F78-021
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Neil: This is from 78, a podcast about the subjective experience of time. It is episode number 0 2 1. . Right before sitting down to record this, I had a bagel with some.
Fizzy water that had a slight citrus flavor to it. I wasn't sure if I should eat the bagel. Bagels are very calorific. I try to be conscious of that kind of thing. So I was like, Hmm, a bagel sounds like it would be really good, but will I eat it? And then afterwards feel bad that I ate it, will I feel a form of regret that I ate it?
I [00:01:00] wasn't sure and I thought to myself, well, there's only one way to find out. So I ate the bagel, and now in this moment having ate in that bagel and that fizzy drink with it, I'm very happy I did that. It was a good idea. It was one of those small, un-forbidden pleasures that life can offer, which are really wonderful.
I'm quite glad I did it. If you find yourself in that situation, I don't know if you would eat the bagel and then think, Hmm, that wasn't such a good idea. But, uh, if you're like me, you might be scared. Something like that would happen and then be pleasantly surprised when it doesn't. Anyways, none of this matters.
This is not what I want to talk to you about on this episode of from 78. What I do want to [00:02:00] talk to you about is something that I came across in the New Yorker. I have a digital subscription to the New Yorker, articles in that publication
, They're good. Usually they're well written, they're about interesting subjects and even the long articles I find that I can get through, even though I'm a pretty busy guy, if I stick with them. Sometimes it takes me one or two days to get through, but I, generally get through and I feel pretty good that I have gotten through those articles and that way they're not dissimilar from the bagel that I was describing, not that long ago.
Anyways, I read the New Yorker and I read a lot of other stuff too. And because I make this podcast, there's this thing that will occasionally happen. I'll read something, or if I'm not reading, i'm listening to a podcast or I'm watching a film or a TV show, and I'll come across something and I'll think
that is [00:03:00] something that I want to talk about on from 78 and I found something like that in the New Yorker. So this is from, , a profile piece that they wrote on the probably soon to be Mayor of New York. The whole title was Ready or not.
Zohan Mandani wants to transform New York City, will the City Let him question mark? And it was by a guy named Eric Lach, LACH. Pretty near the end of the article, there are a couple of paragraphs. That really focus, not on Zohan Mandani, but on his father Mahmud Mandani.
I hope I'm saying that name correctly. I'm gonna read these couple of paragraphs out loud to you, and then I'm gonna try to say a couple of things about them. So they read read:[00:04:00]
In the summer of 1964,  Mahmud Mandani., then a student at the University of Pittsburgh took a sightseeing bus trip across America from Pittsburgh. He went to Chicago, salt Lake City, San Francisco, Los Angeles. He spent a night in Las Vegas and blew some cash at the slot machines. Early the next morning, he boarded a bus bound for Tao New Mexico. He gazed out the window at the desert as the sun rose. Around noon, he approached the bus driver and asked if it would be possible to pull over for a few minutes so that he could go outside and pray.
What kind of religion is that the driver asked? I'm a Muslim. Mahmud replied. In Mandani's recollection, [00:05:00] the bus driver, after being informed of his young passenger's religion, reached for his microphone. Folks, we have a Muslim with us. He said he wants to stop for 10 minutes so he can pray. The driver asked for a show of hands. How many people on the bus would be okay with an unscheduled stop?
Everyone raised a hand. The driver pulled over. When Mahmud got out, the other passengers followed him. They formed a circle around him and watched as he prostrated himself. Then everybody got back on the bus together. I read that. And this happened, you know, in the mid 1960s, the time before I was even alive.
My first thoughts were wonder, they were asking myself, can something like that happen today?[00:06:00]
And my answer to that question in my own head. Was, I don't know, but it seems not super likely to me that something like that would happen today. And then my reaction to that answer was, am I right about that? Another question, right? So first we have the question, can that happen today? Can something like that happen today that's followed by an answer?
No, probably not. Which is then followed by a second question. Am I right about that? Am I right that it probably couldn't happen today? Am I somebody who has become something that I really don't want to be, which is cynical, I wonder if people, most people, the majority of people in the world today are actually perhaps a lot more open-minded, maybe more curious.[00:07:00]
Maybe not so scared and defensive all the time. And do I just assume that people are, because that's the kind of stuff that I hear about when I consume a lot of news media. Right? And I actually don't know. I'm not sure My own lived experience has led me to believe that. Depending on, when you ask me what I've, I've gone through maybe more recently is probably gonna be the most determining factor of how I would answer this question.
