Rethinking work and play

Transcript

Transcribed by machine from the recording.

Scott Chris, how are you, my friend?

Chris Oh my goodness. So here I am in London. You're in New York now, right?

Scott I am in New York City. So I'd love to hear all sorts of questions. New York, New York, the town that's so nice they had to name it twice.

Chris London, London, I guess. It doesn't work.

Scott It's not the same.

Chris It doesn't work the same way. And in some ways it's not as nice. Back home in North America, you guys are experiencing a heat wave. Here, we had this week of glorious summer about two weeks ago. And now it's kind of gray and rainy every day. And it's slowly dawning on me that That thing I experienced two weeks ago, that was the summer here. Like that was it. And I'm still at this, I'm having this inner struggle around would I be happier having not experienced that glorious week? Thank you very much. You know, and partly because of the 18 months that it has been. I think that certainly in this country, which is just always under a cloud of gray, when the sun comes out, it does something physical to the spirit, to the zeitgeist of the population. And, you know, if you ask me how I am, like, if I could be honest with this, I need more sunshine.

In my life right now, I know there's a lot of conversation about pandemic brain, this kind of lethargy, this sluggishness that a lot of people experience in some places. Like here, I've got one shot of AstraZeneca in my veins. I've got another one coming up. So we're starting to kind of Supposedly go back to normal or recover some of the activities that we had left behind. And I'm finding that even though there are things that are opening up, I'm not opening up yet. I kind of struggle sometimes to get up in the morning. I just don't feel as, I mean, yeah, I'm still doing a lot of stuff, but I don't feel as energetic. As I did 18 months ago.

Scott I think you can't, I wouldn't want to minimize the lack of sunshine in London because all suffering is real in particular, right? And rooted in finitude. And so we're all finite creatures and our ability to experience pleasure and pain is all rooted. Infinitude, like in where our space is and who we're sharing it with and where we're in dwelling space and things. So I think, you know, you could say, hey, you know, yeah, I mean, I hear what you're saying in the sense of like, well, look, there are people that have it worse off than me. But pain is pain, right? And I think we always lose when we try to quantify suffering existentially because If you're suffering, you're suffering. And again, that's not to say that every form of suffering should get the same sort of deliberate attention from the UN or the UK government or something like that. But it is saying all suffering and alienation and struggle is real, right? And something as simple as not seeing the sun and being quarantined and things like this can create real suffering that is...

You know, people took their lives in the pandemic that were living by any standard in world history. They were living in the top 1% of human history as far as health care and wealth and well-being, and yet they couldn't go on anymore. So, you know, I'm just always wary of minimizing anybody's pain. And, you know, we could also It's very easy to judge. We had a tennis player walk off the court this week, right? To some judgment in the news. Oh, right.

Chris Well, so it's Wimbledon this week here in London. So many stories I could tell you about Wimbledon, but...

Scott Do you get tickets? Can you get tickets to Wimbledon? You totally can.

Chris Actually, there's this wonderful, wonderful tradition here in Britain around Wimbledon, which is called the queue, right? The lineup. But at Wimbledon, it's like capital T, capital Q, the queue. And every day there is a certain allotment of tickets. That are available. They're unsold. They're sold on the day to people who get up very early in the morning and line up for the queue. So if you're willing to stand in line long enough on any day of Wimbledon, you can get tickets. Now, if it's to sort of get tickets to the men's or women's final, you may have to join that queue two or three days prior. But if you're willing to do it, then you can get tickets to that event too. So there's this... In a weirdly magical British way, there is this strange blend of ultra-elitism and egalitarianism in the institution of Wimbledon. You can also purchase effectively box seats, like season tickets. Those are my tickets.

And if there's any event at Wimbledon, I have those seats. I can go or I can sell them to somebody else if I don't want to go to myself. There's a whole industry around owning seats inside Centre Court in Wimbledon. And if you can manage to buy one of these seats and the waiting lists are very long, you might as well buy it. I mean, the bank will lend you the money to buy it because it's a business. I mean, there are so many travel and tourism organizations who will happily pay you a lot of money for every seat that you don't want to sit in. That is all a wild digression, but yes.

Scott It's not wild, though, because I want to know, like, would you go to, I mean, would you like to go? Would you be the kind of guy that's... Oh, it's fantastic.

Chris Wimbledon, you would think, oh, this is just going to be kind of lame. It's amazing. It's a lot of fun.

Scott Do you eat and drink in the stands? Do they have like beers or pretzels?

Chris Yeah, there's this wonderful lawn and a hill within the park area. And that's kind of like the picnic commons. And then we've got like big screens projecting what's happening on the main courts. And if you don't have tickets to actually sit in one of the courts, but you've got kind of like a general grounds pass, then you may be there with some friends on that lawn having a picnic, you know, drinking drinks, eating strawberries and cream. There, Wimbledon has its own strawberry farm to supply the strawberries for Wimbledon. Wow. Yeah. It's, it's fun. Wow. It's fun. I mean, this is, it must be, it must be something similar in New York where there's like a social calendar of events. Right. Right. Right. There's this, and then there's that, and Wimbledon is on the social calendar. So you get, you know there will be for the major match events there will be some people in the royal box who are probably

you know royalty um all the way down to me wow what am i doing there um i am not a very good tennis player i will admit but you know someday i would like to go any sport in person

Scott Oh, we'll do it. We'll do it. We'll stand in the queue. I would love to. Yeah, I would love to go to something with you because I think it'd be fun. I think it would be interesting and fun. I think dispositionally, you're tall. I'm not tall. You're good looking. I've got a face for radio. You know, it'd be fun to kind of like, it's like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito in twins. We could wear matching outfits and go.

