Admitting REGRET: the Last Taboo.

you know YouTube and filmmaking are two
completely different things but you learn a little bit about the filmmakers art as you're making videos here on YouTube and this is in effect take two of the video I did the first take I was fresh out of the gym I felt great I thought this is gonna go great film that's sitting on a park bench with the natural sunlight pouring down on me no no no natural what didn't work out at all not only did the coloring look terrible the lighting looked terrible but the whole time I kind of kind of splitting ideas and just kind of a little bit puffy and squinting up and stuff so that's what you learn bit by terrible awful bit anyway yeah I was yeah it was fresh out the gym and feeling myself and I was sitting in front of a vegan restaurant too but obviously I need I need a crew of interns to make outdoor filming that type possible all right on to the only moderately depressing topic of this video look I want to talk about regret and I want to talk about being open about regret and you know I feel like this is the last big taboo in the english-speaking world in the 21st century in what sense to it what's that so I mean it's taboo with my microphone over here ah look we live in a culture that like accepts you and embraces you if if you say that you regret you know that you were born a man instead of a woman I mean like the actor towards transsexuals we live in a culture that's so positive so encouraging about drug use and drug addiction and being an ex-alcoholic and you know committing unspeakable atrocities and more whatever like oh well that's when you were young you know you've moved on is there any [ __ ] empire in the history of the world that had less interest in in taking its own war criminals to court than the American Empire um yes the British Empire the British Empire was even less interested in any kind of accountability like yo you tortured some people to bet death in Vietnam but nothing we can do about that now it's going on still today anybody who committed atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan one of the good things is they'll talk about it openly because those guys although there's no chance of any kind of accountability no Chet nobody who did anything wrong in 2008 financial whatever not into not into personal accountability culture we live in a culture that's so warm and receptive to regret about gender and sexuality and drugs and alcohol but it seems to me it is in denial it's not accept you know it's it's quite taboo to talk about regret of matters of real substance so most obvious one here is education so look this is not a problem with 100% of white Western English speaking people but it's a problem with the majority people I deal with and I deal with unusual kinds of people I deal with people with very most of them of very high level of education a lot of people I talk to of F phd's I deal with my own family who are some very peculiar people I deal with people who are vegan activists and you know whatever it's not a cross-section population but this reluctance to even let the word regret come out of your mouth I really noticed it all the time and I may be a little bit extra sensitive the issue because of what my father's own own attitude was so my father he virtually created his own religion of refusing to regret everything of wanting to believe that everything in his life and everything in my life everything in life was some kind of positive progress and positive growth I do think many of you will just am I saying that you were [ __ ] you've known people with that kind of attitude whether or not it quite reached such a religious fervor as you did with my father now I think my father was in some ways warped by the positive encouragement he had as a young man look guys let's keep it a little real you can have both you have people who are warped psychologically because they received so much negative attention or discouragement right they were told growing up you can never do this you're never gonna be good enough you're never gonna be smart enough that Kanwar people sure it can warp your outlook on life and it can influence your behavior negatively but some people get warped by encouragement some people get warped by being told again and again you know you're beautiful you're wonderful you're brilliant you're the best you're the best in your class you're the best in the school you're so talented you don't need to work hard you need to worry everything's gonna be great you're gonna be a success and stereotypically in white western english-speaking culture I do talk to a lot of kind of good-looking blondes good-lookin females who really had that problem and what makes it all the more tragic is those women may not be stupid they may be intelligent they may be talented but they're not as intelligent as they think they are and they're not talented in the ways they suppose they are because they've only had this kind of positive encouragement and they haven't had someone in a down-to-earth way say to them look you're already failing this class at this level maybe you shouldn't press on to the next class the next level maybe you gotta reconsider and re-strategize where your talents lie what you're good at what you're willing to work hard at where you're gonna put in the effort maybe this career path isn't for you or this educational path is a few maybe something else is maybe there's something else you can excel at or maybe you just need to re-examine what you're doing so that you can excel so in the same way my father um I really think he had some of the same psychological disadvantages as someone who grew up as a stereotypical good-looking blonde in this culture I mentioned to my girlfriend the other day I once saw an interview with a Czech woman a woman from the Czech Republic and she had worked as a model and an actress but she also had a university degree in something boring like chemistry so not hating on chemistry but you know I mean some some real said and she said and you could tell her you could feel her seething disapproval she said it was not until I came to the United States of America that I had even heard of this idea that a beautiful woman didn't need to do anything else in her life other than be a beautiful woman she said where I came from if you're a beautiful woman that's good but you still got to work hard you still got a study hard you still got to prove yourself you know you still got to earn the respect to your peers you still gotta work hard to have a career or distinction something somewhere now I don't know that's that that memory of mine that's been more than 20 years ago I think that I saw that interview it may be that the Czech