Are people more like the people in the story that Mahmud Mandani tells, or are people more jaded, cynical, defensive, et cetera? And sometimes I'm gonna say they're more jaded and cynical, and other times I'm gonna say no. They're actually much more open-minded. But the reality is I actually don't know which one is right.
I don't know. I'm not sure. [00:08:00] And this is one of those wonderful moments, I love when they present themselves when I'm doing this podcast questions that I actually don't know the answer to. I love those questions because those are the kinds of questions that break me out of.
The kind of satisfaction that I can feel in knowing stuff or thinking that I know stuff, right? Thinking that I'm right about things. That's pretty satisfying. At least it is for me. Like I know what's up. I know how people are, I know how I am. Various forms of, I know whatever. That feels nice. When I encounter a question that breaks me out of that and makes me realize that actually there's a lot of stuff that I am, I don't know, I don't know, don't have much of an idea, I might have a thought like I did in this case, right?
Like, this is what I think, but then you know, when I'm lucky, I think [00:09:00] I don't go with that necessarily. There's this other thing that happens like, but are you right? That's the question that I don't know the answer to a lot of times, and I really, really like it when I get those sorts of questions. Those are good.
I enjoy them a ton. I'm glad that it happened to me now, and when I was kind of going through this and I, I encountered this question, another thought occurs to me and the other thought is, In this story, did people find themselves in a, the presence of a person who was different than them, who did things that they themselves did not do, or did things that they, they maybe they did do, maybe they prayed, but they didn't pray that way.
And rather than responding to that with knowledge. Such as, well, his way is not my way and therefore [00:10:00] wrong. And I know that they responded, I think with, oh, I wonder what this is gonna be like. And they just , observed something that was unfamiliar to them. And then they went back to their lives.
They went back on the bus together and they went to their next stop. , , I think that's actually an example of what I would call desire. I'm a lacanian psychoanalyst, and so the term desire is a term that definitely has a certain kind of resonance for me.
It's a term that has some meaning. Desire is what we encounter when we encounter lack. We can't desire what we have. We can only desire what we. Lack what? We don't have what is absent from our lives, and one of the things that can be absent from our lives is understanding, knowing, and we can respond to a lack of knowing, a lack of understanding in so many different ways.
One way that we can respond to it is by getting freaked out and then [00:11:00] behaving in some kind of properly defensive way. Sometimes that defensive way. May take the form of a kind of violence or something. It doesn't always go that way, but it can. But that's certainly not the only option which exists.
There are so many other options, and one of the options that exists is to not defend ourselves from the lack of knowledge, from the lack of understanding, from the desire that it can be born from. That absence of knowledge, that absence of understanding, but instead to be like, oh yeah, I'm gonna go with that.
I'm gonna roll with this. I'm gonna see where it takes me, and not knowing where it's gonna take you, not being sure what will happen as a result of going more into the place of absence, lack. As opposed to running away from it. And I think that's a really good thing. And I guess that's my question right now that I don't know the answer to.
I'm gonna phrase it in a slightly different way here. Are people today [00:12:00] able to experience lack, absence and desire? And I'm sure to some degree people are that's actually a question that as I ask it, it seems like kind of obvious some people are. So maybe the better way to ask the question is generally speaking.
How able are people to do that and more specifically, how able am I to do that? Let's make this very subjective. Let's make this very personal. You know, I can of course, like try to focus on other people in the world in an abstract way. That's pretty easy. But what about me? Can I do that? I'd like to think that I can, but is that true?
I just made this face and kinda like put my hand up in the air to, to signify like, oh, that's a really good question. You couldn't see me do that because this is an audio only podcast. But that's what I did and it is a good question, I think, can I do that? Can other people do that? [00:13:00] I don't know the answer, but it's a kind of question that I want to spend some time with it something that I wanna reflect on,
So on that note, I am going to stop talking. This has been from 78, a podcast about the subjective experience of time. Thanks for having me in your ears, whatever it is that you're about to go do next in your life, that you're able to encounter a lack of knowledge, a lack of understanding, and not get freaked out by it.
I think that would be good too. Okay. Till next time, folks, you all take care.