Chris I appreciate your sentiment. I would suggest that you maybe talk to some people who have been with me to public events and get their take on it. They tend to feel embarrassed in my company. And I think one of the reasons is that And maybe this is sort of a consequence of being, you know, a writer who is, you know, a lot of my life feels quite hermit-like to me and I enjoy that. But when I'm in public to an event like that, I am so gregarious, right? I love it. I will strike up this conversation with, you know, the person in line before me and after me and, you know, in the bathrooms and... you know bumping into somebody in the crowd and you know it's if if if you're not into sort of random chat with strangers

Scott No, I love that. I'm the same way. I would talk to anybody. I will talk with anybody. So tell us the story of what happened, which this woman, it's pretty... Oh, right.

Chris So Naomi Osaka, right? So, you know, a titaness of women's tennis back at the French Open. I guess it was back in May. So she withdrew from the French Open. And it was for mental health reasons. I might get the details wrong, but I seem to recall it was, you know, basically about, she would feel this overwhelming wave of anxiety before every kind of press availability, which is something you have to do, right, as a professional athlete, you do that. You know, you sit down at that press conference, right, before or after every event. And so she withdrew because she just couldn't handle it. And she's likewise withdrawn from Wimbledon. And she's going to participate in the Tokyo Olympics. But basically, as so many people have been doing over the last several years now, You know, doing it for herself and has the courage to do it. And at the same time, raising awareness that, you know, just as you said beautifully to me, raising the awareness for me that, you know, all pain is real and we shouldn't minimize it. But raising awareness about mental health and mental health issues within the professional sporting community.

And for me, I think also just, Reminding me to recognize that I'm not immune from what does seem to be a totally observable and I'm sure by now diagnosed psychological phenomenon, which is just how for many of us We are profoundly different individuals today versus 18 months ago. There's something in my wiring has been affected by the radical and sustained break from the way I used to do things. And it's not, it's not snapping back.

Scott Yeah, it's interesting because sport is one of these things that we've lost. Right. Which is something that's so fundamental to the human condition. And when we were talking, batting around what we're going to do in this episode, we talked about some stories. And the only sport I've ever been good at, I mean, I played a bunch of them, but the only sport I was ever good at was golf. I still have a love affair. Yeah, yeah, I played in high school college. Oh, my God.

Chris Well, if you want to feel good about yourself, let's go golfing.

Scott Oh, it would be great. It would be great. We'd have a great time. I mean, I like that one.

Chris You would have a great time.

Scott It's interesting because, you know, I started playing it in high school, and I got good at it, and I loved it, and I still have a love affair with it. I mean, the parabola of a perfect golf shot to me is just unbelievable. Maybe the most famous golfer of all time, Bobby Jones, who was actually an amateur his whole life. He won several pro events, but he never became a touring pro. He was this Georgia kind of landed gentry sort of person that... It was where kind of being a professional, like taking money for golf was viewed as sort of lower class or something. But in the 1925- This is Chariots of Fire for the golfing world. Exactly. It's totally Chariots of Fire. This is totally Eric Little. At the 1925 US Open, Jones moved his ball slightly when he was setting up for a shot in the fairway and no one saw it. But Jones was adamant that the ball had moved and he assessed himself a one-stroke penalty, which ultimately cost him the win because he was going to win, but he wound up in a tie because he...

Assessed himself this penalty stroke and he lost in the playoff. And so he was praised for this classy move. Everybody was like, this is the consummate gentleman. This is unbelievable that somebody would do this. And he said, you might as well praise me for not robbing banks. Which gets to this question.

Chris This man takes the rules of golf seriously.

Scott Very seriously, and it is a gentleman's game. And also, I don't take the rules that seriously. So if we played together, I would cut you a lot of slack.

Chris Well, if you do make it over here, we'll, I mean, we have to book quite an advance. We can go up to St. Andrews and play on the old chorus.

Scott Oh, it's windy there. I mean, Lynx style. I mean, it's not for my game because I hit the ball kind of long and high. And so I would love to play it because that would be challenging because my game does not suit well to that course. I've played Lynx style courses without trees and stuff. I would take trees and less wind, but I'd love to play it. So here we go.

Chris I have never felt more lost and confused in our conversations than this territory we are in right now. I'm trying to sustain a conversation about golf. Okay, if we play, let's just agree that when I swing and miss the ball entirely, that doesn't count. Oh, it's fine. It's fine. It's a practice shot. It's a practice shot.

Scott It's completely fine. It's completely fine. So this is interesting because we're talking about the human condition in sport. And here you have this kind of thing with Bobby Jones, where he is so committed to the rules that he would lose the U.S. Open. And who knows even if he did move the ball? I mean, he thought he moved the ball. No one thought he moved the ball. Like, did he really move the ball? But he's so committed to it. So you and I, the other night, We're talking about our next podcast. And we did not know we were both Dungeons & Dragons players as children, which, all right, we just lost 15 listeners. And people are gonna give us swirlies, like, you know, put our heads in toilets and bully the nerds. Will they?

