

It's incredible how much power that has given me if you can

Jeremy Sherman:

pull it off and yeah, so.

Jeremy Sherman:

In a way, it's the courage of your insignificance.

Jeremy Sherman:

It's not the same as becoming mealy mouth.

Jeremy Sherman:

It's not the same as what I call the doctrine of foregone in conclusion.

Jeremy Sherman:

Hey, you never can tell, I don't know what I'm talking about.

Jeremy Sherman:

Nobody knows anything.

Jeremy Sherman:

It's not that at all.

Jeremy Sherman:

I can have real high confidence in a bet and still remain more

Jeremy Sherman:

confident than it is a bet.

Johnny:

Fantastic.

Johnny:

I definitely want people to come and check out your book.

Johnny:

I will be myself.

Johnny:

I love reading that kind of thing.

Johnny:

And I know that you have a few additional recommendations for people to check

Johnny:

out as well, based on some of the, some of your own reading and experience.

Jeremy Sherman:

Right.

Jeremy Sherman:

So I do a lot of writing and two sources I have found that have, that made a

Jeremy Sherman:

big difference to my writing was this one is a tiny book recommended to

Jeremy Sherman:

me, by my older brother, the one who always used to beat me with language.

Jeremy Sherman:

Who's a literature professor.

Jeremy Sherman:

It's a book called Style Lessons in Clarity and Grace.

Jeremy Sherman:

It's very short.

Jeremy Sherman:

It's very practical.

Jeremy Sherman:

It's in probably its 15th or 16th run by now.

Jeremy Sherman:

It just makes clear.

Jeremy Sherman:

How you got to package ideas so that they get into other people's minds yeah.

Jeremy Sherman:

In the din that we're dealing with now, the quantity of stuff

Jeremy Sherman:

that's available you can't afford to have eyes glazing over at all.

Jeremy Sherman:

You need to be very influential early on.

Jeremy Sherman:

You got to hook them.

Jeremy Sherman:

And that book was very effective.

Jeremy Sherman:

Also, I found very useful a series of lectures from the teaching company

Jeremy Sherman:

called Building Great Sentences.

Jeremy Sherman:

It really changed my writing opened it up in a, in an interesting way through

Jeremy Sherman:

a simple technique that he, that the, that the professor in that lays

Jeremy Sherman:

out it's, I think only eight hours.

Jeremy Sherman:

So those are the biggest pivot points I can point to in my.

Johnny:

Fantastic.

Johnny:

Definitely would love to check that out.

Johnny:

I love taking those sorts of courses and programs as well.

Johnny:

I think I've listened to at least 10 or 15 of the great courses on audible.

Johnny:

So that would be a great one to add to my collection.

Johnny:

And as we do wrap things up today, you said that you're very easily searchable,

Johnny:

but is there one place was the best place for people to come and check?

Jeremy Sherman:

Yes.

Jeremy Sherman:

So I've made a repository a condensation of it all.

Jeremy Sherman:

It's just my website, Jeremy sherman.com, Jeremy sherman.com.

Jeremy Sherman:

It has an overview of all of my work and various rabbit holes you can go down.

Johnny:

Perfect.

Johnny:

I love going down some rabbit holes.

Johnny:

Try not to do it in the episodes, but it does happen sometimes if there was

Johnny:

just one thing you hope people remember and take away from that, hopefully.

Johnny:

Well, there's a lot more, but if there's just one thing you think, well,

Johnny:

one thing I'm wanting to most take away from this conversation today.

Jeremy Sherman:

W well, given the law of sevens in advertising, which is

Jeremy Sherman:

that you don't hear that anything even one time until you've heard it seven

Jeremy Sherman:

times, I will go back to fallibilism, no matter how confident I am in a bet, I

Jeremy Sherman:

remain more confident that it is a bet.

Jeremy Sherman:

If you recognize that about yourself, if you recognize that about everybody

Jeremy Sherman:

you're dealing with, we are all guessing.