Republic has changed a lot of things have changed in central your up since then I've been to the Czech Republic beautiful country terrible climate alright moving on in some ways my father had those defects and I would suspect you know some of my viewers may know that also my father situation was not that he was good-looking but that he grew up in a disadvantaged household and he was actively perceived as being disadvantaged but all of his teachers and professors he was getting all this positive encouragement he was the working class hero stereotype came from a steel mill town everybody around him worked in a steel factory his own mother worked in a steel factory when his mother remarried he got married to a second guy that guy was also an employee of the the steel mills steel factory and you know his parents had had divorced when he was an infant kind of thing and you know so he was a single child of being raised by a single mother factory worker in a steel town so all he ever heard growing up was that he was a working-class hero that he was good enough and smart enough and brilliant and and what-have-you and really briefly he was gifted with a very good memory for me it's a funny story it may not be funny to you but I mean the way he got by in the education system was just by memorizing things and this covered up some really serious lapses in what talent and what kind of intellectual ability he had didn't have a lot of examination based math education is really just testing your ability to memorize things and the ultimate example of this was that he took a course that he had no interest in and he told me he took this course only to try to raise his grade his grade average to get into a better you know ph.d program ultimately MA program PhD from get a better scholarship he to of course he found completely boring and uninteresting on geology the science of rocks and with no interest he just sat down and memorized the textbook and he got the highest grade on that exam that anyone had ever gotten in the the records of the the school and the professor was so astounded he asked my father if he'd be willing to change majors and switch into that my work now my fathertold this with of course a guffaw and a laugh to him it was the most ridiculous thing to imagine that he would have quit being in philosophy and gone into geology maybe his whole life would have been better if he had that's your aptitude is just memorizing and recursion maybe could have had a great career as a geologist Canada is a country with a lot of mining you probably could have had a great career even organizing labor unions since y'all because that was his communist fantasy he wasn't he was an extreme left winger he was not just a moderate communist he was a communist extremist probably could've been real happy organizing miners unions and a better life so that's that's kind of another story but he hit his limit in terms of his ability to scrape by just memorizing and regurgitating things on exams that all came to a screeching halt when he got an all-expenses-paid scholarship to go to Harvard University Harvard School of world religion to learn Sanskrit and with the best professors in the world the textbooks all the encouragement in the world in what may have been the best university at least the best university in America or maybe even the best university in the world for studying and teaching Sanskrit at that time Harvard School of divinities at its zenith of Fame at that time especially in Sanskrit um he could not do it he could not he could not do the verb paradigms he could not do the basics of of learning Sanskrit and he dropped out did he spend the rest of his life regretting this no instead he convinced himself he created this new religion this new belief system that he didn't regret anything that nothing was to be regretted that he would go around all the time telling everyone fiercely how proud he was that he had no regrets in life that somehow his life is just one long succession of victories and how all these experiences just made him who he is and who he is a supposedly a wonderful human being which he really wasn't when my father first fell in love with my mother with the woman who became my mother he had a famous dinner party where he met my mom's parents the first time and he told them then I mean I only heard this story as he told it I can only imagine how much more embarrassing and awful the situation wasn't real life he told them then probably at the inner tilt that he had no regrets in life it he felt a man ought to live his life with no with no regrets and no remorse and that that's how he was at that time my father already had seven children born to him by several different ways and he was looking at marrying my mother to have child number 8 and child number 9 that's me you know hashtag no regrets that's life and I think I think my mother's parents my maternal grandparents probably regarded him as psychotic from what I get from the story the reaction was was pretty now remember you know I remember my grandparents that side they we're not they're not no see self-effacing people thought you know I think I think dinner I think dinner was ruined you should regret hey wait look look look look look look my philosophy is the the diametric opposite extreme I think all of you can probably imagine the ways in which this is a kind of sick sad self justification of my father's party I'm very upfront with people about my regrets what they are why I have them what I want to learn from them moving on and how I don't encourage other people to make the same mistakes I made I'm really upfront really honest people no regrets especially when I'm talking to professor's colleagues I often state it in a very emotionally neutral inexpressive way like yeah I regret that I came here and majored in Chinese I regret that I study Chinese I regret that I ever started learning the Chinese language this has been a disaster that's been a failure you know I regret it but that alone even my stating it in a completely dry neutral factual way a lot of people have the same reaction my father did again my father is a little bit weird or a little bit of extreme example this but I'm kind of seeing and again how widespread his attitude is in white Western culture and they're there to size it one is just okay one is the difference we regret in admitting that you regret something is just saying oh no you mustn't admit that right but the second is I think this deeper feeling although still relatively shallow is deeper feeling that these experiences even these mistakes have made you who you are so you ought not to regret anything because if you regret something or if you admit that you regret something