Chris I mean, this is, I mean, we live in a different era now. When you and I played Dungeons & Dragons, it was, you know, it was not the done thing. But... Did you know I looked this up because I was thinking, you know, what were people doing during the pandemic and what were the things that sort of, you know, became popular again? And sure enough, 2020 was the best year ever for Dungeons & Dragons, according to the company that publishes like kind of all of the core like manuals and game rules and stuff like that.

Scott Do you know who the inventor of Dungeons & Dragons was?

Chris Oh, I do. It's like Gary somebody or other.

Scott Gary Gygax. Which is a great name. Yeah. Gary Gygax.

Chris So, you know, so that's interesting, you know, because you think about it in a pandemic year where everybody is self-isolating and, you know, Zoom fatigue and it all kind of got old fast. The idea of getting onto calls with a small group of friends and basically weaving a story together. Like having a guide and then each of us, let's take on a persona and, you know, following some set rules, but with just so much that is just about role play. You know, it's about improv. Allowing ourselves to immerse ourselves in a parallel world and create new stories for one another. It's the perfect pandemic escape. That, you know, that the technology enabled people to do. And now I'm sad that I didn't use this opportunity.

Scott I know, we could have gotten, like, with both the communities we know, our networks, we probably could have found some great D&D players and probably could have got a regular game going. So for people that don't get Dungeons & Dragons, it's this kind of, it's sort of like, imagine you're doing a role play in Middle Earth, you know, Lord of the Rings, Hobbit sort of era where there's orcs and elves and magic and there are, you know, people wielding swords and there are quests and sort of things. So you're let loose in this world. That is akin to Tolkien's kind of Middle Earth. And Gygax borrows some stuff from Middle Earth and other places. And you're in this medieval fantasy world. And you pick your class, you know, you could be a mage or a sort of sword for hire or... A thief, or an assassin, or a kind of cleric, or all these things.

You have all these, and the class has kept expanding as the game expanded. And you can choose, you know, you could be a human, or an orc, or an elf, or a half-elf, or this, or that. But the most interesting thing, as you and I were reminiscing down the road of Dorkhood, we got caught up in the whole thing of you have to pick your character's alignment. And this is what I think is so interesting about what this game can tell us about ourselves and human nature is the whole choice of alignment, right? So, okay, so a couple of things there.

Chris And I agree, alignment is probably, for me, one of the most fascinating things about role-playing games and choosing your character's alignment. But before we get there, just to fill in a couple more tidbits as now all the memories are coming back. By the way, did you know, I mean, when we were kids, Playing D&D. I think it was like stereotypically, like it was what the boys in South Park were playing, right? Oh, totally. These like people-faced boys. But I looked at the stats now. There's an article in Forbes. And the gender split is about 60-40 male-female and 1% non-binary. So there's a very small sliver there. But like it's really equalized a lot from What I imagine and what I think it probably was back in the 80s and 90s. There were no girls that played when I was a kid that played D&D. And it's interesting to, you know, I'm not really sure. It's, there is, you know, one of the positive things that the internet and social media objectively, I think, did for society is that groups that were marginalized Whatever that group could find one another and become a functioning, thriving community where when we're together, what we do is totally normal. As a kid playing D&D, we found this little broom closet.

I mean, that's just a big part of, I guess, what has changed about it. And as I think of it today, looking back, it's ridiculous that it was somehow seen as deviant behavior. Because with a more, I guess, just unbiased critique, it was kind of like a good induction into drama class or theater or improvisation. I mean, it was only fun if you put on the mask yourself and imagined, you know, I am... Now, how would this character behave? It's basically improv games. And to learn how to create play and to create adventure for yourself with just your imagination, And to take real joy and energy and excitement from a kind of fantasy landscape and adventures that you create for yourself is a really good way to stay out of trouble.

Scott Yeah, no, it's fascinating. So alignment, right? So you have to choose. You have to choose. There are two poles, which is really interesting. There's a relationship to society and a relationship to morality. And so the relationship to society is lawful, neutral, or chaotic. So you're a rule follower. Or you're somebody that is, you know, follow the rules when they make sense, but I'm not religiously a rule follower. Or you're chaotic, right? Which the chaotic is like, no, I don't like the strictures of society and I'm a rebel. But there's also this kind of moral spectrum where you're either good, right? Where you're committed to basically the good life and the true, the good and the beautiful things. You're neutral between good and evil. Or you're evil. You're really on the dark side of reality. Right, you're explaining this badly, I think.

Chris Okay, step in, please. So did you ever watch Westworld, either the original movie or the television series?

Scott Yeah, I've watched the original movie. Okay, so at the beginning- By the way, do you know that Arnold Schwarzenegger patterned his performance in The Terminator off of Yul Brynner's performance in the Westworld movie?

Chris Are you still going to be my friend if I admit that I did not know that?

Scott I mean, we're in real geekdom here. Oh, okay, okay.