Jeremy Sherman:

Life has only guess.

Jeremy Sherman:

Yoda is wrong.

Jeremy Sherman:

There's only try.

Jeremy Sherman:

I mean, that's a nice rhetorical flourish she uses.

Jeremy Sherman:

Yeah.

Jeremy Sherman:

In retrospect, you can say things have failed or succeeded,

Jeremy Sherman:

but no, there's only trying.

Jeremy Sherman:

And and we're all trying to some degree or another, and we're

Jeremy Sherman:

trying to find better bets.

Jeremy Sherman:

And, and we can do that with confidence without becoming assholes.

Johnny:

Yeah, I'll be having words with all of my life coaching buddies

Johnny:

who admonish people for using the word try then and put them right now.

Johnny:

I'll pick, I can put them straight.

Johnny:

Jeremy I've really enjoyed this conversation and I certainly would look

Johnny:

forward to having you back on the show.

Johnny:

Again.

Johnny:

Thank you so much for coming and giving your time, sharing

Johnny:

your knowledge and insights.

Johnny:

It's been a real joy.

Johnny:

Thank you.

Johnny:

for coming in.

Jeremy Sherman:

Thank you.

Jeremy Sherman:

It was a delight to talk with you Johnny.

Johnny:

Oh, my goodness.

Johnny:

That was a lot of fun.

Johnny:

I hope you enjoyed the show.

Johnny:

I certainly did..

Johnny:

That was a fantastic conversation and went into some deep places that I guess I

Johnny:

want to explore more in future episodes.

Johnny:

So you can check out more about Jeremy in the show notes for this episode and

Johnny:

look out for future episodes coming up.

Johnny:

If you haven't checked out recent episodes, things like my chat with

Johnny:

Grant Baldwin about becoming a paid professional speaker, or my chat with

Johnny:

Nancy Juetten about creating bio's that will get you booked and get noticed,

Johnny:

then definitely go and check those out.

Johnny:

Remember to visit our sponsors Brand Face, and take them up on the opportunity of

Johnny:

a free brand score so that you can make sure your brand is connecting with your

Johnny:

audience in the way that you want to.

Johnny:

And you're being seen in the right way.

Johnny:

Coming up very soon on the show, I will be having a chat with the people

Johnny:

behind Brand Face and bringing that to you in a whole episode, that's

Johnny:

going to be an amazing conversation and something to look out for.

Johnny:

If you have enjoyed anything from this show today, got some value from it.

Johnny:

Please consider sharing the show out with your friends and your network.

Johnny:

And I will remind you if you'd like to support the show financially,

Johnny:

even though we have a sponsor, additional support is appreciated and

Johnny:

you can visit the Super Cast page.

Johnny:

You'll find the link for that in the show notes as well.

Johnny:

All the remains we say is thank you for tuning in, I hope to see you again very

Next Episode All Episodes Previous Episode

About the Podcast

Show artwork for Present Influence
Present Influence
The podcast that helps professional communicators learn the skills that increase influence, impact and authority.

Listen for free

About your host

Profile picture for John Ball

John Ball

John Ball is a keynote coach and professional speaker on a mission to help upcoming leaders master their communication, create impact and stand out as experts in their field.
John left the high life of his flying career to do something more meaningful to him and has since worked with several leading personal and professional development organisations as a lead coach and trainer.
The heart of everything John does involves helping people shift to personal responsibility and conscious awareness of how they show up and perform in every situation, whilst equipping them with the tools to be exceptional.
John also co-hosts The Coaching Clinic Podcast with his great friend and colleague Angie Besignano.
He lives in the beautiful city of Valencia, Spain with his husband and often visits the UK and US for speaking and training engagements. When he's not speaking or podcasting, he's likely to be out swimming, kayaking or enjoying time with friends.

Enjoying the show?

Your support means we can bring you more with better production and new features, even bonus episodes. Thank you.
Tip Your Host
A
We haven’t had any Tips yet :( Maybe you could be the first!