especially something the substantive this deep these types of experiences that have changed you are that have made you who you are what you are admitting directly or indirectly is that that you regret becoming the man you now are and for me that's not daunting at all I think in having that conversation you're exactly committing to the level of honesty of regretting that you've become the man who you are because I agree it does run that deep the decision to learn Cambodian and move to Cambodia changed me I became a different person and in some ways a better person but not all I mean I'm not I'm not into lunch on that I'm not kidding myself the decision to learn lotion decision to study Korean a jib way all the different decisions I made in terms of my education language career yeah it changed me it made me who I am and I can openly say now I'm 40 years old and I'm looking at it the next 20 years of my life where I'm making the transition from 40 years old to 60 and it's deplorable I've put myself in a terrible position a lot of it is not my fault a lot of it has to do with the education system in Canada and circumstances way beyond my control in places like Cambodia and Laos whatever I regret that I ever studied Chinese that I ever studied Japanese that I ever studied lotion Cambodian poly Cree a jib way I regret all of it and I'm burdened with the awareness that my intellectual potential even my political potential might potentially contribute positively to politics whether at City Hall or Parliament or as a vegan activist or as an activist on some other set of issues I care about like prison reform any given war the armbar we always have a good selection of Wars to be an activist not in 21st century or you know the struggles of indigenous peoples in Canada groups like the Korean Ajay way whatever it is that I've lost all of that I've lost each and every opportunity to do something meaningful to make a pause the difference in the world because of those decisions I made even though I made those decisions with the best of intentions and with exactly these positive aspirations and now I've got nothing and going nowhere and I'm really willing to say I regret that I regret what I tried to do what I did and sure I even regret you know what what it's made me you sure put optimistic ending on this know you know you know there's that old canard of wanting to believe that we're living in the best of all possible worlds was that live Nets yeah I think it was live nets and not Spinoza who said that you know trying to convince yourself that things would have been even worse if you taken some other path I'm just not I'm just not stupid enough to tell myself that and I'm now at a stage in my life where in terms of what I can do with my mental powers my intellectual competence and ability I'd be in a better position today if I joined the army and I don't just mean if I joined the army at 18 if I joined the army at 18 25 28 38 at any given point then I believe me I don't by military service as someone who studies political science I have a pretty accurate idea of just how miserable and depressing that would be but the compromises I have made and the sacrifices I have made to acquire the learning that I have sure it's it's left me with with nothing and no hope for my own future none so look if you're not willing to say that if you're not willing to look in the mirror and and and regret you know who you are and those decisions and what it's what it's made you into then I think this kind of conversation can only be a kind of sham can only be a kind of Act and that was what those conversations have Mallen to do every time I discussed it with my father whether I was whatever back in my 20s or the discussions we had not so long before he died all you would ever get out of this guy was this performance this sham this this act and I think that's the same act he tried to do for my you know my maternal grandparents or my my mother's parents which is just to try to play the part of this man who who has no regrets and instead what you are is is a man who has regrets and doesn't want to admit it to himself or doesn't want to admit it to the to the outside world so moving forward I can say you know I don't have the answers but I have the honesty to admit to myself that I at least have these questions and that's what regret is it's a question of couldn't I have done better couldn't I have beens that's the worst it could have been worse what is that supposed to be it could have been worse [Music] right right right right right right right that's that's of my professors professor priestly it was a professor Buddhism and never went to Asia I knew another professor that a Cambridge yes yes I would have rather join the army I would have rather done anything any of the plausible options rather than a nobleman if I had learned to play the drums in Toronto and been in a band there would have a better reward for then there has been for the extraordinary life I've lived I made the wrong choice at every stage I regret it all and I can't even play the drums and I can't knit a sweater and I can't drive a car you know those are sacrifices about learned pal I did all these astoria things along stuff itself I mean I think it's interesting your way of phrasing it at first was in terms of the educational content like at least you learned at least you've learned from experience it's true I've learned but it when you say it could have been worse but the reality is if I had put the same level of effort and energy that I put into Palli that's just one language poly as an ancient language into anything else I would have learned more with better outcomes including even ancient Greek or Latin by the way it would have been incredibly easy for me to learn ancient Greek compared to pally alright and I would now have somewhere I could go and get a PhD and move forward with that right so I mean as easy as I say it could have been worse yeah well guess what and every single one of those stages I can look at that and say it could have been better even at the stage you know this where I was learning Japanese which was a terrible to learn Japanese over a short period of time well I could have been learning French as useless as that sounds that still would have been better at any one of these stages it's real easy to see what would have been better I couldn't learn Russian I could learn Farsi I could learn it the Persian or Iranian language or what I call it sure right so this I think anyway she means well my girlfriend but it's a false encouragement to say it it could have been worse the nature of regret is exactly facing up to the fact that it could have been better that is that is really an ineluctable regret