Chris So you've got to understand, I've got a very thin base of geekdom. And then there's a lot of other things that if you test my knowledge, especially of popular culture... If your respect for me depends upon my capacity to help you win in like the arts and culture category when we play Trivial Pursuit... No, not at all. Okay, thank goodness, because that's not... Yeah, it was always my weak category. And I never would win because inevitably you had to get one of those pieces of pie. So Westworld, right? The beginning of Westworld, you come into this park, welcome to this fantasy land. First thing you have to choose, are you a good guy or are you a bad guy? Are you gonna wear the white hat or the black hat? And this was alignment in D&D. And it was a really important choice. So here's this whole... Landscape, Playscape. We're gonna go on adventures together, but are you gonna be a good guy or a bad guy? A good girl or a bad girl? That was kind of your first decision. And like everything else in D&D, they, you know, they...

They added these refinements. So like you say, they recognized in kind of setting it up that good and evil is just actually one version of it. You can be, just like in Westworld, you can be a good guy who is also a lawman, like the sheriff, or you can be a good guy who, law gets in my way, And I don't know what the Westworld equivalent would be, but it's kind of... The classic of this would be Batman versus Superman.

Scott Exactly.

Chris Superman is a good guy and law-abiding. Right, he's true justice in the American way.

Scott And Batman is sort of like, look, the law gets in the way of really stopping the bad people.

Chris The criminals get off. Right. And that's why we need vigilante justice, that the law works too slow.

Scott And also, you could be a bad guy or gal. You could be a bad guy who either plays within the rules. We see this in lots of movies where the bad guy is this corporate titan or something who always lawyers up and who obeys all the rules and is totally evil. Or you can be a bad guy Like the Joker, who is not just evil, but really wants to tear down society. It's not gonna play in any scriptures. Watch it burn, right? So you could be, there's different ways to be a bad guy. You could be a bad guy in the system, wanting to beat the system, or a bad guy that wants to take down the system. And then there's this messy neutral category, where you're kind of, you're not sure what you think about good or evil or societal structure.

Chris Yeah, I always felt that if you're going to enter the playscape and say, you know, my attitude towards this world is that I'm not going to take sides. I guess either you're sort of choosing sort of to be the balance And that you see that good and evil are just two sides of a cosmic truth. And it feels more true to be allied to neither. Then to pick one, like to pick to be good and ignore everything you know about that, but the evil is real. And how do I even know if my actions are good? I mean, can I see all ends and all consequences? I feel like... You know, probably a lot of philosophers today are neutral. So confused about what would be good that it feels safer just to not try to pick that stance.

Scott And the classic character for this, I think, at least in the DC universe, is Catwoman. I mean, because she's chaotic in the sense of she's a criminal, but she's neither good nor evil, right? She does some things. She helps the vulnerable once in a while, but she also... Skirts with the villains and she's she's not like like Batman is clearly chaotic good. I mean, there's this great Line in the in the in the Christopher Nolan films with Christian Bale where he's partnering with Catwoman and he says No guns no killing like it's clear that like even though he breaks the law and stuff He won't use a gun because he doesn't want to kill anybody and then he it's not just killing He kind of walks it back a step because guns are killing instruments.

Chris Right, so that's his good guy side of his persona.

Scott Right, there's a moral thing. It's not about law and society, but it is about the good, and he thinks there's a real morality, whereas Catwoman, you know, she's chaotic neutral. I mean, she's not law-abiding. But she sometimes, you know, even watched in The Dark Knight Rises, she winds up helping Bane and Batman. I mean, she's kind of her hire.

Chris So yeah, I feel like if we want to talk about superheroes and what is their alignment, we got to kind of update it to more contemporary exemplars in, say, the Marvel universe, like Iron Man. So he would be what? Chaotic good? I think he's neutral good. Oh boy, you're way geekier than me.

Scott Well, because I think sometimes Tony Stark breaks the rules and then, you know, in Captain America, the Captain America film where Tony Stark is kind of the rival to Captain America, he's partnering with the government because he feels guilty about what they did, what the Avengers did destroying this Eastern European city. And so he kind of, you know, his alignment as far as society is neutral.

Chris He sees that if we're superheroes just running rampant around the world, that that's not necessarily the best way to pursue the good. We need some order here.

Scott Right, right. And I think Captain America almost changed, well, I think I would have said he's lawful good, but he becomes the outlaw. But maybe he's lawful good in the sense of he thinks the government has betrayed the rules. And so he's upholding truth, justice, American way stuff.

Chris Right. If the institutions won't do it.

Scott I'll do it. Whereas Tony Stark does not see himself as beholden to any institution. He sees himself as godlike, and he's really good. I mean, he wants to do the good, but he's kind of neutral good. Like, if it helps to go outside the law, he'll do it. Like, if it helps to be institutional, he'll do it.

Chris I guess you would say, like, you know, the whole Guardians of the Galaxy, they're kind of chaotic good.

Scott Yeah, but by nature, are they neutral? They're definitely neutral or chaotic because they kind of float around.

Chris They're definitely not lawful.

Scott No, no, no. And they can't be because there's no kind of universal moral laws governing. There's no constitution governing the universe. They have to make it up as they go along. And so they're definitely somewhere between neutral. Now, what is Thor?

Chris Okay. Well, okay, so he's clearly one of the good guys. Yeah. Okay. And then your question is, what's his relationship to order and the law as a path to achieving the good?

Scott He might be neutral good. No, what about Loki? Loki, I would guess, is neutral evil.

Chris Okay, so, okay, like, it's been decades, bro, so you're going to have to walk me through this. So Loki, okay, I remember, like, so Thor's, well, yeah, we think of it, if not evil, at least mischievous brother. So, but you think he's evil. Which is he actively wants to promote bad in the world, you think. So he's not just sort of selfish, but he's evil, you think.

Scott I think so. The new Loki series might make him neutral.

Chris I haven't watched it. I actually don't know what his alignment is. But when you say he's neutral evil, the first neutral is neither lawful nor chaotic. You think it's because... What? Explain that to me.

Scott Surely he's chaotic, isn't he? Well, at times, but then at times he plays by the rules. Like, at times, Loki, when it serves him... I mean, you think about in the last Avengers Endgame movie, the Endgame movie, he's kind of on the ship with the Asgardians. He's kind of in society. I think Loki plays... Luther, in some instantiations, he'll start Lexcorp or something like that. He's a guy that actually buys off politicians. He thrives in the system. Whereas I think Loki, he can play in the system if he needs to. Or not, so I think he's neutral evil. His own interest is self-interest and his own kind of malevolent projects.

Chris I guess maybe one way to think about motivation for superheroes, and we can get to political leaders who think they're superheroes in a moment and kind of bring all of this to the real world. But I guess one of the ways to think about it is, do they fantasize about being legislators? Right. So if you're the Joker, like, no, I just want to burn shit up. But you think about Thanos, for example, who said, like, I've got a very clear theory about how the universe should work. And I think that right now, you know, life is violating that theory. It's growing out of control and we can't have that. And nobody has the strength to enforce the law. So I'm going to enforce the law. So you would argue that he was, there was something like lawful or like he was trying to appeal to some higher universal law and he was really interested in being that legislator.

Scott Thanos might be the most neutral character, too, because he violates... He acts in a way... He might be... He's either lawful neutral or neutral neutral, because I don't think... You're right. I don't think Thanos is evil.

Chris Right, but he didn't see himself as evil.

Scott He's like, this is... Yeah, and there's not a scene... Look at the Avengers endgame movie or whatever. You'd be hard-pressed to find a cruel... We'll see you then.

Chris So if that helps people, you know, thank you to the Marvel Cinematic Universe for helping us to make sense of alignment from our D&D days. But you know, it's actually, so it's fun, but there is a kind of, you know, for me, a sort of broader insight here about, you know, play is insightful. Yeah, and And I feel like one of the things that certainly happened for me over the past 18 months is so much of the serendipity So many of the opportunities to play and play with other people or play by consuming culture and things like that were removed from my life. And I became a tremendously productive person. And I think there's something about getting things done. There is total culture of maximizing productivity in our work life, in our personal lives, time management, all of it. How can I get more tasks done?

Completed through the quantity of time that I've got each day seems to be a really important objective that really isn't objected to. And then when you eliminate everybody's distractions and you say, hey, you could just get more work done. And they're like, yeah, I should get more work done. And I think now, having attempted that for a year and a half, I think we're in a position to kind of do it like a self-assessment of, you know, so how's that going for me? Is, you know, is the kind of the linear way through productivity the best way? Or do we, and I'm answering for myself, I feel like, well, one of the consequences was My energy just isn't the same as it was. The verve somehow isn't the same. And I've started to become really quite convinced that productivity, whatever this thing is, it's a nonlinear equation. That less time spent working and more time spent playing would get me further faster.

And maybe part of it is because even while we're playing, we are exploring the world from different perspectives and in new ways. There is so much growth and discovery happening when we are in play space, when we are in play mode. All of these useful frameworks for navigating The real world that we unconsciously learn, and they're really useful, like alignment. You know, we can totally diagnose the MCU.

Scott And we can look at... You know what's interesting, too? Like, on a meta level, to critique our own process, you and I had this delightful conversation the other night about D&D and alignment, right? And we could have just rolled in and said to our listeners, we're going to be playful right now because we're going to tell you something we really enjoy, even though normally we give you this kind of timely kind of headline and then timeless kind of question. We're just gonna mess with the format a little bit because we found something we really enjoy and we're gonna let you in on it. And we spent so much time figuring out how to intro something we just wanted to talk about. That was fun. It's just interesting. And I've loved this podcast. I think it's delightful. And part of what I think we do for our listeners is once in a while,

we'll pull back the curtains and let you see, if you like this podcast and you like the way we think, we'll help you see how we think. And so it's funny because it was even challenging for us to be playful on this podcast.

Chris Oh, totally.

Scott And by the way, Chris has these dice. And so if you become, we're going to have some kind of Patreon link where he'll send you pictures of his D&D dice, which it was crazy to me that he has them.

Chris I just rolled a 70. Is that good?

Scott Oh, wow. Wow. So this is, no, but it's just interesting.

Chris Check up what it means on my wand of infinite wonders.

Scott Oh, dude, I love that. I always wanted what was called a bow of magic missile. It was never created, but I wanted a bow. So magic missiles are these like magical arrows that always hit and they cause a certain amount of damage. And so I was like, why can't I have a bow of magic missile? Where my bow basically doesn't have a string, but when I touch it, it pulls up a magic missile. I mean, that was my dream creation.

Chris It was never created. Wand of Wonders. Wand of Wonders. I rolled a 70. It means I cast a fireball. Nice. Ooh, a 13. 13's not good. 13. 13. I'm stunned until the start of my next turn, believing something awesome just happened.

Scott Your wand of wonders blew up in your face. You're stunned.

Chris That means that this meant something to only five people on the planet, but I hope that you were listening.

Scott We love it, though. We love it. But I think alignment, so it's interesting because part of what play offers us is often a less threatening way to look at our own motivations, right? Because always when we're thinking about superheroes or... Our D&D characters are something we're always thinking about ourselves, because that's where human beings live. We're always thinking about ourselves, and then our interaction with the world and interpretation of it comes through our look at ourselves. I think the fun thing about alignment is you're thinking about, what am I, really? What would I be? If I had superpowers, would I change? Most of us have to functionally be at least lawful Or else you go to jail or something, right? So most of us are coerced into being lawful. But if you had this capacity to transcend norms... That's why I love post-apocalyptic films and literature, because it gets... Okay, it becomes a choice. What do you want to play? That's why I love The Walking Dead. The Walking Dead, the zombies are completely uninteresting. They're window dressing. They're like a weather pattern. They're not interesting at all.

Like, they don't do anything interesting. The interesting thing in Walking Dead are different human choices. And this community chooses this way of being, and this community chooses this way of being, and they're trying to figure out, well, we don't have the strictures of society anymore, so how do we, in this post-apocalyptic reality? And so I think the great thing is, like, you can live, like, you actually can live Pre-fantasy or pre-apocalyptic, you can actually ask yourself, who am I and what do I want to be and who do I want to be?

Chris So my question now is, so yeah, so what is your alignment, do you think? I think I am neutral good. You think you're neutral good?

Scott Yeah, I think I am...

Chris So if you're stopped at a red light, you may go through it.

Scott Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. I might. I might. I have a respect for society, but it's not absolute. But I do have a respect for the good. And I think ultimately the good is important to me, like respect for life and respect for people's dignity and things like that. But I think That can often be, I think the strictures of society can often be contra good. And also my own personality is such that I don't worry about running the stoplight. No, I've gotten tickets because of that and things like that. I'm not obsessed with someone's watching. No, what are you?

Chris Yeah, I guess I want to be one of the good guys. Are you neutral maybe? Well, so I feel like, I wonder if that's, you know, maybe just a, if that's an honest tension that Do we all work with this tension? I mean, I feel like I'm not always good in the sense that sometimes I am really... Obsessed isn't quite the right word, but really caught up in me. My life, my goals, my needs, my anxieties, I can really be inwardly focused in a way that is almost sociopathic. But I say that recognizing that I suspect that's a lot of us, right?

Scott There's a lot of- You're being the better Augustinian Christian than I am right now, because I kind of like, because if you ask me intellectually, I would say that's true about everybody, but you ask me personally, and my self-righteousness kicks in. I'm a good guy, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm a good guy, oh, yeah, yeah. No, but this is, you know, like Augustine.

Chris Right, so I want to be a good person, but yeah.

Scott If you read Augustine's Confessions, he has this great story. Where he's like with his buddies and he steals a pair as a teenager or something. And he's like, I didn't even, I don't even like pairs. And I just wanted to fit, like, he's like examining his own depravity. And he just goes into all these examples when he just made terrible choices and, and, and did them knowing they were terrible. Like it's, it's, it's great like psychoanalysis and we would not have psychoanalysis without Augustine's confessions. But I think you're right. I mean, the Augustinian Christian in me would say, aren't we all to some level bent toward the evil?

Chris Yeah. So I think for me, yes, a little bit. I mean, in moderation, right? Evil in moderation is how I describe myself. And then on like kind of the lawful or the- That would be a great resort.

Scott You should open a resort. We should open a resort in the Cayman Islands.

Chris Evil in moderation. Evil in moderation. We would get some really, really interesting guests checking in. It would be a great business model. I'm pretty sure. Well, we should do that. Now, kind of the lawful or chaotic. See, now, I don't know. I mean, I'm certainly a very, I am a very kind of, you know, law-abiding person. But intellectually, I have a strong bent, a strong resistance to accepting the way things are. I'm intellectually far more interested to like poke holes at everything. And so, you know, as soon as that becomes kind of the norm, I just want to be on the other side of the argument. It's like, what are we missing when we all adopt that? Just like, remember a couple of years ago, my TED talk, everybody's talking about what's wrong with social media, what's bad with social media. So I'm like, I'm gonna try to argue the other side. You know what? Let it run amok because what it's showing us is how messed up our relationship with truth is. If these tweets and this fake news is enough to completely confuse us, Now, you know, In some way, that's extremely radical stuff. I mean, the people at TED were a little like, geez, you really wanna say this? Like, yeah, shit, let's do it. I think this is an interesting thing to say, to provoke us to think.

So there is something I would do very poorly in a society that demands strong intellectual obedience. Like a China, say, because I wouldn't be able to be myself, which I just need to be a bit of the iconoclast. I see that as something useful that I can do, is to provoke questioning.

Scott See, it's so interesting, because I think I'm the opposite in our conversations. I think I am the person that generally is Citing the rules of the road for Western intellectual history. Well, that there's this, Hegel says this, or Plato says this, and we gotta, like, I find myself, even though personally, I'm probably a little more libertine in my own tastes, but like, intellectually, I probably am this lawful kind of, I'm, it's part, but one of the reasons I love our conversations and our friendship, because I think I am, you kind of push me in some really helpful ways, because I think I am probably at times beholden to certain kind of ways of, certain conventions intellectually. So, yeah, I mean, I think that that's, even though, like, I think people wouldn't describe me as this sort of uptight guy or something, but I do think I am, my own disposition is probably to preserve the tradition, if I can, rather than upend it.

And the tradition, but I mean, I don't mean any one particular thinker. I'm just saying, well, okay, like, let's not kind of cancel them. Let's not upend them yet. Like, maybe their day is still here. Their day in the sun is still here kind of thing.

Chris Right. Yeah. You know, it's interesting. I was just thinking, listening to you describe that. You know, we tend to, we tend to hold a lot of people in society to a lawful good standard.

Scott Yeah.

Chris Right? Like every elected politician, you're expected to be lawful good. You know, every judge, every chief executive officer, right, like officer of a publicly traded company, every bank executive, you are all expected to be lawful good. And, you know, we play D&D, like just, you know, random group of people. There weren't that many Lawful Good characters in the party.

Scott No, no, no. And what's funny is in this country- Who wanted to play Lawful Good? Right, and it's funny because we just went through a presidency. Of somebody that was basically chaotic neutral. I mean, Trump was chaotic neutral.

Chris Wait, wait, let's linger on that for a moment. So you think Donald Trump was chaotic neutral. Okay, so chaotic, like, yeah, definitely not lawful. I mean, the law is just there for people who don't understand that you can get further ahead by not following it.

Scott I mean, he was a chaos agent, but he wasn't truly evil in the sense of, I don't think he had enough... I mean, Augustine says, you know, like, a really good liar gets some virtue because they have to know a little bit of the truth. To hide it, right? Trump wasn't even a good liar. Like, he wasn't even the kind of liar that has to learn the truth to cover it. Like, Trump was just a chaos agent. I mean, I think he was kind of not on the good and evil standard. He was just all id. And so it was all chaos and all id. And so I wouldn't even say Trump actually had the kind of moral imagination to be evil. Is it, okay, yeah, that's interesting.

Chris Or is it about narcissism? Like if you're extremely narcissistic, is it hard to be either good or evil? Because both of those kind of suggest like an outward orientation.

Scott Yes, yeah, yeah. And relationship and imaginatively constructing your relationship to the world, right? Right, right. Yeah, and no, I think Trump had no imagination. I mean, other than for himself, I mean, as a marketing kind of showman.

Chris So, okay, so the person who says, I do whatever I want to get whatever I want is chaotic neutral.

Scott Yeah, I think the narcissistic, powerful personality like Trump is chaotic neutral. No, Biden might be neutral good in the sense of, I think Biden is a creature of the Senate and he respects that stuff, but he's okay bending rules once in a while for the little guy.

Chris I mean, I think he's, he might be, although if you're in politics- Or is that just sort of like a, I feel like there's a higher law here and sometimes the actual law in the books is kind of a- Right. So I just really, you know- Maybe he's lawful good.

Scott I mean, I think to be any kind of decent politician who people respect, whether you're right or left, but if you're respectable, you kind of have to be lawful good, right? I mean, you have to be not just good, you have to be lawful. You have to respect the traditions and the strictures and work within them. So maybe if you want to be a politician, at least if you're not lawful good, you have to learn how to fake it. Like, what was Churchill? Definitely good.

Chris I mean, I'm sure he would describe himself as lawful. I mean, it's... You don't think so?

Scott No, I don't know. I mean, I think he would. I mean, I don't know. I mean, Churchill, though, was a rambunctious kind of... It's interesting to, like, I think instead...

Chris You know, more interesting, just a contemporary thought, like, what about the Chinese president, Xi Jinping? What would your first, just how would you try to put that world leader into the alignment boxes?

Scott Lawful neutral. Elaborate? I think, like, I think... So lawful, that makes sense to me.

Chris I mean, definitely big part of, you know, Chinese society is order, right? Like we're basically a civilization-wide experiment of what does society look like when order is the number one value? Yeah. So I get lawful.

Scott But I think you could see him like... Doing some humanitarian things for countries and also him doing authoritarian things. I think the kind of law is Chinese order, right? And so I think he makes decisions based on... So I don't think he's gonna... Make the moral decision that will be critical and prophetic in light of Chinese culture. Like I think he's going to kind of do the lawful, that's the other interesting thing, like which kind of thing is one dominant over the other. So I think for Ping, like law is going to be dominant over his morality kind of thing, which will be neutral. So the important thing is Chinese order and tradition. And sometimes, you know, like he'll use that power for some things that will alleviate poverty and suffering in the world, which China has taken more people out of poverty faster than any nation state we've ever seen, right? Like they've also done incredibly oppressive and horrible things. And I think... The current Chinese president is someone that is really neutral on the moral question, but very devout on the order question.

Chris I guess the Chinese case raises this related big question of who decides what's good and what's evil. I mean, is this something that I determine for myself? And if I have a kind of a vision for my authority to create a better world, Other people may fundamentally disagree that that vision is better, but that's my internal story to myself. Does that make me good? Or is there some sort of Archimedean point that looks at me like, you may think that that's better, but that's not better. That's worse. And so while you're deluding yourself into thinking that you're good, you're actually evil. Now, this is, I think, careening back to the fantasy world. Maybe one of the things that's most fascinating, maybe it's what's appealing about fantasy films or the Marvel Cinematic Universe, because that question was never a question. Right? And in fact, when I was, you know, a kid and like reading fantasy novels, what I found, one of the things I found so clarifying about these books is there was no doubt what was good and what was evil.

Right? Like evil, the universe is gonna end unless we stop this. So that's clearly ultimate evil. And if we're fighting against that, then we must be the good people because we don't want the totality of life in the universe to end.

Scott And even if you roleplay the thief or something, right? You're the thief who is in the party, who's stealing gems or something that helps the party defeat the ultimate thing. Even the people on the edges of morality in the party are still serving the good.

Chris Yeah, when you're confronting ultimate evil, I mean, anything that obstructs that agenda makes you one of the good guys. Now, Game of Thrones, you know, is quite interesting in one respect because it, you know, this is, you know, George R.R. Martin, he's like, his insight, his genius, his innovation was to look at the fantasy genre as, you know, The opportunity of storytelling that they're missing is to make everything morally ambiguous. Let's evolve past the clarity of good and evil and let's just create fantasy story where people have their own messy motivations. And whether it's good or evil, you know, really does depend on, you know, whether you're in the Biden administration or you're in, you know, the Xi Jinping administration. From both of our perspectives, we're doing right by our people. And this is the game to kind of see how it plays out. And ultimately the victor is going to be the ones who write the history books. I always, you know, that was that, And maybe this is sort of the Christian upbringing in me, kind of wanting to be one of the good guys. And then living in a real world where Unless I don't ask any hard questions.

Unless I don't do things like live in China for several years and study its politics and befriend people within its government structure. If I don't do any of those things, then I can live in that fantasy role-play world. But in the real world where so much is trying to navigate these positions of gray. And then there are so many actors in the world who amass tremendous strength for themselves and a following by just saying like, to hell, I'm going to pretend that it's black and white. Yeah, yeah. Hey, everybody, you know, read my fantasy novel. And in our story, we're the good guys and they're the bad guys. And we all love those stories because they're clarifying. And my challenge is always that, and I guess this is maybe part of what makes me neutral, is I love this story, but I don't know if it's the right story.

Scott Yeah, it's funny because I'm sitting here in New York and I'm just a short train ride away from the great institution, Union Theological Seminary, where the great Reinhold Niebuhr taught. And he was this giant of 20th century, not just Christian intellectual thought, I mean, American intellectual thought. I mean, he was asked to testify before Congress multiple times and stuff. And he developed this theory called Christian Realism. And he started as a pacifist. And then lived through, you know, World Wars. And, you know, as a kid, and then he was, I think, a teenager. No, he was in his 20s or something in World War II. And, you know, he basically just thought, like, there's no pure hands. Like every, you know, you can't, like, basically, you know, all these Christians... Where are these bracelets? WWJD. What would Jesus do? And Niebuhr would just say, that's irrelevant. We can't live like Jesus. We don't have his job description. We have to live in the real world with dirty hands. And he was trying to have an ethic of how do you be moral with dirty hands? And that's, so maybe I'm self-righteous. I guess we're all at least neutral on our best days.

And evil at our worst days. But, you know, we'd like to tell ourselves. And I think good is good to be aspirational towards, right? Like, it's good to aspire to the good. But you're right. I think we all probably are so much more complicated and compromised than we can admit in polite company, because we all like to think of ourselves as good people.

Chris Again, when we go to a sporting event together and you're completely embarrassed in my company. That's when you'll decide, you know, is Chris actually a good person or is he secretly quite evil? I hope evil.

Scott I hope evil. I hope we get into some trouble. So this has been great. Yeah, this has been great. And also tell us, as our listeners, if you have a moment to send us an email or something. Because we'd love to hear what you all think about what we're doing. And also, this is kind of a different episode. I mean, we did things a little bit differently today. We kind of started with our own kind of things that we used to like to do as kids. And so... So yeah, just please let us know how we can better serve you as our listeners. And thank you for tuning into us as you all are regularly doing. It's wonderful.

Chris I wonder if we're now going to connect into the D&D community, if we're going to get some... Oh, yeah.

Scott Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. Absolutely.

Chris Because if you're out there, I need so much help. You've got to update me to the new rules. Because I think I played second edition, or maybe it was like 2.5, and I just looked online. It's fifth edition now, and I don't know what the fifth edition rules are. I don't know anything about this.

Scott And invite us. I mean, we will play. We'll come into your party. Like, we will, yeah, invite us. I mean, we would play, right, on Zoom or something.

Chris I have my dice. I'm ready to go.

Scott I'll have to go get dice. But I'm in New York. I can get dice.

Chris I'm sure there's some kind of like dice app now, right? Not the same, not the same thing. Not the same thing. Maybe it will be like really retro and like, oh my God, you have physical dice. It's so cute.

Scott Yeah, no, it'll be, it'll be retro. Thanks my friend. This was fantastic. Yeah, it was great.

Chris All right. Take care, Scott.